Special Learning Situations

On the fringes of the happy classroom crowd, sits a lonely little boy confronted with the almost impossible task of finding his way through a bewildering world. He is frightened. He feels miserable. He is made to feel different.

Thrust into a school where personal worth is heavily equated with academic competence, our sad little boy is trapped in a school system which too often denies his need to be himself. His tragedy is that in many instances he has been stigmatized with a label: 'slow learner,' 'emotionally disturbed,' 'disadvantaged,' 'physically handicapped,' or perhaps 'perceptually handicapped.' Too often, in a sincere effort to help him with his problem, society has splintered him off from the rest of the gang, segregated him by walls and in spirit into special classes, or sent him far away from home, out of sight and frequently out of mind.

Such children can be numbered by thousands in this province. The Committee feels that a searching look should be taken at our rationale, with some of its high sounding phrases, to assess its applicability to all children, including the present 'misfits,' rejects, and losers in our educational system.

A child may be handicapped physically, emotionally, mentally, environmentally, or in any combination of these ways. His learning and behavior may also be affected by exceptional native endowment or unusual circumstances. These are facts which cannot be dismissed; they will be further elaborated upon in this chapter.

It becomes increasingly clear that if the measure of success of an educational system is weighted toward pressuring children to digest a rigid, structured, graded curriculum within fixed intervals of time, many children must fall by the wayside, with some acceptable up-to the-minute label attached to explain their unforgivable sin of failure. If a narrow curriculum is considered immutable and untouchable, it follows inevitably that those who cannot benefit from its perfection, must be put aside and separated in time and space from their peers. This was the pattern established for special education nearly a century ago, and its results will be seen when we study the complexity and ramifications of existing special education.

In contrast, the Committee suggests that if primary emphasis is placed on the learning and progressive development of each child as an individual, it becomes easier-as well as imperative-to take in a far greater number of children with a variety of personal strengths and weaknesses under the umbrella of the regular school program. Except for the very severely impaired, such a rationale would make what was formerly considered 'special education' an integral part of general education. Every child is 'special' and each will benefit from special learning experiences, which should be an integral part of his schooling.

It is possible that the extent and seriousness of handicaps may change under different medical and social conditions, but it is unlikely that they will be entirely eradicated. Despite the fact that the incidence of handicaps has declined, it must be recognized that advances in many fields of medical knowledge have resulted in the survival of thousands of children who in rougher or more ignorant times probably would have died in infancy. As a result, the schools, and particularly the special schools, will have to cope with children who have more severe and more complex handicaps. Society accepts the responsibility for the welfare of handicapped members to a far greater extent today than it did in earlier generations, and much has been done during the last fifty years to enable children suffering from all kinds of handicaps to take their place in society as they grow up.

It is the right of every child to have access to a learning program which will lead him to develop mentally to his optimum as an educated person. The educational jurisdiction is charged with providing facilities, resources, and personnel to enable him to reach this goal.

The learner whose special needs place him on the outer reaches of the process of education should never be allowed to reach a point where he becomes isolated from the whole. The acts, the regulations, the grant structure, the teacher education program, and the overall approach to education have tended to foster the separation of pupils into categories, after first making a gross division between those in education proper and those requiring special education. Special education should not be set up as something separate from the ordinary school program but as an integral part of that program.

Special Education Today

Special education as carried on today in the Ontario educational system is a welter of complexity, divided authority, blurred responsibility, and a broad spectrum of services unevenly distributed through the province and too frequently inadequate.

A brief glance at Tables 1 and 1(a) will indicate the classroom orientation of such education; that such services at the secondary school level are almost non existent; and that many bare spots exist in certain school jurisdictions, particularly in rural areas.

Table 2, taken from a promotional brochure, indicates the sophistication and variety of special class opportunities now available in a large urban centre. The table does not include the large number of language classes for New Canadian children.

In 1967-68, in addition to the 2,279 special classes, the Department of Education supervised education in 111 'Special Education' schools, in which the enrolment was 5,413. In 104 schools for the retarded there were recorded 4,201 pupils, and in seven hospitals there were 1,212 pupils.

Table 3 categorizes the official legislation that enables school boards to operate for special purposes.

To appreciate and understand the complexity and variety of the special services listed in the tables, one needs to look at the history of their development. A full historical background since 1870 appears in the Report of the Royal Commission on Education in Ontario, 1950, as well as in The Development of Education in Canada, by C. E. Phillips.

(3) No rural school section established under this section shall be included in a township school area. 1965, c.109, s.4.

The Dimensions of the Problem

Despite the proliferation and diversity of educational services rendered to Ontario children in schools and elsewhere, one cannot help but wonder about the extent to which their needs are being met, recognized, appreciated, or ignored. The answers to this question must be sought in several directions.

From the Educational Point of View

In a brief to the Provincial Committee on Elementary Teacher Training, the Council for Exceptional Children expressed the belief that about 10 per cent of the elementary school population needed special help, and about 3 per cent required a special class program. According to the 1966 Report of the Minister of Education, there were a total of 1,364,871 children enrolled in elementary schools. The same report shows that there were 22,177 children in auxiliary classes, or 1.6 per cent of the total elementary school population. The report also shows that of an enrolment of 436,026 children in secondary schools, there were 7,860 children in special vocational schools and 20,279 registered in occupational programs-a total of 28,139 in special courses in secondary schools, or 6.5 per cent.

It should be noted, however, that these statistics are based on a rationale that assumes a fixed curriculum to which children are fitted largely according to learning ability. Further, the figures in the accompanying tables may be based on crude instruments for classification, so that they may not be really comparable and may not reflect the actual need for special learning opportunities.

Present legislation in Ontario will allow school boards to set up special programs to meet the need of almost any kind of disability, if local school boards take advantage of it. The legislation implies that school boards must set up programs to meet the needs of all children within their jurisdiction. Implementation of programs and the training of special teachers has lagged far behind the law.

While no exact data are available as to the number of children with exceptionalities in Canada, some American and British statistics are available.

Table 4 shows the estimated percentage of school age children and youth from 5-17 years of age, in need of special education, by area of exceptionality, USA, 1957-58.

*R.P. Mackie, H.M. Williams, P.P. Hunter
  U.S. Office of Education
  Bulletin No. OE-350-48-58
  Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office, 1963

Source: Statistics Branch, Department of Education and Science

From the Health Point of View

The entire area of identification of children with handicaps is a maze of confusing diagnostic labels and professional entanglements. As time goes on the line of demarcation between health and education is becoming exceedingly blurred, and a co-ordinated approach to children's total needs becomes imperative. A fragmentary attack through a variety of agencies or departments concerned with children is quite inadequate.

