I.

Introduction to Special Education

Education has become a fundamental right for children and youth across the world – so
much so that it is accessible through both the public and private academic institutions. However,
it is not as straightforward as providing literacy and numeracy skills. It also includes the idea of
making some form of education accessible to all children and youth regardless of their race,
gender or needs. Children and youth with special educational needs have a right to as much
learning as any child and youth, but the means and methods provided to achieve this goal vary
greatly.
A. Definition of Special Education
Special Education is the design and delivery of teaching and learning strategies for
individuals with disabilities or learning difficulties who may or may not be enrolled in regular
schools. Students who need special education may include students who have hearing
impairment or are deaf, students who have vision impairment or are blind, students with physical
disabilities, students with intellectual disability, students with learning difficulties, students with
behavior disorders or emotional disturbance, and students with speech or language difficulties.
They may be students with behavior disorders, emotional problems or a medical condition of one
kind or another. Some students have a number of disabilities and learning difficulties. Their
special need might be permanent or it might be temporary; this depends on the nature of the need
and, to some extent, on what action is taken by their parents, teachers and other community
members.
B. Policy, Goal and Objectives of Special Education
The policy on Inclusive Education for All is adopted in the Philippines to accelerate access
to education among children and youth with special needs. Inclusive Education forms an integral
component of the overall educational system that is committed to an appropriate education for all
children and youth with special needs.
The goal of the special education programs of the Department of Education all over the
country is to provide children with special needs appropriate educational services within the
mainstream of basic education. The two-pronged goal includes the development of key strategies
on legislation, human resource management, family involvement and active participation of
government and non-government organizations. Likewise, there are major issues to address on
attitudinal barriers of the general public and effort towards the institutionalization and
sustainability of special education programs and services.

Special education aims to:

1. Provide a flexible and individualized support system for children and youth with special
needs in a regular class environment in schools nearest the students’ home,
2. Provide support services, vocational programs and work training, employment
opportunities for efficient community participation and independent living,
 3. Implement a life-long curriculum to include early intervention and parent education,
basic education and transition programs on vocational training or preparation for college,
and
4. Make available an array of educational programs and services: the Special Education
Center built on "a school within a school concept" as the resource center for children and
youth with special needs; inclusive education in regular schools, special and residential
schools, homebound instruction, hospital instruction and community-based programs;
alternative modes of service delivery to reach the disadvantaged children in far-flung
towns, depressed areas and underserved barangays.

C. Four Points of View about Special Education

1. Special education is a legislatively governed enterprise.

This point of view is expressed in the legal bases of special education Article IV, Section 1
and Section 5, Article XIII, Section 11 of the 1987 Philippine Constitution guarantee that the
state shall protect and promote the rights of all citizens to quality education at all levels and shall
take appropriate steps to make such education available to all. The State shall provide citizens,
the disabled and out-of-school youth with training in civics, vocational efficiency and other
skills. The State shall adopt an integrated and comprehensive approach to health and other social
services available to all people at affordable costs. There shall be priority to the needs of the
underprivileged, the sick, the elderly, the disabled, women and children. R.A. 7277- The Magna
Carta for Disabled Persons- provides for the rehabilitation, self-development and self-reliance of
disabled persons and their integration into mainstream society.
The Philippine Policies and Guidelines for Special Education provides that every child with
special needs has a right to an educational program that is suitable to his/her needs. Special
education shares with regular education basic responsibilities of the educational system to fulfil
the right of the child to develop his/her potential. There are many other laws, memoranda and
circulars that have been enacted through the years in support of special education.

2. Special education is a part of the country’s educational system.

Special education is a part of the Department of Education’s basic education program. With
its modest historical beginning in 1907, special education is now a major part of the basic
education program in elementary and secondary schools. The Special Education Division of the
Bureau of Elementary Education formulates policies, plans and programs, develops standards of
programs and services. There are special education programs in public and private schools in all
the regions of the country. The government continues to grant scholarships to deserving school
administrators and teachers to pursue the graduate degrees at the Philippine Normal University
and the University of the Philippines. In-service education programs are conducted to upgrade
the competencies of administrators, teachers and non-teaching personnel. Networks and linkages
in the country and overseas are sustained.
 3. Special education is teaching children with special needs in the least restrictive
environment.
In the final analysis, teaching is what special education is all about. From this perspective,
special education is defined in terms of the “who, what, how and where of its implementation”.

