I. The Basic Ideas of the Golden Key Project
II. Why to Design the Golden Key Project
III. The Objectives of the Golden Key Project
IV. Implementation Principles and methods of the Golden Key Project
1.1. Human society has an unshirkable responsibility to be nice to disabled persons
When humans first survived on the earth, they fell prey to as well as preyed on other animals, consequently, disability was an inevitable outcome. By the time disabled people were safeguarded to a certain degree in matriarchal clan society when humans learned to use fire, this miserable group of disabled persons began to appear in human society. In fact, every progress in the development of the human productive force had to be made at the cost of some people becoming disabled. Yet human society could never abandon the development of this productive force for the same reasons as they should never abandon just war for fear of people being wounded and disabled.
Up to the present, facing mine accidents frequently happened with the development of coal production, what a government can do is to try whatever possible to reduce the incidence of mine accidents and the deaths from coal production of per million tons, instead of giving orders to ban casualties. Nowadays in China, over one hundred thousand people died from traffic accidents each year. To this, the government can only order to strengthen traffic control instead of forbidding the growth of motor vehicles. In addition, environmental pollution resulted from production development has become one of the substantial causes of disability.
In short, disability is what human society has to pay for their development. So human society has an unshirkable responsibility to be nice to disabled people.
1.2. Equality of access to education is the base of social equality
Respecting human rights is a sign of civilization progress of the society. As early as the first years of the founding of the UN, all the member states, by reflecting the trampling of the Germany-Italy-Japan evil Axis Powers during the World War II on the human rights, began to draft in 1946 and finally passed in 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Since then, equality of access to education became an important part of the Declaration. The development of human society is based on material production. With the gradual transition of the main force in material production from ¡°labor work¡± to ¡°a combination of labor and mental work¡±, the proportion of ¡°mental work¡± is growing. Any individual, who wants to have equality in society, must become a member of the main force of society. A disabled person, being a member of the inferior group in society, must obtain equal right to education. Only in this way can he or she be able to have equal room for development and to have substantial equality among other social members by setting off from the same starting line. A disabled person, as an individual when grown up into society, will be confronted with three problems on equality respectively in ¡°starting point¡±, ¡°process¡± and ¡°result¡±. We cannot expect equality in ¡°result¡±, which may cause equalitarianism so as to make the individual weak-willed and to obstruct social development. By equality in process we mean nondiscrimination in employment, opposing racial discrimination, gender discrimination and disability discrimination. The most important equality is equality in starting point, that is to say, equality of access to education, particularly equality of access to good education; otherwise, if poor families lived in poverty for generations, how can we talk about social equality?
1.3. Inclusive education is the unalterable orientation of the development of special education
Educational development must be based on civilization and progress of human society, and there is no exception to special education. The process that the ideas of ¡°liberty, equality and fraternity¡± arise, develop and deepen is the process of special education advances.
When human society shook off ignorance and got to show sympathy and compassion for disabled people, and institutions were thus set up to provide board and lodging, and training and education; special schools were none other than the outcomes of that period. When non-disabled people's society got to realize that they should equally accept disabled people to return to the mainstream society, there came integration in the field of special education. And today's inclusive education has emerged from the human cognition that everybody is a principal member of the society only with interpersonal differences in needs, whatever their social status is; and everything possible must be done to meet everyone's special educational needs by ¡°putting people-first¡±. Inclusive education is an idea of education for all and an inexorable trend of the development of education including special education, indicating the current of the history.
1.4. The development of inclusive education must be based on the existing special schools
With a history of developing for more than one hundred years, special schools in China have accumulated a wealth of experiences in running these special schools. In recent years, alongside the Chinese government's increasing input into special education, special schools in China have gained big human, material and equipment resources. But with the mushroom growth of China's economy, more disabled children tend to be found in poverty-stricken and remote regions than in developed areas£¬and as a result, the local resources for developing inclusive education are obviously scarce.
Establishing special education resource centers or guidance centers at the provincial, prefecture and county levels on the basis of the local special schools, making best use of China's precious but not sufficient teachers resources, releasing the special school potentials from their confined campus, and regarding all the visually impaired children of the whole province as their own target students will broaden all the special school teachers¡¯ outlook and will gain experiences and sufficiently utilize all the resources, so that special education of special schools and inclusive education of regular schools can supplement each other and develop together.
