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Symposium of ILSMH, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1979

Whether the retarded children of today can be the effective adults of tomorrow will depend on the extent to which they have the opportunity to benefit from integrated experiences. Traditionally the schools have been exclusive, refusing to accept children with special problems. It was the physicians, not the educators, who started what today is called special education. Professor Jack Tizard, whose untimely death prevented his hoped-for participation in this Symposium, said already twenty-five years ago that the next major progress in special education of handicapped children had to come from general education, from the regular schools. By this he meant that schools would have to be more receptive to accepting children with handicaps and learning problems. Significantly, one of the last assignments he had before his death was a study for OECD (Organization for Economic and Cultural Development) on the vocational preparation of handicapped children, in the course of which he and the other members of the study group became aware of what is undoubtedly the most sweeping program for educational integration of all handicapped children, in development since 1971 throughout Italy. The League's former president, Yvonne Posternak, has documented this development in a report available from OECD (Posternak, 1979).

For developing countries, here is an issue of extreme importance. If they follow the advice of many professors of education and ministry of education officials, they will repeat history and build a school system which segregates handicapped children from their peers in the ordinary schools, and once such a system is created, it is indeed difficult to make changes, as has most recently been demonstrated by the report of the Warnock Committee to the British Government.

The foregoing comments have sketched out some basic actions that need to be given consideration if we want to enable children with mental retardation to be better prepared for assuming their roles as adults of tomorrow.

It is to that second phrase in the title of our Symposium -- The Adult of Tomorrow -- that we must now turn our attention. What do we have in store for our handicapped children as they reach adulthood, and what steps do we have to take to help them move forward?

Most appropriately, the 1979 International Year of the Child will be followed by the International Year for Disabled Persons, proclaimed for the year 1981 by a Resolution adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 16,1976. The Resolution set forth the following five objectives:

(1) Helping disabled persons in their physical and psychological adjustment to society;

(2) Promoting all national and international efforts to provide disabled persons with proper assistance, training, care and guidance, to make available to them opportunities for suitable work and to ensure their full integration in society;

(3) Encouraging study and research projects designed to facilitate the practical participation of disabled persons in daily life, for example by improving their access to public buildings and transportation systems;

(4) Educating and informing the public of the rights of disabled persons to participate in and contribute to various aspects of economic, social and political life; and

(5) Promoting effective measures for the prevention of disability and for the rehabilitation of disabled persons.

It is important for us to keep in mind that this Resolution was written with reference to the entire spectrum of disabled persons, the vast majority of whom become disabled after they have reached adulthood.

Looking therefore at the Resolution's first point, helping disabled persons in their physical and psychological adjustment to society, it is apparent that persons with mental retardation face special problems which require a long range program of special assistance from us.

The first of these problems was pointed up by Ann Shearer at the 1978 World Congress of the International League in Vienna when she said that mentally retarded persons, seen as misfits, are too often caught in a half-world between childhood and adulthood, fitting into neither, frozen into a continuous state of becoming prepared to enter adult life, yet not enabled to reach it. This is a formidable societal barrier which we must seek to remove (Shearer/1978).

The second obstacle refers to the fact that within the total disability group, persons with mental retardation have traditionally been a minority within a minority. All too frequently, persons with other handicaps have successfully objected to the inclusion of a mentally retarded person in "their" programs. Reversing the attitudes and value judgements that have led to this "pecking order," this rejection of mentally retarded persons as inferior within the disability group, requires strong and determined help from organizations such as the International League and all its member associations.

The third obstacle is perhaps the most pervasive, and, at the same time, the one least clearly recognized. The professional literature dealing with the efforts in recent years of integrating retarded persons into the community alleges time and again that there is a strong and pervasive resistance on the part of your neighbors and mine (the common people) to having such persons live among them. However, the actual experience in the United States and in other countries negates this assertion. Where mentally retarded individuals have an opportunity to live like the rest of us in the community, they have been met with acceptance, ever in places where initially there was resistance to their moving into the neighborhood. Once people actually encounter retarded persons, they are frequently not just tolerant but sympathetic and supportive, as has been so well documented by Robert Perske in this Symposium.

The prejudicial attitude does not rest with the common man, the man on the street, but rather with a small but vocal group of opinion makers, textbook writers, research workers, and administrators who, for some reasons that have yet to be explored and explained, feel impelled to denigrate and downgrade the potential as well as the actual achievements of persons with mental retardation. It is they who continue to talk about individuals incapable of responding to either education or rehabilitation, who stress disability rather than potential, who make their low expectations into self-fulfilling prophecies, who recommend policies that are exclusive rather than inclusive, denying access to programs because they presume the applicant to be incapable of sufficient progress.