The value of developing a registry of high risk infants in the province cannot be overestimated. Hospital authorities already gather the pertinent information, and it remains for the proper authorities to compile, co-ordinate, and make this information accessible to those departments and agencies which should plan to meet such a need. The design of a central risk register with regional ties is a relatively new concept, which appears to have been developed in the United Kingdom.

As most Ontario children are born in hospitals, early diagnosis of children is becoming increasingly possible. The number of recent research papers substantially documenting the high correlation between prematurity in infants and the incidence of handicaps, multiple or singular, cannot be denied. It has been estimated that close to 70 per cent of premature infants are born with multiple handicaps. The general purpose of a risk register appears to be to provide a systematic means of following up newborn infants for the detection of disabilities, frequently involving the central nervous system, before symptoms become manifest to parents. Children are included who might be expected to develop certain disabilities on the basis of their birth history, as well as children risking other disabilities of a genetic or familial nature.

The idea was first developed in surveys for specific handicaps such as hearing disabilities. It has been demonstrated that the return in terms of disabilities found was higher when children assumed to be a risk for prescribed medical reason were tested, as compared with the return when the total child population was tested.

A second benefit, of course, is saving in professional time. The general philosophy, purposes, clinical and administrative criteria for establishing such registers in local health departments have been clearly described by R. L. Lindon in "Risk Register" : Cerebral Palsy Bulletin # 3, October 1961. The British Columbia Register of Handicapped Children and Adults, along with current studies carried on at the University of British Columbia, is substantiating the validity of this procedure, particularly emphasizing the registering and follow-up of premature babies by birth and weight.

The need for remedial physical therapy as well as for counselling of parents is acute in the early years of childhood. For such procedures to develop, early diagnosis is imperative. In many instances, voluntary agencies, such as the Ontario Society for Crippled Children, have already admirably demonstrated the complementary role of early learning experiences in nursery school along with physical therapy.

Although this Report comments only generally upon the important area of early diagnosis, treatment, and awareness of children with medically recognized handicaps, the Committee wishes to make specific reference to eye and dental health, two areas which, although they may appear to be less dramatic, are nevertheless crucial to the learning experience and to personal well being. Early detection and correction of visual handicaps is a prerequisite to learning. Similarly, dental care is all-important, not only to the learning experience, but to the personal sense of adequacy that is fundamental to satisfactory child development.

From the Psychological Point of View

The family and the school as primary social institutions in preventing and treating emotional problems are receiving increasing attention. Because the school is a mass agency which cuts across the total population, can compel attendance, has contact with a child over a long period of his life, and has a commitment, more or less, to mental health goals, it should assume central importance for preventive measures. Critical manpower shortages in the traditional mental health professions indicate further the need to involve the schools and their personnel in the mental health struggle.

Clarification of this central role of the school as a preventive and remedial agent has been far from complete.

The study by William C. Morse and others, entitled Public School Classes for the Emotionally Handicapped, particularly points out that: "Experimental programs are proliferating and the commonest involves the special class concept. But there is little common conceptualization underlying these developments. Designs for the conduct of the special classes range from permissive, relaxed, therapeutic approaches to traditional educational programs in the context of tight controls. Once a class is established, the number of pressures upon the participating personnel and administration to view it as successful are many . . . Most of these developments have taken place in the context of little 'firm' evidence for the utility of the special class design."

The authors conclude that there is "a confusion on the part of both educators and clinicians about how to proceed to solve this most trying educational and social dilemma." They further point out that: "To some degree, the mere establishment of the programs does deal with the most pressing problems of teacher morale in the regular classroom, public pressure and immediate pupil unhappiness. However, a second level problem emerges immediately, and it is concerned with finding a means to cope with the day-to-day crises, the continued academic difficulty of the children, and the maintenance of a working operation which continues to involve the persons who originally were most enthusiastic but whose enthusiasm flags when reasonably quick answers are not forthcoming."

In an address to the Ontario Association for Children with Learning Disabilities, in 1966, H. Carl Haywood, Associate Professor of Psychology, George Peabody College, Tennessee, pointed out the degree of discrepancy and overlap in identifying children as 'emotionally disturbed,' 'mentally retarded,' or 'brain damaged.' Diagnostic categories seem to be strongly affected by a clinician's training, philosophy and predisposition. "Psychological tests," he said, "while individually capable of discriminating groups of retarded, mentally ill, or brain damaged patients all from a 'normal' group, have little success in differentiating these clinical groups from each other and even less success in diagnosing individual cases." Neurologists, pediatricians, general practitioners, and teachers often compound the original label.

Whether or not diagnostic categories exist, one may question the wisdom of establishing separate special classes for children who display the kinds of behavior thought to constitute a specific syndrome. Haywood subsequently states, "What psychologists recommend in the way of special teaching procedures differs little, whether the diagnosis is high-level mental retardation, emotional disturbance, or perceptual handicap." He further points out that "there is amazingly little variation in the teaching methods used in these different classrooms." Haywood says that a large number of studies indicate that special class placement does not necessarily enhance the achievement of the retarded child and often has the opposite effect. He also suggests that dividing children into categories has the effect of labelling the child and of making him think that he fits the label as one who is in some respect deficient. Obviously, placement in a special class may be conducive to this effect.

New Trends Affecting Special Learning Experiences

There is a growing trend to stress an assessment of children exhibiting learning or emotional difficulties based upon a comprehensive battery of tests and team conferences, in order to assess a child's particular strengths and weaknesses in basic abilities and in learning achievement. A profile of these strengths and weaknesses can then be constructed. Particular emphasis must be placed on a child's strengths, if a positive, useful, learning program is to be implemented.

Dr. Katrina de Hirsch's work on Predicting Reading Failure describes academic success or failure in school at the kindergarten level in this prognostic light. Upon such assessment, at the five year level, appropriate remedial learning programs can be worked out for each child in anticipation of difficulties which may arise when the child attempts to read.

With diagnostic emphasis on the construction of profiles of particular strengths and weaknesses of every individual child, diagnostic labels become increasingly unimportant except in those cases in which very particular sensory or orthopedic handicaps make quite specific educational procedures imperative, such as for the blind or deaf child. The fifteen to eighteen different areas of exceptionality now served in the school system could probably be reduced to a very small number, the largest group relating to children with major learning disorders.

Special Teachers

The emphasis is shifting from separate special classes to special teachers helping children within their own classrooms and in special rooms or corners in the regular schoolrooms. The meeting sessions between the children and the special teachers follow a general pattern: children with learning disorders remain in the regular classes, appropriate for their age levels, for those class periods in which they are performing at or near a normal level; for perhaps one or two periods per day they are taken to the special classroom for remedial instruction in their areas of difficulty; they always return to the regular classroom for recreational and social events. In the same way, children who are exceptionally competent in particular areas go to a separate schoolroom, laboratory, library, or community resource. Since these children, too, appear to need the social stimulation of their age peers, it is important that they return to the regular group for learning experiences in which they are not markedly different from the normal expectation, and for most social and recreational events.