1.5. Practice is the sole criterion for testing truth
As to the relationship between theory and practice, we should put practice first. Practice needs to be widely spread, summed up and improved. Only in this way can the content of practice rise to a higher level into theory. Such a summing up and improvement depend on human effort. Therefore, conclusions thus made may be either correct or wrong, and either complete or unilateral. Practice is the sole criterion for testing truth. If theory cannot be put into practice, or cannot be widely implemented on various occasions, it certainly lacks vitality. What we are seeking is to learn the worldwide advanced ideas and methods on special education and to explore a practical path for China's poverty-stricken areas to follow in the light of the local cultural, geographical, social and economic conditions. Our theory is summed up through practice and is improved through summing up, and again is put back into practice for verification, thus forming our Golden Key Pattern of spreading education for people with visual impairment.
2.1. Striving to achieve the 2015 Objective
To realize the target ¡°Education for All by the Year of 2015¡±proposed by the UN is epoch-making pioneering undertaking in human history and a milestone for protecting all the children¡¯s right to education. The difficulty of attaining the goal ¡°education for all¡± lies in education for disabled children, especially for those in poverty-stricken, remote areas, and ethnic minority areas. Of all the disabled children, visually impaired (VI) children suffer most, which makes it more difficult to popularize education for VI children. In response to the Chinese Government¡¯s call ¡°To Develop the Western Region¡± and ¡°To Vitalize the Northeast China¡±, the Golden Key Project aims to popularize education for the visually impaired in these two regions, which will be a part of efforts to the global realization of the 2015 objective.
2.2. Treasuring life, and cherishing every VI child
Special education in China has been greatly developing since China¡¯s reform and opening to the outside world. The coverage of Chinese visually impaired children in education rises year after year.
Yet China is a country with a huge population. Even if the coverage of VI children in education goes up to 90%£¬the rest 10% still means that thousands of VI children are unreached and thousands of unfortunate families are in despair, let alone the coverage of visually impaired children in the poverty-stricken areas in China.
Each VI child like all of us has only one life to live. If a VI child cannot timely be educated in childhood, he or she will certainly live in difficulties and hardships all his or her life.In the spirit of ¡°treasuring life and treasuring every blind child¡±, the Golden Key Project has been sparing no effort to make wide, quality and speedy popularization of education for the visually impaired children, as it is a lifesaving project.
2.3. Taking advantage of existing education setup and exploiting local educational potentials
In China, schools are now mainly funded by the government£¬with a complete education managing system established at all levels from the central government to townships. By virtue of this system£¬there is a government-funded regular elementary school in every township or village. Placing a visually impaired child in a nearby ordinary school with board and lodging at home proves to be of no encumbrance to his family but helps to keep good generational relations; similarly, an ordinary elementary school, by utilizing its available resources to accept VI children into the school, brings about almost no economic burden to the school. In view of the present fact that Chinese visually impaired children are less in number and are scattered, the local community can be expected to bear responsibility for and to be able to afford the minimum provision of learning aids and teaching aids for the school. This is a right approach for the development of education for the visually impaired, which is in conformity with both international trend and actual conditions of China. The challenge that the Golden Key Project is faced with is how to select teachers locally to help them continuously improve their education for the visually impaired to meet the special educational needs of each visually impaired child.
2.4. Carrying out all-round school education reform to cope with every VI child's special needs
Integrated education is still characterized by "integrating disabled children into regular classroom and requiring disabled children to try their best to adapt to everything around them", in spite of our requirements for the least restrictive environment for them. Inclusive education aims to meet every pupil's special educational needs in the light of their different situation. To achieve this goal, the Golden Key Project demands that mainstream schools should revamp their in-school education in teaching administration, educational environment, education plan£¬classroom instruction and extracurricular activities.
2.5. Carry out character education through to the end
It is the fundamental of education to pass on knowledge and enlighten people. When we began to design the Golden Key Project, we aimed to carry out character education for sighted teachers and students in every stage of the implementation of the project by grasp the chance of integrating visually impaired pupils into ordinary schools. In character education for the sighted students, two important links must be grasped: One is to trigger all the students' desire to do better by following the examples of the hardworking VI peers; the other is to build a love-filling school atmosphere with the love reciprocation of the VI students. In character education for the teachers, emphasis should be placed not only on that it is their social responsibility to teach VI students well, but on that it is a very good chance for the teachers to raise their professional level and to embody their value of human life. Their initiative of teaching VI student is thus brought into full play so as to promote the professional ethics of all the teachers of the school.