WHO: The exceptional children of the children and youth with special education needs
are the most important persons in special education. Then there are the school administrators, the
special education teachers, the regular teachers, the interdisciplinary teams of professionals such
as the guidance counselors, the school psychologists, the speech therapists, physical and
occupational therapists, medical doctors, and specialists who help provide the specific services
that exceptional children need.
WHAT: Every exceptional child needs access to a differentiated and modified curricular
program to enable him/her to learn the skills and competencies in the basic education curriculum.
The individualized education program (IEP) states the annual goals, the quarterly objectives, the
strategies for teaching and evaluation of learning and the service the exceptional child needs.
HOW: Children with mental retardation are taught adaptive skills and basic academic
content that are suitable to their mental ability. Gifted children are provided with enrichment
activities and advanced content knowledge so that they can learn more than wat the basic
education curriculum offers. Most of them are in accelerated classes where they finish
elementary education in five years instead of six. Children who are blind learn braille and
orientation and mobility or travel techniques. Children who are deal learn sign language and
speech reading.
WHERE: There are several educational placements for these children. The most
preferred is inclusive education where they are mainstreamed in regular classes. Other types of
educational placements are special schools, residential schools, self-contained classes, home-
bound and hospital instruction.

4. Special education is purposeful intervention

Intervention prevents, eliminates and/or overcomes the obstacles that might keep an
individual with disabilities from learning, from full and active participation in school activities,
and from engaging in social and leisure activities.
Preventive intervention is designed to keep potential or minor problems from becoming a
disability. Primary intervention is designed to eliminate or counteract risk factors so that a
disability is not acquired. Secondary intervention is aimed at reducing or eliminating the effects
of existing risk factors. Tertiary prevention is intended to minimize the impact of a specific
condition or disability among those with disabilities. Remedial intervention attempts to eliminate
the effects of a disability.

D. The Basic Terms in Special Education

a. Developmental disability refers to a severe, chronic disability of a child five years of age or
older that is:
1. attributable to a mental or physical impairment or a combination of mental and physical
impairments;
2. manifested before the person attains age 22;
3. likely to continue indefinitely;
4. results in substantial functional limitations in three or more of the areas of major life activities
such as self-care, language, learning, mobility, self-direction, capacity for independent living and
economic self-sufficiency; and
5. Reflects the person’s need for a combination and sequence of special care, treatment or other
services that are lifelong or of extended duration and are individually planned and coordinated.
b. Impairment or disability refers to reduced function of loss of a specific part of the body or
organ. A person may have disabilities such as blindness or low vision, deafness or hard of
hearing condition, mental retardation, learning disabilities, communication disorders, emotional
and behavioral disorders, physical and health impairments and sever disabilities. These
disabilities or impairments limit or restrict the normal function of a particular organ of the body.
In the case of the sensory disabilities – blindness and deafness – vision or sight and audition or
hearing do not function normally and restrict the person’s seeing and hearing. The speech
mechanism is impaired in communication disorders and caused the person to have voice
problems, improper rhythm and timing in speech and even stuttering. The skeletal and nervous
systems are impaired in cases of physical and health impairments and sever disabilities. The
results are crippling conditions, cerebral palsy and other physical disabilities. Impairment and
disability are used interchangeably.
c. Handicap refers to a problem a person with a disability or impairment encounters when
interacting with people, events and the physical aspects of the environment. For example, a child
with low vision or blindness cannot read the regular print of textbooks. The child either reads
books that are published in large print or transcribed into braille. A child who is hard of hearing
or who suffers from deafness cannot hear regular conversation and uses a hearing aid and reads
the lips of the speaker. A child who has a physical disability such as a crippling condition cannot
walk normally and uses a wheelchair, braces or artificial limbs. However, it must be remembered
that a disability may pose a handicap in one environment but not in another. A wheelchair-bound
child with a physical disability may not be able to compete with his classmates in the Physical
Education class, but may excel in Mathematics, Science and other academic subjects.
d. At risk refers to children who have greater chances than other children to develop a disability.
The child is in danger of substantial developmental delay because of medical, biological, or
environmental factors if early intervention services are not provided. Down syndrome occurs
during the early phase of pregnancy when one parental chromosome fails to separate at
conception resulting in the child’s having forty-seven chromosomes instead of the normal forty-
six or twenty-three pairs. At birth, the infant has abnormal physical characteristics and mental
retardation. If a pregnant woman contracts German measles or rubella during the first three
months of pregnancy, the fetus is at risk for blindness, deafness or mental retardation. The fetus
in the womb of a woman who consumes alcohol heavily and chain-smokes, or takes prohibited
drugs is at risk for brain injury that causes disabilities. If a disability runs in the family, the fetus
may inherit it and the infant will be born with a disability. Children may meet accidents, suffer
from certain diseases, malnutrition and other environmental deprivations that can lead to
disabilities.