For many years, Ontario has made use of special school teachers within and beyond the educational system. Many of these crusading teachers have sought to enrich their teaching contribution through additional training and learning experiences far beyond their basic certification. Some have already begun to challenge conventional approval of separate classrooms and special schools by promoting integrated learning opportunities for the children under their wing. Their contribution within the rigid framework so often set for them is worthy of the highest commendation. Too often, in school settings or in separate establishments, special education teachers have been isolated, under-financed, and set aside from the mainstream of education along with the children they serve so sympathetically. It is their humane attitude which we must cherish and nurture in all our teachers, so that it will remain the foundation upon which we can realistically build meaningful learning programs for all children.
- Teamwork involving teachers and principals

There is a growing trend toward teamwork and toward redefinition of the tasks of the psychologist as a member of a clinical team, as differentiated from the role of the psychologist in a school setting. Sarason and his group at the Psycho-Educational Clinic at Yale University, in their recent book, Psychology in Community Settings, have drawn particular attention to this differentiation. In this book, Sarason points out that the case conference method is rarely used in the school setting. The teacher is alone with her problem, with no one to discuss or talk things over with. Conversations between the teacher and the principal usually reflect the constriction and inhibitions inherent in a relationship between a superior and a subordinate.

Sarason concludes after working within many school settings that:

1. The teacher is crucial in influencing, managing and guiding the behavior of children.
2. He has rarely seen a child in a classroom who could not be handled by at least one teacher in ways productive of learning and personal change.
3. As a group, teachers have a potential for change in attitudes and practices that under appropriate conditions would discernibly increase their effectiveness as stimulators and moulders of productive change in children.

W. J. McIntosh in an article on "The School Psychologist," in the February, 1966, issue of Special Education in Canada, adds similar Canadian experiences to the insights in Sarason's book. He points out that the psychologist who stays aloof as a member of an 'alien guild' in the schools, contributes little to strengthening the teacher in the classroom. Psychologists in the school setting may draw upon the insights gained in clinical experience, but the methodology, jargon, and over-professionalism of the various clinical team members may overwhelm, undermine the morale and confidence of, and confuse many a teacher and principal faced with being all things to a large number of children within an educational system.

Psychologists in the future will have an increasing role to play in periodically assessing a child's learning, cognitive, and emotional stages. However, it will be the school psychologist as a member of the school team rather than as a clinician, who will seek for, guide, and test imaginative ways to draw out the best in each child.

Nathaniel London and Celia Perlswieg of the Department of Psychiatry, Yale University, in an paper entitled "Urban Public School Principalship in Crisis, A Case Study," presented at the Ortho-Psychiatric Conference in Washington, DC, in March, 1967, noted that principals initially sought psychiatric answers to school problems. However, after experience with psychologists, they have come to recognize a need to find educational answers for psychological problems in the school setting. Conferences between psychiatric clinic teams and principals are found helpful, but the Yale team points out that there is an even greater need for educators to integrate concepts of child development into their own training, supervision, and practices if the needs of children in schools are to be more effectively met.

Teamwork at the Voluntary Agency Level

In the past year, five important national voluntary organizations have come together to assess and determine the services needed by handicapped children: The Commission on Emotional and Learning Disorders in Children, sponsored by the Canadian Association for Retarded Children, the Canadian Education Association, the Canadian Mental Health Association, the Canadian Rehabilitation Council for the Disabled, and the Canadian Welfare Council. Much stress is being laid on the shortage of workers and services of all kinds and at all levels. The Commission does not feel that it will be possible to train, merely through the expansion of existing patterns of service, sufficient professional personnel to staff the treatment centres, special educational services, and community agencies that would be required to meet this problem.

The sponsoring organizations have gone on record as saying that they believe it essential that new and imaginative methods be found for the earlier identification of children with these problems, in order that remedial procedures may be undertaken and permanent disorders prevented.

Teamwork at the Provincial Government Level

Recognition and support must be expressed for the coordinating inter-departmental committee developed by the Ontario Government. It is postulated that all future planning and further development of services for children with learning and emotional disorders will be based on the collaborative efforts of the Departments of Health, Education, Social and Family Services, Reform Institutions, and the Department of the Attorney General, with maximum involvement of professional and voluntary agencies. The Committee looks with great hope to the recognition and strengthening of this coordinating inter-departmental committee.

Recognizing the Needs of Older Children

It is hoped that the reorganization of school jurisdictions, by providing a framework for the evolution of a total educational program from preschool through adult education, will give rise to a new emphasis upon special education at senior levels.

There are still those who consider that present secondary school programming, often labelled 'Occupations,' should lead to early work experience, early school leaving, and an early assumption of adult responsibilities. They sincerely believe that this approach is the best way of dealing with slow learners as they become adolescents and young adults. They argue that special vocational schools are the answer.

Many slow learners, culturally deprived pupils, and others, find the move from school to full-time employment a difficult experience. These pupils pass through a typical cycle of a few years of unemployment, several part-time or short-term low-paid jobs, and finally a succession of full-time unskilled and semi-skilled positions. This is the segment of the work force which becomes increasingly battered by shifts in our economy and the resulting displacement of industrial personnel. It is the group which reaches a plateau as a productive force early in its work experience and declines rapidly thereafter.

The generalization can be made that the young teenager receiving special education in 'secondary school' is less competent than his contemporaries. This type of learner needs to be retained longer within the school environment. More and lengthier experiences must be provided to enable him to meet maturely the challenges of work and our society.

We should consider the possibility of devising and integrating educational programs for our slower learners which will help them at least until age 18. It is difficult for the Committee to accept the idea that the less competent the student is, the more quickly he should be rushed into the labor force. Common sense would seem to dictate that the reverse should be true.

The entire concept of 'marketable skills' in this age is loaded with fallacies. The educational system cannot possibly keep up with the market, nor forecast what skills it will buy. On-the-job training following a sound learning program, is far more efficient and meaningful. What education can and should do is to accentuate the humanity in people. The basic aim of education is to develop manhood, not manpower.

Children Who May Require Special Learning Experiences

Children with Handicaps.

a) The intellectually handicapped: retarded, slow learners, perceptually affected, neurologically impaired, mentally deficient.
b)The physically handicapped: includes impairments of vision, hearing, speech, and such impairments as disorders of bone and organs of movement, diseases of lungs and kidneys, congenital heart diseases, injuries, and physical frailties.
c) The emotionally handicapped: such as disturbed, including aggressive, withdrawn, shy, and severely maladjusted.
d)The socially handicapped: alienated and anti-social, 'misfits' and delinquents.
e) The multi-handicapped: any combination of a) to d).

