In the past two days, the story of a mentally handicapped child in Hangzhou becoming a genius translator has been screened across the Internet. Behind the touching story, it also makes everyone pay attention to the growth path of those special children.
At this year's Shanghai Two Sessions, CPPCC members from the education sector discussed this hot topic and discussed how to let special children enjoy high-quality and balanced educational resources through integrated education.
Integration reflects the temperature of the city, and there can be no less on the road of young and good education
"Integration represents the temperature of a city. How do special children and normal children integrate? A few years ago, the China Welfare Association Nursery School has been paired with the special school Nanyang School to carry out integrated education exploration. Practice has proved that such puter integration has played a positive role in the early detection and early intervention of intellectual disabilities, language delays and other problems in those special children. I hope that in the future, such a pairing mechanism will be gradually promoted in Shanghai and even throughout the country. On the road to achieving good education for young children, no one can be less. At the two sessions in Shanghai, Fang Yue, a member of the CPPCC Municipal Committee and director of the China Welfare Association Nursery, once again exchanged her thoughts with her peers on this issue of concern.
At last year's Shanghai Two Sessions, the "Suggestions on Exploring and Promoting Shanghai Preschool Integration Education" proposed by Fang Yue, Jin Ying, Zhu Nailin, Fang Hongmei, Yu Lan, Chen Shuangshuang and other members was rated as an excellent proposal of the CPPCC in 2021. In Fang Yue's view, the so-called integrated education should not only allow special children to develop social skills and gain a sense of belonging in meaningful natural situations, but also let ordinary children know and understand the special peers around them, so that ordinary children can learn to respect, recognize and even appreciate the differences between each other, and help those in need in a timely manner.
In Nanyang School's Miao Miao class, most of the students are moderately severely mentally handicapped and have been studying in special classes since kindergarten. Due to the actual situation of intelligence and family, they usually have few opportunities to play and learn with ordinary children. In the past five years, every two weeks, Nanyang School has organized students from Miao Miao's class to go to the China Welfare Association Nursery to study, live and participate in various activities with the children there. Between the children, from the initial strangeness, gradually developed into a good partner for learning and playing together.
Since 2019, the Jing'an District, where the Zhongfuhui Nursery and Nanyang School are located, has continuously conducted research on all types of schools at all levels in the district, and found that there are more and more students with special educational needs, and the scope of "special students" is also expanding, from the original children with vision, hearing, speech, intellectual and physical disabilities to children with learning disabilities and emotional and behavioral disorders. To this end, Jing'an District has established a regional integrated education research practice community that runs through the whole section of preschool, primary school, junior high school, and high school (secondary vocational) basic education, and has set up four pilot teams such as "cognition and learning", "perception and movement", "language and communication" and "emotion and behavior", hired relevant medical experts to provide think tank support for the in-depth development of integrated education, and created a multi-channel public service resource sharing model for integrated education.
In fact, Shanghai has paid more and more attention to special education in recent years, and has successively introduced a number of policies to ensure the sustainable development of special education. In this international metropolis, the support of various positive and extensive social forces has also allowed more and more special students to face more kindness and tolerance, understanding and acceptance when they step into society.
From the popular bear's claw coffee to the "Wusheng Express" deaf express team, from the "Angel Zhiyin Salon" that helped autistic children "music therapy" for more than ten years, to the "Love Coffee" autism social practice base that has attracted much attention in the past two years... Everyone feels the warmth inherent in the city.
School-enterprise cooperation and social participation give every child the opportunity to shine in life
On the first day of this year's winter vacation, Wu Yi, a fifth-grade student at Dongfang Primary School in Pudong New Area, and several of his friends rushed to the newly opened community space of Tangqiao Street near their home - "Tang Space". "Tang Space" covers a charity supermarket with a child-friendly theme, a dream workshop café that helps young people with mental disabilities find employment, and an activity space shared by community residents.
The night before, under the guidance of Tangqiao Street, DreamWorks Cafe received an order for 50 cups of hot drinks from a caring enterprise, and Wu Yi and his partners were tasked with helping several mentally handicapped young clerks in the café as small volunteers to complete the order together, and distribute these hot drinks to the courier, sanitation and security "little brothers" who worked hard outdoors in winter.
In the past, the employment of young people with mental disabilities was the most difficult "worldwide problem" in the employment of people with disabilities. According to a survey in 2017, China's mentally disabled people account for 6.9% of the disabled population, the overall employment rate of the disabled population is 43%, while the employment rate of the mentally disabled population is less than 10%, and a considerable number of mentally disabled young people will appear "maladaptive" after employment, and even return home from society. The timely appearance of the Dream Workshop has found a breakthrough for this "worldwide problem".
As Shanghai's first supportive employment base for mentally handicapped youth, since 2019, DreamWorks Coffee has opened three stores through school-enterprise cooperation with pudong new area auxiliary schools, and the 18 regular employees in the store are graduates from pudong new area auxiliary schools. As the integration home of special education, DreamWorks Coffee has built a platform for this group of special young people to enter and integrate into the society, and has also allowed more people to pay attention to this special group.
Zhang Zhixiao, 20, is already an old employee of DreamWorks. After graduating from the Pudong New Area Auxiliary School in 2019, he went from working at the Dream Workshop Chengshan Road store across the door from the school to the new store in "Tang Space" today, and over the past two years, he has not only mastered the "business", but also gradually become a good partner and teacher for the children around him. Every time a student volunteer like Wu Yi comes, he will not only patiently take them to make coffee, but also use his free time to write calligraphy and learn photography under the leadership of community teachers.
In the afternoon, watching more and more employees and "little brothers" of the caring enterprises who came to pick up coffee in the store, Zhang Zhixiao did not hesitate to take the temperature of each person entering the store and remind everyone to wear a mask. After everyone had a cup of coffee, Zhang Zhixiao excitedly said to everyone: "It's almost the New Year, I'll play a good New Year for everyone, and I wish everyone a good year of tigers." After saying that, Zhang Zhixiao took out a handful of saxophones from the storage area and blew it confidently.
Seeing this scene, Wang Ying, the principal of the Pudong New Area Auxiliary Reading School, was full of emotions in his eyes. "For these special children, many people actually don't understand, always with sympathy, pity to treat, but in fact, he is the same as all of us, need to respect, accept, tolerate." At work, they may move slower, and may be a little negligent, but it is precisely this kind of equality and communication that gives them the confidence to do better. Wang Ying said that "Dream Workshop" is such an integration platform, and the goal is to help more such children integrate into the social family and live the same life as ordinary people. I hope that with the support and care of the whole society, there will be more and more similar platforms in the future, so that every child has the opportunity to shine in life.
Author: Wang Xing
Edit: Wang Xing