Madam, - May I comment on some of the issues raised in Breda O'Brien's recent article in Education Today on special-needs education?
I agree with the comments regarding the legislation which will give definitive rights to people with special education needs. The O'Hanlon judgment in the early 1990s and the subsequent Sinnott case led to education rights for those with severe and profound learning disability (long overdue) and to students with autism.
However, I was taken aback by the suggestion that anyone who received teacher training more than 10 years ago "probably got little or no training in how to teach people with special needs".
The Special Education Department in St Patrick's College, Drumcondra, has been offering a Diploma in Special Education for over 40 years. (Prior to that the course was offered in a premises in Great Denmark Street.) This, until recently, was a year's full-time course.
In the late 1960s the Irish Association of Teachers in Special Education was founded by a group on the diploma course who received encouragement and support from all in the field of special education. It has provided an exchange mart for effective practice for the past 36 years. Its members represent a wide spectrum of teachers in special education. Its annual conference addresses pertinent themes and attributes significantly to the assimilation of new ideas from home and abroad. IATSE has had close links with a corresponding organisation in Northern Ireland and with EASE, the European Association of Special Education.
The Association of Remedial Teachers, Ireland (ARTI) also contributed greatly to the support, education and mentoring of teachers who did remedial work in mainstream schools in the 1960s and 1970s. ARTI subsequently became the present Irish Learning Support Association (ILSA). The Psychological Society of Ireland (PSI) was yet another body whose seminars and training days were of great benefit to the development of teachers' expertise.
I would not wish the huge untapped and unsung expertise of special educators who trained more than 10 years ago to go unnoticed. Indeed, it is hoped that many of the innovations and strategies devised in special schools will have found their way into the mainstream classes which now include some students with special education needs. - Yours, etc,
BARBARA O'NEILL, Rathgar Avenue, Dublin 6.