Children Affected by Exceptional Endowment or Unusual Circumstances.

a) The gifted and talented.
b) The New Canadians.
c) The Canadian Indians.
d)Residents with strong identification with another tongue, ethnic and religious customs.
e) Those in need of nursery school experience.
f) The socio-economically disadvantaged.
g)Those undergoing severe crises: grave accidents, hospitalization, long-term home care, pregnancy in school-agers, death of parents or guardians, family breakdown, changes of foster home, young offenders, early marriage, school expulsion, severe economic change in family status, etc.
h)Transfers: from outside Ontario, from a different educational system, or within the municipality itself.
i) Transients (short term): children of migratory workers, wards of the Children's Aid Society, children with parents in mobile jobs.
j) Miscellaneous: those covered by Section 12, The Public Schools Act. (see Table 3)

Much as the Committee would have liked to discuss all these areas of need at length, only a few can be singled out for detailed comment.

The Gifted

It may be noted that up to this point gifted children have not been mentioned. The omission is deliberate, for it is the opinion of the Committee that specially labelled classes for the intellectually elite should not be established. The Committee is convinced that the learning program, in the hands of competent, gifted teachers, working individually with children, has built into it the dimensions for development for the brightest as well as the slowest learners. However, the schools must recognize, on an individual basis, those children whose intellectual potential is unusual and who would benefit from exposure to additional teachers, to other persons in the community, and to unusual learning experiences. All children, particularly the talented ones, should be encouraged to reach beyond the confines of their school, family, community, and country. At the same time no child should be treated as a 'showpiece,' or made a victim of exploitation. It must be realized that learning skills are not evenly distributed among, or within, children, and that even unusual talents or skills reach plateaus and peaks of accomplishment, and sometimes manifest late spurts.

The importance of top achievers should not be overemphasized. Students who achieve small triumphs are as worthy of commendation as the giants who make great leaps. Both should be encouraged, both should be inspired, both should be provided with those learning situations which best meet their needs.

Some children with exceptional ability of one kind, may achieve little in some or all other areas. Some may be numbered among the 'difficult' children in a class room. In any event, the needs of the highly gifted, as of every other child, must be met. Perceptive parents are most helpful in this connection. Advice and help should be available to all parents who, for whatever reason, find their children hard to understand or to handle. Unusually endowed children can often be recognized in the early years by their demonstrated skills in conceptual thinking and awareness of the world around them.

Still, children with extraordinary talents in the arts such as music and ballet, or sometimes in disciplines such as mathematics, may require special programs to meet their needs. It is not desirable that any children should think of themselves as a class apart, still less that they should lack experience in living and getting along with other children. In principle, it is the hope of the Committee that the schools will provide for the needs of the gifted and talented individual without segregating him. But there will probably be some exceptional children who, because of their all-round development - intellectual, emotional, and physical - should advance more rapidly than their contemporaries. These children may need to be with older children who are close to their intellectual level. However, the majority of gifted children will not follow this pattern. In a school where children are not confined to their own classroom or to one teacher, exceptional children should be able to spend part of the day with others of like ability and have access to a wealth of learning aids and resources, and to people willing to help them on their way. In the senior years, especially, the gifted should also be able to choose options, including intensive courses, to match their interests and abilities.

The New Canadians

All children have the same basic needs. But children of newly arrived immigrants may have exceptional needs, especially in language.

Most of our New Canadians arrive in family groups after long, bewildering air flights, crossing several time zones eastward or westward within very short intervals. Most of them have been abruptly uprooted from the communities they knew so well, jet-propelled through thousands of miles, and landed in strange, impersonal centres. Too often they find themselves upon arrival crowded into substandard housing areas, with little human contact other than with relatives and friends who may have preceded them.

New Canadians arrive almost daily at centres in Ontario. Many bring with them native dress, dietary customs, and special religious holidays. Only a few of those who arrive can speak and understand English well; in fact, many lack even a rudimentary knowledge of the language. Thus, they find themselves severely handicapped without adequate means of communication. Teachers cannot communicate with parents; parents are unable to ask questions to which they need answers. The obtaining of simple information about the child's age, birthplace, and medical history can become a very difficult task. Misunderstandings can multiply, become exaggerated, and lead to anxiety.

According to the Canadian immigration records, approximately 108,000 New Canadians arrived in Ontario in 1966. A high proportion of these did not use English as a mother-tongue. In some schools, as high as 65 per cent of children in junior grades know little or no English. In one school, in 1967, there was a kindergarten class where Chinese was the mother-tongue of all but one of the pupils.

Several approaches have been taken in Ontario schools to remedy this problem. Some voluntary centres have introduced nursery schools for New Canadian children, and language classes for their parents. One large urban centre has developed intensive crash programs where immigrant children are segregated into special classes, and even into particular schools, to learn English. Other systems have attempted to teach English to the children in their own neighborhood schools, keeping them with other children of their own age, pairing newcomers with a friendly 'buddy,' and withdrawing them for special remedial work.

The emphasis in most instances has been upon linguistics and the acquisition of school language. It is interesting to note that the schools where children are encouraged to have young 'teacher-buddies' and where the schoolroom atmosphere is conversationally permissive, are the schools where children seem to pick up English most rapidly. In these schools, remedial English teaching assumes less obvious importance than in others.

Children served in their neighborhood school quickly put down roots. On the other hand, children taken away from the mixed groups with whom they would play and associate at school, and kept apart with other newcomers, may acquire the new language, but have to take the great leap of entering a new school the following year with strange children and strange teachers.

New Canadian children unable to cope with the language of the school, and unable to test their new communication skills with new-found friends, must overcome an enormous hurdle. Being forced to sit quietly for hours on hours, and days on end, in an atmosphere filled with strange visual and vocal signs, can be a great trial. If the atmosphere of strangeness is heightened by hostile or negative attitudes toward the foreigner, the pain and the desire to escape by day dreaming, acting up, staying home, and eventual dropping out are understandable.

We must realize that the parents of these children, though handicapped by lack of familiarity with the Ontario way of life, by their language, and too often by cramped living conditions, are often drawn from the more enterprising citizens of their own country. The range of ability and temperamental expression of their children is very wide. They are as intelligent, fun-loving, and eager to learn as any other children.

A considerable number of immigrant parents will attend special evening classes; many of them will revere learning and their teachers as our forefathers did a few generations back. In some instances, immigrant children are at a disadvantage because of the poor education of their parents. A few parents may not give primary importance to education, and this may be reflected in the type of schooling they want for their daughters and the early age at which they would like their sons to become bread winners. Nevertheless, the desire to establish firm roots in the strange land of their choice is very important to them. Such attitudes should be appreciated for their historical and cultural foundations. Only through personal and kindly communication which reaches the parents, can the long-term educational values of the contemporary Ontario scene be understood.

