Education | Plan for students with special needs received with skepticism

The government’s consultation document on revising Macau’s Special Education System has drawn serious criticism from related groups and educators. Spokesperson for the city’s visually impaired citizens, Albert Cheong Chi Pong, criticized the document and the current system for showing a lack of knowledge and respect towards people with disabilities, thus failing to provide equal access to education for different types of disabled students.
The city’s Special Education System currently provides inclusive classes at regular schools for children and youths with “slightly weak learning ability”, and special education classes for those with “significant overall learning difficulties.” The Education and Youth Affairs Bureau (DSEJ) asserts that it has been taking inclusive education as the main development direction of the system, and arranges for special needs students to study in regular schools as much as possible.
Nevertheless, to receive access to mainstream education, children with learning difficulties must firstly go to the bureau’s Centre of Psycho-pedagogical Support and Special Education to take the integrated assessment or assessment of cognitive ability for their “education placement.”
Mr Cheong, who served as the director of the Macau People with Visual Impairment Rights Promotion Association, indicated that those assessments only fit people with mental disabilities, but are being used as a one-size-fits-all measuring stick.
“The evaluation asks you to count money, but how can you count money if you have a visual disability? Then if you can’t count money, you are [classified as] mentally disabled,” he explained to the Times, adding that inapplicable students should refuse to take the assessment.
The critique was echoed by local scholar and civil group leader Agnes Lam, who also pointed out the assessment system’s lack of focus.
Hosting a discussion on the topic yesterday at her monthly “Civic Roundtable” event, Ms Lam said it can easily cause misjudgement if simply adopting the integrated assessment, especially to those with autism, who may be even gifted. “Special education has a wide range, where students with physical handicaps, visual impairment, hearing impairment and autism have large differences in learning,” she stressed.
According to the DSEJ, special education for those in need will be carried out through “adopting a suitable individual education plan (IEP).” However, in the making of the plan, “there’s no input from the students and their parents,” said Mr Cheong.
“Special education was supposed to serve students with special needs, but why do the students have no right to speak out? Students’ voices are absent in the entire process. No matter what they [the government] will provide, we just can take it, but what we want is choices and our right to choose,” he stressed.
The administration’s choice of words in the consultation document is another bone of contention for special groups. “They use words like ‘placement,’ ‘handicapped,’ which have a derogatory sense and are very disrespectful. Anyone with disabilities would feel being discriminated against, uncomfortable, and unfair for that,” Mr Cheong stressed. “It shows a problem in the thinking and attitude of the people who made the consultation document.”
The director further indicated that the authorities’ plans for disabled students often tend to be a bad fit, and at the root of this is their “discrimination at heart” plus the absence of participation from the disabled.
“It’s not only a lack of understanding, it’s their attitude towards people with disabilities. They think the people with disabilities just need to survive, but survival is far different from living; we need the freedom to choose a life,” he stressed.
“The policy makers only see the disability in them, but don’t see their ability. That’s a huge problem. We don’t need special schools, we need equal opportunity, equal access to education; we need technology like screen readers and scanner programs; we need support like counseling services,” he urged.
Social Welfare Bureau statistics show that Macau has 700 people registered with a visual impairment. But the number should be a lot higher at between 25,000 and 30,000 according to the global ratio, suggested Mr Cheong.