<And think of all the other people who have triumphed over their disability, no-one more so than Helen Keller.

Enough for the moment of our sick, sorry for itself society.

There are more serious fault lines in our Parliamentary system than taxpayers’ petty cash funding moats, duck houses and non-existent mortgages. For a start, the oh so hollow televised debates in the Commons with its empty acres of green leather filled only for a weekly Punch and Judy show. And the House of Lords? It looks even worse. These days the Mother of Parliaments shows not just its age, but also its gray decrepitude. No wonder mistakes are made. But I shall return to this theme later.

Let me get back to more wholesome thoughts, I turn back to special educational needs, and in this Post I shall consider the distinction between disability and deprivation. I ask you which should cause greater concern?

One of the most remarkable things about my involvement as Chair of Governors of a special school for physically disabled children over many years was to discover what a moving and inspirational experience it was. It is against that background that I pose that question.

The Prologue

I still have snapshots of the school in my mind from the time I joined it as Governor in 1988. A head teacher with a vision and a mission statement shared with his deputy “Whole School – Whole Child”, warm, dedicated and committed staff, and above all bright eyed, happy purposeful children,enjoying their school days and helping each other along the way. A win,win situation for everyone included in it – parents, teachers, carers and most of all its pupils. Presentation Evenings captured it all. That is where they all came together in one joyous, celebratory event.

They all had the pride of achievement – without being proud.

What I found particularly moving was seeing children learning to accept and overcome the difficulties that their disabilities presented them with, and the ever so patient help they received from their dedicated and highly trained teachers, carers and therapists.

In Death of a Nightingale I take you into its classrooms. It is a work of fiction, but fact is just below the surface and, from time to time, cuts through it.

Act One Scene 1

Anwar Fawzi and his wife Judy bring their young son Harry, a child with brittle bones, to the school for the first time.

ANWAR FAWZI ….. Have you heard of Fred Raffle? He’s a blind man who plays cricket with dried peas inside the ball so you can hear it, and a suitcase as the wicket. He learned the game at a school for the blind. And my goodness, he now commentates on international cricket. You know, I heard him commentate when India played England. There’s guts for you.

The Cricket Society records:

Fred Raffle is well known in cricketing circles, as is his guide dog, Barney. Fred has followed Glamorgan round the UK and England round the world for decades. The journeys all begin from his home in Sunderland and for the last 10 years Barney has travelled to Glamorgan games with him. During that time Barney has been to 35 grounds and been patted by 14 England captains.

On his travels Fred has worked with BBC and Sky and is well known to their broadcasting teams. When David Lloyd was told of Barney’s 10 years service and impending retirement he suggested a benefit. As luck would have it Matthew Maynard, who is Barney’s favourite cricketer, was travelling to Durham to speak to the Cricket Society on 6th November and this was Barney’s big night. The branch made a donation from the raffle, photographs were taken of the members with the championship trophy and Glamorgan and Durham gave items of cricket memorabilia to auction on Ebay.

Fred Raffle visited my local Rotary Club with Barney to share with us his enthusiasm for the game of cricket, an enthusiasm he gained at a School for the Blind where he and others found a way of playing it with a bag of peas for the ball and a suitcase for the wicket.

The story of Helen Keller is even more astounding.

Act One Scene 3

Joan Errington, the English teacher, and Emma Kirk, the Music teacher, are talking in the staffroom.

JOAN ERRINGTON You’re right There’s real triumph when it comes out of adversity especially if you have to suffer a little first It sets kids up for life. Mollycoddle them, wrap them up in cotton wool, and everyone else will run off with the medals. I think it was Helen Keller who said “Security is an illusion. Life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing at all.” She rose to a challenge didn’t she? Blind and deaf from early childhood.

EMMA KIRK Nannies should stay in the nursery, if you ask me. It ain’t no good pretending that life’s easy. The easy option is usually a dead end. For our kids it is.

Health and Safety enthusiasts please note Helen’s words.

Notes and Quotes

Helen Keller

Helen Keller was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama, on June 27, 1880, to parents Captain Arthur H. Keller, a former officer of the Confederate Army, and Kate Adams Keller, cousin of Robert E. Lee.

She was not born blind and deaf; it was not until nineteen months of age that she came down with an illness that did not last for a particularly long time, but it left her deaf and blind. At that time her only communication partner was Martha Washington, the 6-year old daughter of the family cook, who was able to create a sign language with Helen, so that by age seven, she had over sixty different signs to communicate with her family.

In 1886, her mother Kate Keller was inspired by an account in Charles Dickens’ American Notes of the successful education of another deaf blind child, Laura Bridgman, and travelled to a doctor in Baltimore for advice. He put her in touch with local expert Alexander Graham Bell, who was working with deaf children at the time.