Frequent contacts with the children's parents should be encouraged, even though such bridges may be difficult to build. Many immigrant parents find it difficult to fit easily into the school community. Parent groups, 'Parents' Nights' and 'Curriculum Nights' are new to them, and they feel intimidated and frightened by the authority, real or imagined, of the school. Ways must be found to build a sense of confidence and security before the newcomers can be expected to mingle actively with the established school community. The use of teachers of various cultural and ethnic backgrounds, supplemented with well-trained volunteers conversant with the languages and customs of the newcomers, can provide an excellent starting place for such relationships.

Teachers and counsellors have generally not been trained during their courses to teach such children or to appreciate the strengths and weaknesses of immigrant families and their children. In most instances, teachers seem to lack knowledge of the cultural traditions and family structure that lie behind the children's concepts and behavior. In England, a series of background book lets for teachers has been developed to fill this gap. A similar series, supplemented with in-service training and refresher courses, should be considered basic provisions for teachers working in this field in Ontario.

Schools faced with the practical problem of smoothly and intelligently integrating young New Canadians into their midst, must take account of the children's previous environment and prepare them for life in a different one. The same principle can be applied to any child transferring from a learning situation significantly different from the one into which he is entering. The variety of cultural backgrounds can greatly enrich every school's geographical and historical discussions, and used imaginatively can improve the newcomer's image of his own cultural heritage in addition to enhancing the appreciation of his fellow students.

Young children should be introduced to their new environment in gradual, meaningful stages. Visits to the local supermarket, the fire station, the library, a museum, a factory, or a department store can provide a useful background to their school work and conversation.

Books used at school should be re-examined for their attitudes toward foreigners, and different religious, ethnic, and racial groups. Some books may be found linguistically unsuitable because they assume a social background incomprehensible to the newcomer.

Young children usually acquire a second language with greater ease than older ones. The older New Canadian students who arrive late in their school life have a greater problem. In too many instances, their inability to speak English has been treated as a valid excuse for dropping out of school before the official leaving age. Not too much sympathy is expressed for the older child's difficulty in learning a new language after the patterns, and often the written forms, of his own language have been mastered. This calls for special techniques and materials, and poses problems to which little research has been directed.

Every effort must be made to make New Canadians, like the rest of our children, feel at home as early as possible in the world of learning, and new methods should be developed to assist the mothers in acquiring conversational English, so that they may keep abreast of their children. The purpose of the various remedial measures mentioned should be to eliminate, not to perpetuate, the need for them. New Canadians should be made to feel like full-fledged Canadians as quickly as possible. They should be encouraged to be, not passive onlookers of the Canadian way of life, but active participants who know their rights and enjoy them. Segregating them as a group, and over-emphasizing their identity can make them feel alien, uncomfortable, and different. The time required to make a newcomer feel at home in the school and community should be used as an index of our success. The steps taken to help newcomers must be constantly reviewed as new immigrant groups are absorbed into the native population. Special measures, too long perpetuated, inevitably identify children as different, so that their duration should be as brief as possible.
- Canadian Indian children

The Canadian Indians in Ontario are a relatively small group, with about 50,000 registered Indians, and probably another 50,000 who are not registered but who can be culturally identified as Indian. But although the group is small, it is one not likely to disappear. The birth rate is the highest of any ethnic group; 17 per cent are under five years of age, as compared with 11 per cent for the rest of Ontario.

Most are segregated in isolated reserves, in urban slums, or in areas outside mining and industrial centres. A very small number have moved into the middle class and into white-collar occupations in our cities and towns, as exemplified by several outstanding teachers and educationists who appeared before the Committee.

The isolation, poverty, and low social status tend to retain the Indian population in concentrated pockets, where these conditions are perpetuated and worsened. The condition of the Indian citizen in Ontario, if measured by commonly accepted yardsticks of progress and well-being, is so poor that it is almost impossible to believe that he could have arrived by accident at such low levels of income, health, and educational attainment.

Coupled with all this, a prejudiced stereotype of the Indian is too often communicated in classrooms. This we must eradicate. The learning environment of Indian school children must be changed, to restore the dignity of the individual and his pride in family, home, and heritage. Only then can every Indian child in Ontario receive the benefits and opportunities for learning to which he has the right.

In November, 1965, Father André Renaud, O.M.I., presented a paper on "Education from Within," to the Ontario Conference on Indian Affairs. Father Renaud, a Professor of Sociology at the University of Saskatchewan, has devoted many years of study and research to work with Indians. The Committee is deeply indebted to him for his work, personal presentations, and illuminating insights, which are heavily called upon for support in this chapter.

Father Renaud points out that today children of Indian descent are being schooled presumably for competence in our society, rather than for what is left of their own. Therein lies the difficulty. For the past 25 years, Indian children have been offered a schooling process identical to that offered to other Ontario children. A brief look at the reserves indicates that this approach has produced poor results.

Educators must be sensitive to the cultural background of Indian children if the learning experiences provided for them are to be meaningful and rewarding. Indian children are not born into a vacuum, but into families that are integrated in a given type of human community, which may or may not be integrated in the larger society which we call Canadian.

The following characteristics of Indian society were extracted from Father Renaud's paper:

1. "...Today's Indian communities are a continuation of a 'silent' type of human society . . . Indian communities developed ways of communicating between human beings which did not stress oral language... in a face-to-face hunting society, talking is not necessary to be successful at the hunt or to nurture social awareness... They read or guess each other and other fellow human beings much better than we of the talking society are able to do.

2. "...Indian communities function without the benefit of full literacy... The record of the past is still transmitted orally by the older generation and not in textbooks, as in our society ... There are few books and newspapers in the homes or on the reserve...Yet most Indians are potentially avid readers, provided the printed matter is of direct interest to them ...

3. "...Indian communities are still functioning in a prescientific and empirical way... The factual knowledge of the geography, wild life, and vegetation of various areas in Canada accumulated by the Indians was extremely extensive and accurate... This knowledge, however, was purely empirical. It was the accumulated observation of centuries of hunting and food gathering... and was handed down by word of mouth...This traditional knowledge of natural environment has been changed and such knowledge has lost its life-giving function and purpose. The process itself has remained, however, applied to the man-made environment of our cities and other institutions: parents and neighbors tell children what they know of the white man's society and where to get supplies of one kind or another, etc. Both grown-ups and children keep their eyes open all the time to learn more, but it is not recorded and tested observation. It is often accurate, but it is not scientific.

4. "...Indian communities, particularly on reserves, are traditional. The older people still teach the young directly and personally...