E. Trends in Special Education

Researchers have conceptualized the history of special education in stages that highlight
the various trends that the field has experienced. Although some of these conceptualizations
focus on changes involving instructional interventions for students with disabilities, others focus
on the place of interventions. The focus on placement reflects the controversy in which the field
of special education has found itself throughout history.
Samuel G. Howe was one of the first to assert–in the nineteenth century–that instructional
settings had inherent qualities that alone insured effective interventions.
Belief in the essential curative powers of place spurred the late nineteenth century crusade
for bigger and better institutions, as well as the mid-twentieth-century movement for
deinstitutionalization. Exclusive focus on the importance of place distracted many professionals
and prevented them from recognizing that dramatic changes in philosophy were accompanying
the movement for deinstitutionalization.
In the late nineteenth century, social Darwinism replaced environmentalism as the primary
causal explanation for those individuals with abilities who deviated from those of the general
population, opening the door to the eugenics movement of the early twentieth century, and
leading to the segregation and sterilization of individuals with mental retardation.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the debate had suddenly shifted from whether the
disadvantaged should be helped to where these individuals should be served. As the
institutionalization versus deinstitutionalization debate raged, many individuals were given
custodial treatment, which is contrary to the mission of special education.
Almost a century after the placement debate began, special educators still focused on the
importance of place. Many were calling upon the field to create not one perfect setting for the
delivery of services, but a continuum of placement options that would address the needs of all
students with disabilities.
 The civil rights movement had reconceptualized special education as a case of access of
minorities to the educational privileges of the majority, and the least restrictive environment
clause of EAHCA/IDEA prompted advocates for people with disabilities to call for
mainstreaming–the return of students with disabilities to the regular classroom whenever and
wherever possible. In the 1980s the Regular Education Initiative (REI) was an attempt to return
responsibility for the education of students with disabilities to neighborhood schools and regular
classroom teachers.
In the 1990s the full inclusion movement called for educating all students with
disabilities in the regular classroom with a single, unified and responsive education system.

Controversial Issues in Special Education

Special education has been the target of criticism throughout history. Some of the criticism
has been justified, some unjustified. Some criticisms brought to light ineffective practices, such
as the inefficacy and inhumanity of relegating all persons with disabilities to institutions.
Other criticisms were distractions with disastrous repercussions, such as the singular focus
on the importance of place while ignoring other inappropriate practices.
The beginning of the twenty-first century found new criticisms being launched at special
education. Some argue that the use of diagnostic labels is potentially stigmatizing to students,
others that minority students are overrepresented in some disability categories, and still others
that education of students with disabilities in special classes and schools, even pulling students
out for instruction in resource classes, is akin to race-based segregation. Some of these criticisms
may expose ineffective practices, others may only distract educators from the effort of finding
and implementing effective instructional practices.
Professionals must develop the ability to learn from history and differentiate between
unimportant criticisms and those with merit.
One valid criticism repeatedly launched against special education involves the
implementation of ineffective educational interventions. Although great concern about the where
of instruction was expressed in the 1980s and 1990s, little attention was given to the what of
instruction. Throughout the twentieth century the field of special education repeatedly adopted
instructional strategies of questionable efficacy–interventions that have little to no empirical
basis.
Additionally, special educators have adopted, with "bandwagon" fervor, many practices
that have been proven ineffective and have thereby repeated the mistakes of history. If special
education is to progress, professionals will need to address and remedy the instructional practices
used with students with disabilities.
Special education has also been validly criticized for the way in which students with
disabilities are identified. In the early nineteenth century, physicians and educators had difficulty
making reliable distinctions between different disability categories. In fact, the categories of
mental retardation and behavioral disorders are inseparably intertwined. Many of the disability
categories overlap to the extent that it is hard to differentiate one from the other.
Additionally, some of the categories–learning disabilities and behavioral disorders, for
example–are defined by the exclusion of other contributing disabilities. Thus, at the beginning of
the twenty-first century, much work remains on the identification of students with disabilities.