Bell advised the couple to contact the Perkins Institute for the Blind, the school where Bridgman had been educated, which was then located in South Boston, Boston, Massachusetts.

The school delegated teacher and former student, Anne Sullivan, herself visually impaired and then only 20 years old, to become Keller’s teacher. It was the beginning of a 49-year-long relationship. Helen’s big breakthrough in communication came one day when she realised that the motions her teacher was making on her palm, while running cool water over her palm from a pump, symbolized the idea of “water;” she then nearly exhausted Sullivan demanding the names of all the other familiar objects in her world including her prized doll. Anne was able to teach Helen to speak using the Tadoma method touching the lips and throat of others as they speak combined with “fingerspelling” alphabetical characters on the palm of Helen’s hand. Later, Keller would also learn to read English, French, German, Greek, and Latin in Braille.

In 1888, Keller attended the Perkins School for the Blind. In 1894, Keller and Sullivan moved to New York City to attend the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf and Horace Mann School for the Deaf.

In 1896 they returned to Massachusetts and Helen entered The Cambridge School for Young Ladies before gaining admittance, in 1900, to Radcliffe College, where Standard Oil magnate Henry Huttleton Rogers paid for her education. In 1904 at the age of 24, Keller graduated from Radcliffe magna cum laude, becoming the first deaf and blind person to graduate from a college.

Helen Keller wrote Light in my Darkness, which was published in 1960. In the book, she advocates the teachings of the Swedish scientist and philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg. She also wrote an autobiography called The Story of My Life, which was published in 1903. In total, she wrote twelve books and authored numerous articles.
Extracted from Wikipedia

Read Death of a Nightingale, and you will find many other illustrations of the point I am trying to make. Read the Music Lesson in Act One Scene 4.

Now for a couple of pieces of nonsense.

First consider a case in the House of Lords, the highest Court in the land, reported in the Times Law Reports on 28 July 2000.

The Court ruled that teachers and those working for local education authorities, had a duty of care to children with special needs.

That might seem to be self-evident, but think about it. Four Local Authorities, Hillingdon London Borough Council, Clwyd County Council, Bromley London Borough Council and Hampshire County Council, took four cases to appeal to that Court in order to try to establish that that was not the case!

Never mind the waste of time and money. What about their attitude of mind?

The Local Authorities tried to argue that as Parliament, in establishing the Statementing process to protect children, had not provided this – in fact it had actually rejected an amendment to this effect – it had limited the duty of care to the Statementing process, and that was the end of their responsibility.

Seven Lord Justices decided otherwise – thank Heavens.

They said quite specifically that whether Local Authorities liked it or not, whether teachers liked it or not, whether it produced a rash of claims or not, whether it was difficult to put a figure to the damages caused or not, teachers, education officers, educational psychologists, all those working for Local Authorities had a duty of care, and the Local Authorities had what is called a vicarious liability, that is an indirect but real liability, for any failure on the part of their employees to provide it. That failure is called Negligence.

Local Authorities could not even argue that they had to address only the child’s educational needs. The judges again were explicit. “They have to take reasonable care of their health and safety including the monitoring of their needs and performance.”

I am not at all sure that solicitors always take full note of this case when they represent the parents of children with special needs.

For my second piece of nonsense consider the following. The quotation is a factual one.

Act One Scene 3

Joan Errington, the Music teacher and Margaret Williamson, the head teacher, are talking in the staff room.

JOAN ERRINGTON I read an article recently by one of our clever, clever wise guys – far too many of them in education, and too clever by half for our own good, if you ask me. He said – children with special needs come in tens, scores, even hundreds, not one by one. He said you’ve got to give up the individualised approach. Would you believe it?

MARGARET WILLIAMSON Yes, I know. And I am afraid that some academics just don’t understand, and of course they go on to teach their students the error of their ways No doubt they then get their students to repeat those errors to pass their exams. Ugh.

Just what would have happened to Fred Raffle and Helen Keller if that “clever, clever wise guy”, in fact a professor committed to Inclusion, had been involved in their education?

What these stories tell you, and many others like them, is that when you focus on “outcomes” and not meeting individual needs, you are going to fail some children. Is that really what you want? (Revisit Post 3)

It isn’t the disability that matters so much as the deprivation that it can bring. Focus on deprivation, and there’s no knowing what miracles can be achieved. If you want another story to make the point of this “needle” think of El Sistema,the Venezuelan Youth Orchestra. (Revisit Post 17)

What politicians of all three political parties need to grasp, and academia too, is that children with special educational needs are all different. I set this out in detail in “The Book” page in this website.

Their needs may overlap, but likewise they are all different. If they are not being met individually then they are deprived, wherever they are being educated.

Those who do not realise this have a serious learning difficulty.

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