5. "...Indian communities are homogeneous; cross fertilization of ideas, skills and attitudes is still kept to a minimum and in-breeding is constant. The main consequence is that each Indian community ...has a very definite identity well known to its members.

6. "...Indian societies and communities...are still not part of the industrialized society... Most of them still conceive of food gathering of one kind or another, including relief, as the best way to satisfy these needs... It is the case of maximum human adjustment with minimum manipulation of environment versus minimum human adjustment and maximum manipulation of environment.

7. "...A very large number of Indian societies do not fully operate on the dollar system. They do not buy water, pay rent, buy fuel, etc. Most government services come to them without a price...The sharing pattern is still present in many communities, preventing the accumulation of goods and the full experience of private property with all its psychological and social consequences.

8. "... Most Indian communities number less than a thousand members. Consequently, they are still simple and undiversified...There are few formal organizations in Indian communities and most social planning is either informal, traditional, or non-existent.

9. "...Individuals in each Indian community are aware of an extensive amount of interdependence, with their fellowman inside the group...each Indian community conceives of itself as a 'we' and looks at the outside world as 'they'... among Indian people there is little psychological awareness or recognition that they need other human beings outside the reserves and that other human beings need them.

10. "...Indian communities are well aware that in some way they are far more Canadian than all the other communities that have emerged on our common territory."

This is the frame of reference that the child of Indian background brings to school, and which influences him throughout his years of schooling. Any plan to bridge the gap for an Indian child between a pre-industrial civilization and the 20th Century technical age must take this into account.

The learning program for children coming from Indian communities cannot be the same as the program appropriate for children living in a sophisticated urban, or even rural, area. However, the principles upon which the learning program has been outlined in this Report should make it possible for Indian children to begin their climb up the ladder to higher education from their own unique vantage points. The children of every society start from different positions, and the higher they go, the closer they come to children from other societies. The main thing is to inspire children to climb their own learning ladders rather than fall off and be left at the wayside.

In planning schools and working out learning programs with Indian children and their families, special consideration should be given to the sociological insights presented by Father Renaud. Armed with such knowledge, an understanding of human development, and a sense of 'creative' commitment, the educators who seek to teach Indian children will accept one of the greatest challenges that Ontario education has to offer.

The Ontario Government has no explicit policy directed specifically toward Indian students, since it does not distinguish students of different ethnic backgrounds. It is recognized, of course, that there is much unofficial concern among Departmental authorities. The Federal Government has a special interest in registered Treaty Indians and does have policies for them. Its current program was outlined by the Minister of Indian Affairs and

*Canadian Census, 1961.

Northern Development, the Honourable Arthur Laing, speaking to the National Association of Principals and Administrators of Indian Residences, on March 15, 1967. He stated that close collaboration with provincial school systems is now an essential part of Federal policy. Policy or not, remedies are needed, and in this regard, the Committee strongly recommends that Indian children be taken under the total umbrella of Ontario's educational policies and responsibilities, with Federal financial co-operation.

The status of the Indian in Canada has become entangled with a history that reaches back far beyond Confederation, and education cannot solve the problem in isolation. The solutions lie in all-embracing approaches based upon the total needs of Indians in present-day society. The Committee urges that earliest attention be given by provincial and federal authorities to working out a fairer situation for Indians. The focus here has been upon education, but it is realized that the proposals made can be implemented satisfactorily only as part of comprehensive change, calling for imaginative thinking and bold steps, and involving the Indians themselves in the process.

The Socio-Economically Disadvantaged

Much has been written previously in this Report about the possible disadvantages children from various backgrounds may have upon entering school. Nursery schools have been emphasized as one technique for helping children acquire the language and skills many middle class children acquire at home or in private nursery schools. It has also been found, however, that continuity of individual interest and stimulation must be maintained in kindergarten and the early school years if the gains thus made are to be retained. The Committee has come to view pre-kindergarten schooling as valuable, if not vital, for all children.

We must recognize that more and more young mothers, especially in the large metropolitan areas, are working outside the home and, in most instances, are obliged to leave their youngsters in the care of untrained people. As a result of these and other factors, the number of children who spend their days in crowded apartments without adequate play facilities and playmates, or without appropriate guidance and training, is increasing. In the rural areas, children who may have no nursery school experience, few playmates, and in many areas no kindergarten experience, should be given the opportunity to enjoy these experiences just as their city cousins do.

We are in no sense suggesting that the school should take over the responsibilities of parents for their young children. However, we argue for the positive benefits of nursery school experience for all children, while at the same time inviting maximum parental involvement. The importance of tempering even the best home care with earlier contact with groups of children is increasingly admitted. There is, too, a growing recognition of the findings of psychological research that many of the rudiments for later learning experiences are acquired before children enter primary school.

What is done in the preschool classroom varies a great deal. For underprivileged children, the stress is on a combination of health care with development of a more extensive vocabulary and range of experience. In general, educators are still divided into two camps-one leaning toward group games, singing, and art, and another that stresses the handling of numbers, some basic playful experimentation in science, and the beginning of letter and word games. Much of this argument is carried over to the daily compensatory classes presently going on in some Ontario centres, where disadvantaged children are 'educationally pressured' for two hours daily as a supplement to the regular morning kindergarten experience.

As has been stated earlier in this Report, in order to evaluate such techniques, long-term and short-term goals must be clarified, and research by qualified personnel should be encouraged. We still know little about the importance of timing in the development of the cognitive process, and which stages within the process may or may not be reversible. Every precaution must be taken to ensure that present Grade 1 learning programs are not lowered into kindergarten and so on throughout the learning program. Each stage has its own appropriate learning tasks, closely related to the natural development of each child. Just as children cannot be taught how to skip before they can walk, there should be no attempt to force early reading and writing upon children at four years of age. What can be done is to guide their learning in such a way that a solid foundation is built, upon which more abstract stages of learning can be constructed.

In the interests of all children, kindergartens should be made available in every community, with particular emphasis on the non-urban parts of the province. Compensatory learning programs for underprivileged children should be given high priority, preferably as a remedial experience within the home school. The Committee strongly urges the development of nursery schools, far beyond their number today. Priority in time should be given to developing nursery schools in the socio-economically deprived areas throughout the province, but the nursery school movement should be given support for all children. At the present time, nursery schools come under the Department of Welfare. It is strongly recommended that they be considered as an educational instrument, not as a child-caring, baby-sitting service. The learning experience at the nursery school level should flow smoothly and meaningfully without interruption, repetition, or confusion into the program carried on for all children at the kindergarten and primary levels.

