At a private gathering yesterday, while waiting for the main guest and speaker, I was inevitably asked what I did, then about the education of children with cerebral palsy and then, of course, what was conductive education.
Generally, I try to shift the last question and come at the answer from a different direction, rather than directly. A remarkable number of people asked, for instance, how they would advise a young relative who wished to train to be a teacher of children with cerebral palsy are astonished to discover that not only is such teacher training not an option in the UK, their young relative cannot train specifically and specially as a teacher of disabled children: thus making the stark contrast with the training of conductors in CE that teachers entering upon a classroom where there are children with cerebral palsy haven't necessarily a clue about CP or how to teach a child with CP. Alternatively, I might ask when the questioner last heard of a national conference on the education of children with cerebral palsy, in order to point out that - unlike with the education of children with other educational disabilities, the mainstream educational world did not find this a subject worthy of time and debate. OR I might suggest to them that if they were to google "cerebral palsy" and "education", they would find little of informative value (other than conductive education) as compared with googling "cerebral palsy" and "therapy" which would produce many 'hits', but with little value to an enquiry about teacher-training, pedagogy and curriculum.
So I was intrigued, a moment ago, whilst checking on the stats for this blog (number of views; source of referrers etc), to notice that some one person on the planet had done a search on bing for "cerebral polcy in the classroom". Wondering what bing had found them, I went to take a look, as you can if you click on the link just above.
The most promising-sounding search results bing offered the searcher were:
How children with cerebral palsy are educated in the regular classroom
and
Both offer standard medical explanations of CP.
The first then reduces the role of the educator to not much more than an arranger of furniture: "Teaching children with cerebral palsy is often an unfamiliar circumstance for a regular education instructor, but with assistance from therapeutic programs and access to modifications in the classroom, students with CP can thrive in a general setting alongside their non-disabled peers."
The second then has a 14-point plan for the teacher, which puts preparing the other pupils as its first three points (think - this only works if the incoming alien with CP is the very first into this classroom) as the priority ahead of being an arranger of furniture (which comes in at only the 4th point) but helpfully proposes as 5th and 6th points that the teacher should "keep the floor clean" and "use antibacterial cleaners".
I wonder what my bing searcher made of this? Did they find the pages helpful? Did they learn something of the subject they were researching? Was the searcher a trainee teacher and the need for antibacterial wipes when including pupils with CP in the regular classroom end up in a coursework essay - and what grade was it awarded? Or was the searcher a Mum or Dad, seeking re-assurance about a school placement recommended by their child's local education authority?
How depressingly little it all has, as I said earlier, to do with teacher-training, pedagogy and curriculum. Or, how little to do with the notion that I mentioned in a previous posting, that education is a transformational process and purpose that might inspire the minds of teacher and pupil alike, together. Even those with cerebral palsy.