2.6. Inspiration from the design of foolproof camera
To a photographer, a precise professional camera is a must for pictures in artistic quality; whereas what ordinary people need is a point-and-shot camera for home use. To the teachers and educational administrators at the grass roots, we do not require them to become specialist in a short period; instead, we hope them to be equal to their educational and teaching work for VI students as early as possible.
Foolproof cameras are getting more and more ¡°foolish¡±. The reason is the great hi-tech input into the design of the product. Inspired by the design of the camera, we, when designing the Golden Key Project, early introduced the professional knowledge as much as possible to every link of the project and divided the whole process of education for VI students into several easy-to-understand and easy-to-operate modules under the guidance of the inclusive education spirit.
2.7. Establishing a support system to maintain sustainable development
There is a time limit to the implementation of the Golden Key Project, but the local VI children's demands for education can never be time limited. How can a solid foundation be laid for the sustainable development of the local education for the visually impaired during the project implementation: This is another challenge the Golden Key Project has to be faced with. It is essential to make an in-depth exploration on the afore mentioned matter at the beginning of the project implementation and to design a professional guidance network and an administrative control network, which supplement each other, forming a support system spanning provincial, prefecture, county and school levels. In the meanwhile, we must also be able to formulate a series of training plans for various teachers and administrators at all levels according to the teachers¡¯ professional level and our available financial resources in poverty-stricken areas.
2.8. Playing a good supporting role in society
With the development and improvement of our civil society, NGO is increasingly becoming the main force of the social programs for public good in China, just like the role of the non public ownership economy in China¡¯s economic development. While exploring an approach to development of special education in the Chinese context, we are seeking how to put Chinese NGOs in a proper place of the social programs for public good in China. The Chinese overnment represents the supreme interests of the people and is responsible for macroscopic decision and control; whereas we NGOs, devotedly specializing in a certain circle, have relatively strong operational capacity. We hold that the Golden Key Project objectives must conform to the government macroscopic objectives and that renewed and deepened efforts are needed to implement the project by earnest and sincere cooperating with the local government and by integrating administrative order with project control. Only by acting as a good supporting actor of the government from the standpoint of a master of the country to impulse and promote the project implementation, can we as an NGO ensure the project for the final satisfactory effect.
2.9. Overblown statistics must be strictly forbidden to ensure full transparency in financial affairs
The Golden Key Project bears the responsibility not only for all the benefited VI children, enabling each of them to receive special education for their special educational needs and to have abilities to serve the society by their own labor, so as to live equally and with human dignity in society; but also for the donators, because as an NGO we have nothing but loving care and all our work has to rely on their contributions. We are shouldering the great trust of untold donators, so we must realize their noble wish to aid the poor and the disabled for them.
Therefore, when designing the project, we must pay great attention to the project control and do our utmost to ensure reliable statistics and full transparency in financial affairs.
According to a working agreement signed by the Golden Key Center and the provincial department of education, a leading group must be established consisting of the representatives of such provincial organs as civil administration, department of public health, Federation of Disabled Persons, and Women's Federation, headed by the provincial department of education and the Golden Key Center. The provincial department of education is in charge of the leadership and implementation of the project£¬while the Golden Key Centre is responsible for overall planning, professional guidance and fund raising of the project, jointly striving for the achievement of the following objectives of the project:
3.1. To conduct an overall screening for blind or low vision children between the ages of 0 and 15, with the precision rate of screening VI children aged between 7 and 15 amounting to over 95%;
3.2. To arrange VI children between the age of 7 and 15 into a nearby mainstream school with the coverage amounting to over 95%;
3.3. To choose a classroom teacher for VI children and continuously to raise the teacher's professional standards by training and orientation evaluation to meet every VI child's special needs;
3.4. To establish professional guidance networks and administrative control networks at all levels, forming a support system of education for the visually impaired to ensure teaching quality and future sustainable development and to train teachers and administrators at all levels;
3.5. To give wide publicity to human rights and humanitarianism, gradually spreading from regular schools through communities to the whole society, so as to make a social basis for the development of education for the visually impaired.
The spirit of human right and humanitarianism and to change people¡¯s traditional concept of neglecting blind persons¡¯ right to education into the concept of education for all, thus making a solid social basis for the development of education for the visually impaired.