*Ontario Department of Public Welfare, 34th Annual Report, 1964-5

Special Learning in Extra-School Establishments

Many children with special handicaps are being cared for in a variety of residential settings, institutions, group homes, children's villages, and so on. The present Report can comment only briefly upon this area, and the Committee asks that a special study in depth be made of all these services, with a view to establishing better co-ordination, closer integration, higher standards, and increased services for every child in Ontario. Those involved here are children who in the past, for one or more reasons, have been designated as incapable of being handled within the regular school programs. They range from severely mentally defective to emotionally disturbed, visually handicapped to physically impaired, and include also those deemed 'unmanageable' or delinquent by the courts.

Some of the institutions which shelter these children fall below the standards the Committee would consider desirable for children. In some cases, the children's 'schooling,' is too closely entwined with custodial care, within physically crowded and unattractive facilities, lacking in trained personnel. Wherever feasible the Committee recommends the physical separation of 'the school,' from the residential facilities. Parading from one ward to another for learning experience can hardly seem like going to school. Going to a school, even if it is only a few yards away, is psychologically significant to a child, and makes it possible for him to prepare himself for learning with a fresh set of attitudes.

Some institutions have a short-term policy, which implies that the children in their care could, under certain conditions, re-enter the regular educational stream. The Committee's concern was particularly with the educational component of such institutions: the quality of education given; the staffing; the facilities; and the rigidity or flexibility of rules and practices permitting children to move from such institutions back into the normal stream of learning and living.

The Deaf

Particular attention is drawn to the study made for the Committee by Dr. Harriet Green Kopp, Principal of the Detroit Day School for the Deaf, and one of the outstanding international authorities on education of the deaf and hard-of-hearing. Her study focussed upon the educational facilities and services in Ontario for this particular handicap. It is not possible to give here the details of her illuminating report, which in many ways points up very clearly that, in this field particularly, Ontario has not kept pace with recent research findings and expenditure of funds commensurate with the problem. Dr. Kopp says: "Historically, the education of the deaf has been weakened by the pull of opposing philosophies concerned chiefly with the mode of communication. Battle lines have been drawn so sharply that more necessary areas of concern have been neglected. Within the past ten years there has been increasing realization by educators that a comprehensive plan for the education of all hearing-impaired individuals must be developed. Although the deaf comprise a small population, a minority group, they should not be permitted to become a sub-culture by default."

Dr. Kopp's paper, the main points of which are summarized below, provides valuable guidelines for study and improvement of most of the facilities for dealing with serious handicaps which have been developed for the children of Ontario in the past 75 years.

1. The Committee's previously expressed concern with the need for early diagnosis is strongly supported. In her words, "Our educational systems must be aware of medical findings and must participate in identification of high risk infants if we are to build in the flexibility required in advance of the day of need."
2. The present situation must be examined, its effectiveness evaluated in the light of known research data and experience, and more effective use must be made of present resources.
3. Such study must involve assessment of the entire educational program, from finding and diagnoses of infants through vocational planning, placement, and marital counselling.
4. Planning must take into consideration density of population, geographical distribution, financial resources, existing programs, available personnel, and the nature of the population.
5. The international trend is away from the residential to a combined day school program with day schools located in centres of population . A critical factor is the need for a sufficiently large school population to permit homogeneous grouping and sequential education. Although absolute minimum school size is still a researchable topic, it is known that fewer than 150 children make age-grouping unfeasible. Upon this basis, many older residential institutions in their present form should be phased out.
6. Regional boundaries for transportation districts should be based on population and geographic criteria rather than on political divisions. School districts and school boards can develop co-operative rather than competing plans in order to serve their impaired children with maximum use of available resources.
7. It is becoming usual practice to educate impaired children at the earliest possible age. For example, the improvement in early detection of hearing loss permits provision of hearing aids to very young infants. Intensive exposure to acoustic stimuli coupled with systematic development of language has altered the historic definition of hard-of-hearing.

It is now possible to educate as hard-of-hearing, many children previously classified as profoundly deaf. For the profoundly deaf infant, early language programs are essential if the child is not to suffer irreversible damage in the development of areas responsible for perceptual and cognitive abilities;

It is important to realize that children with handicaps experience the same sequence of physiological, social, and psycho logical maturation levels as their non-handicapped peers; but too often the natural order is altered by delay in language development, which disrupts the normal cycle and causes added developmental stress. Dr. Kopp claims that "later education cannot remedy the cumulative language disability arising when the very young hearing-impaired preschool child does not receive consistent and continuous teaching by well prepared professionals." The same principle probably applies to all handicapped children.

8. "Parent education and parent counselling programs from infancy throughout the educational cycle are essential to provide for family involvement in the total team effort."
9. "Longitudinal evaluation on a routine periodic basis should be the responsibility of the total professional team. For example, for the hearing handicapped team this should include the otologist, psychologist, social caseworker, audiologist, vocational rehabilitation worker, and educator, with the educator assuming responsibility for co-ordinating the effort until the student is ready for vocational placement. At this time responsibility should shift to the vocational rehabilitation agency for continuing counselling service to the adult, both vocational and personal."

The Blind

Education for the blind is now undergoing an interesting transitional stage from residential schools to integration of such children into regular schools. Programs for visually handicapped children in Ontario date back to the 19th Century. The general pattern of life for a blind person has been one of segregation beginning with the residential or special school, continuing into a sheltered workshop or protected community of workers, and ending in an asylum for the aged and infirm. The fact that some blind children attended regular schools during this period was accidental and actually the result of scarcity of special schools. Planned, integrated schooling for the visually handicapped is a much later development.

Stewart E. Armstrong, Superintendent of the Ontario School for the Blind at Brantford, in expressing the aims and objectives of the school, emphasized to the Committee the importance of recognizing each child as one who is first a child, and second a person who is blind. As a child he has a right to develop his potential to learn and grow into a responsible, productive, and well adjusted citizen.

The school emphasizes the desirability of the blind child having contacts with seeing children, so that both the seeing and non-seeing can learn to appreciate each other as members of society.

Present programs in the province range from that of the residential school at Brantford, which is a Braille school situated on a 45-acre park 65 miles west of Toronto, to integrated classes, because the policy has been for very many years to encourage those Ontario children who are able to use ink-print to remain in their home communities and attend the regular schools. Of the 256 children enrolled in the Brantford School, 200 come from Ontario; the remainder come from other provinces.

The integrated programs apply to any situation in which a visually handicapped child continues to live in his own family circle, attends a school within walking or commuting distance of his home, and associates with other children in the school for at least some of his lessons and with neighborhood children after school hours.

The variations possible within this rather loose arrangement are numerous, and the techniques used include the limited vision classroom, the resource class room, the resource teacher, and the itinerant teacher. Each of these involves to a greater or lesser degree the services of a trained teacher of the blind and the supplying of either Braille or large-type books and other specialized equipment and materials.