Lest you feel that I am overstating the case, let me relate to you that in England recently a highly regarded psychiatric textbook was published with such grossly denigrating description of persons with mental retardation that a British advocacy group, the Campaign for the Mentally Handicapped, felt impelled to mount a protest action resulting in hundreds of signatures, resulting in turn in the publishers' promise that corrections would be made. In the United States, a group of well-known research workers in the field of psychology issued a statement claiming that in severe and profound retardation, limits of educability are encountered which preclude any program of training and education as futile (Partlow Review Committee, 1978). The National Association for Retarded Citizens recognized the seriousness of this situation and issued a strong Resolution in support of a developmental approach which is firmly based on the knowledge, not just the belief, that there is no human being who does not possess the capacity to grow and develop. The Center of Human Policy at Syracuse University responded to the psychologists' challenge with a manifesto entitled The Community Imperative which refuted point by point the psychologists' assertions (Center of Human Policy, 1979).

I have dwelt on this matter at such length because I hope that the discussions of this Symposium will address themselves very specifically to this issue and assist our member associations around the world to understand this problem and to develop appropriate action programs in much the same way that racial prejudice and the misinformation underlying it must be met head-on.

In our rapidly developing field it is urgent to spread new knowledge, to update textbooks, and to take positive steps to use this new knowledge effectively in day to day programs and services.

The 1968 Jerusalem Congress, at which the International League launched the Declaration of the Rights of the Mentally Retarded Persons, was followed by the League's 1972 Congress in Montreal with the challenging theme, "Suit the Action to the Word." What I am trying to convey to you is that this challenge is still confronting us; it is laid out carefully and well in the League's publication Step-by-Step, guidelines to implementing the Declaration on the Rights of Mentally Retarded Persons (ILSMH, 19?8b).

It may appear at first that these comments pertain only to countries with well established services for retarded children and adults, but this is not so. Observations of the international scene during the past twenty years have brought to light numerous instances where the so-called developing countries received in good faith and acted on information which no longer reflected acceptable practices. This Symposium must give careful consideration as to how the International League could strengthen and safeguard avenues of information that will help our member associations to assume effective leadership in their countries. Obviously, the League's collaborative arrangements with the United Nations and its Specialized Agencies, as well as with the international voluntary organizations concerned with disability, can provide a basis for extending and strengthening the channels of communication.

Within the framework of this brief introductory paper it is obviously not possible to deal adequately with what has remained, almost everywhere, the most difficult problem in planning for the adult persons with retardation -- namely, appropriate employment or meaningful occupation. I would like to single out a few highlights.

For many workers in the field the sheltered workshop is the appropriate place of occupation for all of those who cannot work independently or find places in open employment. Recently, in one of the Scandinavian countries, we encountered among many of our colleagues the presumption that even for the moderately (middle level) retarded persons sheltered workshops would not be available, and "day centers" would be organized for them.

In contrast, speaking at the ILO Regional Seminar on Vocational Rehabilitation of the Mentally Retarded held last year in Jamaica, George Soloyanis emphasized the need to move away from "the stereotyped thinking which suggest-s- that the best and most comprehensive programs for retarded persons consist primarily of special education or training, then placement into a sheltered workshop." Accordingly, he laid out twenty-four work opportunities suitable for retarded persons which are in fact being undertaken somewhere in the world.

Because there has been a great deal of confusion about it, I would like to make specific reference to agricultural work. It came into bad repute as an occupation for retarded persons, particularly in the USA, because in many instances the large farms, attached to institutions serving several thousands, utilized what could only be called slave labor, without any thought of vocational preparation and future placement. However, in recent years the National Society for Mentally Handicapped Children (NSMHC) has developed a comprehensive agricultural training center, Lufton Manor, in southwest England. In the context of our Symposium it is worth noting that the Director, David Carter, has served as ILO consultant in several African countries (Carter, 1976).

At the same Congress, in Ann Shearer's presentation on "Meeting Vocational and Social Needs," various schemes of on-the-job training were mentioned, including one I want to highlight because of its simplicity of approach. In the "Pathway scheme" first promoted by the NSMHC in South Wales a few years ago, a small sum of money is offered to an ordinary, experienced worker, called a "foster worker," to guide a handicapped employee through his or her first month of employment, and the employer is guaranteed a grant to cover the first three months of wages (Shearer, 1978).

I have selected this particular example of innovative work placement and training because it seems to deal so effectively with the total employment situation, i.e., also assisting the retarded worker in handling the social and environmental aspects of the job, the area where failure most frequently originates. Obviously this is a scheme that can be adapted easily to any type of work situation.

Looking back over the past three decades since our movement on behalf of retarded persons came into existence, one can identify many significant events, such as, for instance, the founding of the International League. Yet I venture to say that nothing has been as impressive and as promising as the emergence of the person with mental retardation as an active participant, not only in the planning for his or her own present and future, but increasingly also as a person concerned about the well-being of others.