They Said He Would Never Read

Mrs. Mary McCullagh reports on the progress she has been able to make in teaching her son to read, although he had been classified as ineducable. The trouble is, of course, that I'm not supposed to be doing it at all. Once your child is classified as 'in-educable', then it follows almost as the night the day that he or she will never read. Not perhaps in theory, but more often than not in practice, which is why f am concerned to write this. At the very start, let me say that one should not condemn the training centres, most of which are doing Well?according to their instructions, framework and resources?by the children in their care. It is believed, and with a great deal of truth, that what must come first is social training, and that with the low intelli-gences of most trainees, one must expect even that to come along very, very slowly. But what of the exceptions? The misfits who don't slip so easily and conveniently into a pattern? And must one accept without continual trial the inability of even the general run? With the best will in the world, it is fatally easy to correlate an inability to tie a shoelace, to use a knife and fork, or to speak distinctly, with an incapacity to recognise and understand at least one of the three K's. Of course, this works the other way too. One nfight find a child with good manual and articulatory ability whose concept of written language was to all 'ntents and purposes non-existent. Progress in both cases can tend to take place only at the rate of the slowest avenue open to each child, instead of being geared to allow the necessary variations in pace and direction. But, when considering the 'ineducable', an additional physical handicap presents a more confusing issue than exceptionally low intellect. ^appy and confident Let me explain, briefly, about our child. He is brain-'njured, with a certain degree of spasticity, and consequent weakness of body muscles. His IQ is n? more than 60 and his speech, swallowing, and band and foot movements very uncertain. He has a tendency to minor epilepsy. But he is psychologically very well adjusted?happy and confident. Apart from an ability to do without sleep (which clashes with our 0vvn sometimes inordinate desire), he has few behaviour traits which one would classify as abnormal. He is now …