An interesting pattern of integrated services may be seen in New Jersey. This state carries a completely integrated program with no residences. The New Jersey system recognizes that it cannot duplicate all the services provided by the residential school but seeks to provide many of them at a summer camp for blind children. This is still an area for study. It is part of the trend and the thinking of this Report and is implicit in the Kopp study.

In 1966, a comprehensive American study by J.W. Jones and A.P. Collins, called Educational Programs for Visually Handicapped children was based on "an analysis of reports from 353 special local public school programs which employed one or more full-time teachers of visually handicapped children and from 54 residential schools for these children." It revealed that the growth of integrated classes has been rapid in the last few years particularly at the elementary level.

The Retarded

The special schools operated by the Retarded Children's Association in co-operation with the government, are now in an interesting transitional stage. The point is being reached where such special schools will become part of the spectrum of public education: their programs to be co-ordinated and supervised and to include integrational experiences with children of other 'labels' and children in the normal stream. This entire process is moving increasingly from total voluntary effort to government responsibility.

The role of voluntary agencies in education, such as those concerned with learning and emotional disorders, should not go unappreciated in a democratic society. It was these agencies which redefined 'educable' as applying not only to those children who were capable of learning to read and to write but to the slower learners and all the other handicapped children whose learning accomplishments were at a non-verbal, non-academic level. It remains to develop these facilities to a degree that will ensure access for all children with such handicaps to the best possible learning experience related to their needs.

The Physically Handicapped

The quality of education in some of the institutions devoted to this area of education is excellent. Sunny View School in Toronto provides an outstanding example. The Crippled Children's Centre, a voluntary agency located in Toronto, and serving the children of Ontario, is probably one of the very best centres of its kind. Here medical diagnosis, remedial work, therapy, and education are well integrated into a smooth-running service by extremely capable personnel. The colorful, warm atmosphere in the nursery schoolrooms, the psychologist sitting on the floor beside a child, the three hundred responsible volunteers who come regularly every week, present a treat for the visitor. The ingenuity of prosthetic appliances created and developed on the premises, and the dedicated surgical, medical, and therapy teams, illustrate the heights a service can reach in this province when supported by both private and public interests.

The need to regionalize many of the services offered in this centre should certainly be given serious consideration, so that the benefits could be placed within reach of all children in the province. Much should also be done to clear away the cobwebs of protocol which enshroud many of the financial relationships between government and voluntary agencies. Serious consideration should be given to co-ordination by the provincial government of the educational programs in many institutions, with a view to involving the leadership presently developed, and working out financial support commensurate with support of education in the regular schools. The relation ship between voluntary and governmental services should be studied.

*Some students on different activities.

Children in Reform Institutions

Particular mention must be made of the advances which have been made in the past few years in education at the training schools under the Department of Reform Institutions. The teachers have been recruited by a full time educational director, paid salaries equivalent to those of teachers in the regular school system, and provided with modern educational facilities and aids. Every effort is being made to help the teachers feel that they, like all other teachers, belong to the general educational structure of the province and to have them keep abreast of new developments and experiments. Genuine efforts are being made to improve motivation, broaden the curriculum, and to use educational materials that are meaningful to the students. In all these areas, the teachers are constantly reminded of just how significant education can be when it serves as a key to reach and rehabilitate students. In the words of the Minister of Reform Institutions, "The Department has very definite plans to expand its system in the future, as needs and various business and social trends make themselves felt. Increasingly, in the future, the meetings between the Director of Education, Head Teachers, and the contract teachers of the various institutions will provide the framework and experience from which a solid, thoughtful philosophy of Correctional Education will emerge, and gain recognition and stature as an influential aspect in the rehabilitation of the offender."

Despite the cheerful, well-equipped, contemporary classrooms and devoted teachers, the haunting sights of a child behind bars, of pastel painted cells for girls, and of an eleven-year-old in a reform school, could not help but give the Committee occasion for deep reflection. Surely our society must give thought to the winding and painful path which leads children so early in life to such incarceration.

The high incidence of youngsters in these institutions who come from broken homes; who are without families; who have been transferred from less severe training schools; who have come from long chains of foster homes; whose educational excursions have been sporadic; and who are often accompanied by bulging files of psychiatric, psychological, and social work jargon, speaks sadly of the sordid life histories of many of these children.

The Committee recognizes that the educational system is only one of the instruments by means of which society makes small and inept attempts to attack such rooted problems. Emphasis must be placed upon seeking out and developing as early as possible all preventive measures which will help protect children from such disaster. The teacher in the schoolroom must see herself as an integral part of the harmonious orchestral arrangement of human services which must be developed if such misfortunes are to be prevented at an early age.

The residential schools on this continent are beginning to feel uneasy about the pressure for 'integrated' education. It must be appreciated that a good residential experience may be preferable to a poorly conceived or limited approach to integration. It is for this reason that, before remote residences are phased out, those of the handicapped who are in need of special help, must be assured that the finest quality of service and education will be provided for them. There will probably be a need for decentralized small regional residences to house children with multiple handicaps of a serious nature; however, precedence will sometimes be given to larger centres with highly-trained personnel, and where more sophisticated higher educational facilities are readily available.

But quality services such as these and all similar schools, regional, local, and residential or day, should not be restricted to the children of public school sup porters only, inasmuch as the Province contributes annual grants to such schools from general revenue.

If a child goes to Milton, Belleville, or Brantford, the Province pays the entire cost, but in Toronto, especially, the local taxpayer is required to fund a substantial part of the cost for such education. Such schools may be administered by one school board for the benefit of children of all taxpayers. But equality of opportunity to all and an absolute right of access requires that the total cost of all such schools should be borne by the Province.
Conclusion

Returning to the basic postulate that every child is our major concern, and after carefully examining the bewildering array of special learning programs in this province, the Committee wishes to reaffirm its conviction that every child benefits from compassion, good teaching, adequate facilities, and understanding. Every child in Ontario has a right to stand with dignity beside everyone else in the human parade. The handicapped child, whether seriously or mildly affected, must be given a chance to learn like any other. No child, by reason of geographic location, religion, or any personal circumstances, should be denied access to such help.

If we are truly to help the child who is different, we must be preoccupied not with his handicap, or with his weakness, but with his potential and his strengths. All of us need to recognize that all men are part of the great tapestry of life, and that all are potential contributors to society. We all share the joys and sorrows, the achievements and the failures of the great spirit of man.

The late Dr. Z.S. Phimister caught the vision in his address to the 44th International Convention of the Council for Exceptional Children, in April, 1966, when he said: "But different as each child is, and unpredictable as he is, he along with the rest of us must recognize, if we are to make democracy work, that we have a part to play in society, and whether that part will add something desirable to the world or subtract something from things as they are, is up to us to determine."

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