The educable mentally retarded children are capable of making progress in the normal school subjects of reading, writing and counting upto...
The educable mentally retarded children are capable of making progress in the normal school subjects of reading, writing and counting upto a functional level if the curriculum and methodology of teaching these subjects is specially designed to meet the limitationsof their nature. The standards aimed at and the methods used should be functionally oriented. All the school activities school subserve practical realistic and reliable aims for these children.
The most important objective of the teacher would be to help the mentally retarded children to develop these attributes which will enable them to become self-sufficient and accepted members of the community in which they live. The primaryconcern of education should be to promote not so much the three R’s but the three A’s personal adequacy social adequacy and occupational adequacy personal adequacy refers to the ability to take care of one’s ordinary everydayneeds. Personal adequacy for the mentally retarded is concerned as much with self-respect as self-care.
Social adequacy refers to helping the child to behave and conduct himself generally in ways that will make him acceptable to his fellow men both in the work and in leisure timeactivities.Occupational adequacy is essentially practical oriented. The aim occupational adequacy is to impart to the child those skills which willhelp him setting employment and become economically independent. In lower occupations a friendly co-operativedisposition, good manners, punctuality and perspeverance are important factors than knowledge of a specific skill in securing a job keeping in view of these things for developing occupational competency that the tool subjects of reading, writintg and counting should be emphasised as they are required to certain occupations.
The ultimate purpose of placement of the educable mentally retarded is to help the child in positive and realistic way to make him secured in the community as a wage earner and a complete citizen.Remedial measures for the educable mentally retarded may be assigned both to the parents at home and teachers at school. The role of the parents to understand their mentally retarded children is as important the role of the teachers at school. In this context the responsibility of the parents and the responsibilities teacher are mentioned below :-
Remedial Programmes by the parentsat home:
After discussing some of the principles of education for the educable mentally retarded children now it is proper to write a few words for the parents. It should be remembered that most of the mentally retarded children will remain at home. There are only a few instructions which can help the retarded children. Therefore parents should shoulder major responsibilitiesof the educable mentally retarded children. They should understand their children and develop right attitude towards their bringing up and their rehabilitation.
First thing is that they must accept the presence of the retarded children in their homes instead of cursing fate or themselves. They should have to reconcile with the situation boldly.
Educable mentally retarded children need love and affection but this should not amount to something to over protection ro indulgence parents should be sympathetic but firm and consistent in their disciplinary demands. This will help in developing useful habits and attitudes in the children.
Parents should not forget that the mentally retarded child learns at his own place. There is no need to push him beyond his abilities as he is a slow learner. They must remember that child individual mentalgrowth should be emphasisedrather than the standard rate.
The parents should encourage the retarded children to do various household activities, such as washing, cooking, cutting, decoration and other simple domestic work. At the same time they should appreciate and praise their work in order to give a sence of achievement. Similarly the retarded boys can be taken to the fields or factories where the actual work can be senen withuse of concrete materials like coloured paper, black, chalks clay, pegs, balls, tools of various sorts and toys sense training can be given to these children.
For motor control and muscular co-ordination, physical exercisescan be done with skipping, ropes, wooden tadders, stair cases, balancing poles etc. parents also can engage these children in outdoor Games of different types and let them play in their own lawns or outside.
These children should be taken as for as possible to various places of interest. They should be encouraged to ask questions about the things they observe and thus helped to increase their vocabulary, experience and power of observation.
Remedial Programmes by the teachersat a school :
Now more efforts are done to create more favourable learning environmentfor the educable mentally retarded children. Environmentalmanipulation is obviously related to the learning outcome. Behaviour can be shaped by applying principles of operant conditioning one advantage of operant conditioning as a technique is that it does not require the student to have verbal ability and thus is the technique most appropriate for the severely retarded.So the teacher should adopt the following techniques and principles for helping the retardades.
The techniques are :
1.Paired associates learning.
2.Social learning.
3.Effective verbal mediation
4.Motor learning.
5.Discrimianting learning.
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