When we talk about education, everybody agrees that every child needs a teacher, not just for their intellectual development, but also to their social, cultural and physical development. Many people talk about how teachers are important, but few of them talk about how teachers are important to children who need special attention as children with some intellectual disorder or mental retardation.
To understand better how teachers are essential and very important to them we need to know a little bit about what the point of view was around the special education in the past. Before these children could be inserted in regular schools, there were taken as a problem of the society close to a flaw of society, that’s why they were excluded from society and locked in hospitals and “asylums” because society thought that they could not be with the “normal people”. But as time passed and they started to think that these children could have the right to be in society too interacting with other children. But they were separated from us, in special schools where the whole school and professionals were adapted to be able to attend to their special needs.
When a child goes to schools, he/she learns more than just how to read and how to write, but how to interact with other people, and how the real world is, far from their parents and in other points of views. And the person who helps him/her is the teacher, who guides the children and is always by his/her side to orient in all their decisions.
And when we talk about special children, the teacher needs to know how to act with them, because different from “regular children”. They need special care, because in some cases they are children who cannot talk, cannot walk and have difficulties to interact with other people. And not because most people think that a teacher cannot make any difference in their leaning process, but yes, in some cases where the deficiency is very advanced, they are not able to actually learn reading, writing and critical thinking. But if they study in a regular school with regular children and a teacher they can develop other characteristics as Vygotsky said that the children learn when they are interacting with other children, like if they are changing information with their classmates. For example, a child who does not talk and does not have good motor coordination, by being in a environment where he is able to interact with other students he can improve a little bit some of these skills.
However, it is important to think that we place the child in a regular school and not think that he/she as part of the class and exclude him/her just because we think that he/she are not able to learn and develop his/her critical skills as other students. But we have to think about them as whole class and make our best to develop their skills.
To conclude, there are a lot of things that they can learn and acquire, not just the child but the society too, because including special children in a place where other children and people can carry out all the things that they are able to do, we are helping them to lose the prejudice and to break the ice that the society has towards them.