Perhaps the largest, most pervasive issue in special education is its relationship to general
education. The relationship of special to general education has been controversial since the
beginning of universal public schooling. However, in the late twentieth and early twenty-first
centuries, the question of whether special education should retain a separate identity or be fused
with general education such that it has no separate identity (e.g., budget, personnel) was made
prominent by proponents of a radical restructuring of special education.
Proponents of radical restructuring and fusion argue that such integration is necessary to
provide appropriate education for all students regardless of their disabilities and without stigma
or discrimination. In their view, special education suffers primarily from structural problems, and
the integration of two separate systems will result in a flexible, supple, responsive single system
that will meet the needs of all students without "separating out" any. All teachers, according to
this line of thinking, should be prepared to teach all students, including those with special needs.
Opponents of radical restructuring argue that special education's problems are primarily the
lack of implementation of best practices, not structural. Moreover, they suggest, special
education will not survive to serve the special needs of exceptional students if it loses its identity,
including special budget allocations and personnel preparation. It is not feasible nor is it
desirable, they contend, to prepare all teachers to teach all children; special training is required to
teach students who are educationally exceptional. Arguments about the structure of education
(special and general), who (if anyone) should receive special treatment, how they should be
taught, and where special services should be provided are perpetual issues in special education.
These issues will likely continue to be debated throughout the twenty-first century.
In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, another issue became the basis for
conceptual or theoretical bases for special education practices. Postmodern and antiscientific
philosophies have been put forward in both general and special education. These ideas have been
challenged by others who have noted the importance of the scientific method in discriminating
among ideas and assertions. Likely, postmodern ideas and attempts to apply them to or refute
them will be perpetual.
More than two hundred years after Itard began his work on the education of the wild boy
of Aveyron, special educators are being asked to make decisions concerning such issues as
placement and delivery of services. The inclusion debate, although important, has the potential to
distract the field of special education away from issues of greater import–issues such as the
efficacy of intervention and the accurate identification of students with disabilities. If special
educators are to avoid the mistakes of the past, they will need to make future decisions based
upon reliable data, evaluating the efficacy of differing options. Since the inception of what is
now known as IDEA, significant progress has been made in applying scientific research to the
problems of special education. In the twenty-first century, special education need not remain a
field of good intentions, but can fully employ the scientific child-study techniques begun in the
late eighteenth century to provide free and appropriate educations to all children with disabilities.

F. Difference between Special Education and Regular Education

The basic goal of special education is to provide exceptional children with disabilities
which will prevent them from fully benefiting from traditional educational approaches with
specialized instruction and intervention sufficient to enable them to benefit from their education.
Many people have the misconception that special education is merely a watered-down
version of regular education. This is understandable, but incorrect. In fact, the opposite is often
true. Special education is in many ways more intensive than conventional education.
Special education differs from regular education in two ways:
Different instructional methods are used, and additional specialists (specialized teachers,
speech therapists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, aides, social workers, etc.) are
involved beyond regular classroom teachers. These professionals' specialized skills are matched
to the specialized needs of identified children.
Special education uses intensive, individualized instructional methods. Most special
education students will work on traditional academic content areas such as reading, writing,
math, social studies, and science. In addition to traditional academic content, many exceptional
students also benefit from a functional curriculum. A Functional Curriculum is designed to help
students learn basic daily living skills they have not developed on their own such as toileting,
eating, grooming, using money, filling out forms, communicating basic needs, and following
directions that a teacher or boss gives them. Functional curriculums teach students the basic
skills required for independent living.
Traditional and functional curricula are augmented on a child-by-child, as needed basis by
specialty services that help individual children to manage or overcome impediments to their
learning. Intervention services students may receive at school include physical therapy (PT),
occupational therapy (OT), speech and language therapy, and other related services.
These specialties serve several purposes: 1) to help prevent minor problems from
becoming a disability, 2) to prevent the effects of a disability from getting worse, 3) to resolve
problems in connection with a disability, or 4) to teach students to complete certain tasks in spite
of their disability.
For example, psychological and other specialists may collaborate to create a behavior plan
designed to help a child reduce acting-out behaviors, learn to meet their daily living needs, and to
focus their energy on learning. A behavior plan is a written plan that specifies what positive
behaviors the student should be exhibiting, such as completing work in a timely manner, or
sharing toys with other students during group activities. The behavior plan also specifies what
tools school staff can use to motivate students to model those appropriate behaviors. Some
school staff and families think that behavior plans should mainly create planned consequences
for a student's misbehavior, but these punishment-oriented plans often do not get the full benefits
that a more comprehensive behavior plan could provide. Both children in regular education and
special education can benefit from behavior plans, but often, children with special needs will
need a more detailed plan.