4.1. Screening
4.1.1. The principle of combining general mobilization with administration of student records:
Student records have been set up by the education authorities at county levels and an annual physical check-up for all the students has become a must at each school, which contribute advantages of finding out the enrolled VI children from mainstream schools so as to provide individual special education for them. In the student records there is an uncared-for corner where some children are labeled as ¡°unable to receive education¡± or ¡°temporarily postponed admission to school¡± as well as those not included in the statistics for various reasons, among whom blind children tend to be concealed in this regard. It is therefore necessary to mobilize local people, especially village teachers and pupils, to provide clues about VI children. And so long as the village teachers and pupils are well informed of VI children¡¯s appearance, posture and behavior features, they are able to supply many valuable clues, because the teachers know quite well about local situation and pupils are so lively that they can go almost everywhere in the locality.
4.1.2. The principle of integrating village screening with eye doctor¡¯s diagnosis:
With a great number of clues about VI children, we designed the ¡°Simple Card for Screening¡± based on the data provided by WHO to carry out screening by relying on township education administrators and central school teachers, with the accuracy rate of more than 90% The screened-out visually impaired children were then examined and diagnosed by a county hospital oculist whereby an ophthalmologic file on each child was established.
4.1.3.The principle of giving equal emphasis on classification of visual impairment and classification of education.
The Chinese criterion of classification of visual impairment is based on instant far vision under a bright light, regardless of whether one can read with much effort or not. This criterion is the legal basis for safeguarding the rights and interests of visually impaired people. Yet we are not sure that children identified as low vision children based on instant far vision criterion can learn prints and be suitable for education for low vision people; similarly, it is not necessarily a must for some blind children to learn Braille if with the help of optical aids. Therefore, in doing classification of education, we must take into account of such factors as a VI child's far vision, near vision and field of vision; his adaptation to light and cause of disease, case history and whether the child's present condition is steady, in order to finally decide what education should be offered to the child, education for the blind or education for low vision people.
4.2. Training of teachers:
4.2.1. The principle of integrating VI children into a nearby regular school and selecting teachers locally:
In view of brain drain in poverty-stricken areas, it is wiser to select teachers from the local school where VI children are integrated than to send teachers with special education knowledge from other places to work for a locality. And this is the only way to conform to the reality of the locality.
4.2.2. The principle of training teachers for the blind and those for low vision respectively and progressively:
We train a teacher of a local school to be the classroom teacher in charge of teaching of a VI child at that school. We have three forms of training for classroom teachers, namely pre-job training, mid-stage training and training in systematic theory.
In each county£¬we also have a supervisor in charge of professional guidance for all the classroom teachers of the county.
In every prefecture, we have set up a guidance centre, and several prefectures share a resource centre, with each center having teachers in charge of pre-job training, follow-up training and training in systematic theory.
4.2.3. The principle of paying equal attention to teachers and education administrators:
Satisfactory teaching effects depend on qualified teachers and scientific management. For this reason, we hold professional training courses not only for classroom teachers and supervisors, but also for the administrators at the county and prefecture levels.
4.3. Teaching:
4.3.1. The principle of caring for both sighted children and VI children:
Teachers must make an integrated teaching plan about all the subjects, pay attention to both sighted and VI children, make full and reasonable use of each class hour and encourage sighted children and VI students to learn from and help each other forward by compensating for each other¡¯s deficiencies so as to ensure teaching quality.
4.3.2. The principle of setting great store by individual differences among visually impaired students for all-round development:
In view of the individual differences in visually impaired students, we set some challenging objectives and practical measures, made an individual education plan (IEP) for each of the students and organized teachers and students, parents to participate in the implementation of the plan by solving key problems selected each term concerning mental rehabilitation, social adaptability, learning ability and daily life skills.
4.3.3. The principle of defect compensation and potential exploitation:
Visually impaired children do have their particular advantages over sighted children due to the compensation of other sense organs, although they have visual defect. In the process of teaching, therefore, full attention should be paid not only to compensating for their visual defects, but also to their potentials in study.
4.3.4. The principle of social adaptation and equal participation:
Sighted students are strongly required to respect the equal rights of visually impaired children and visually impaired students are greatly required to do their equal duties; and teachers are required not to give too much care and praise to VI children, so that VI children can learn to be in healthy mental attitude towards the society.
4.3.5. The principle of creating a friendly atmosphere:
The whole class are taught to love and help the blind child. This first becomes a rule of the class and then an atmosphere spread throughout the school.The blind child is so moved by his peers that he will certainly study much harder to repay them. The painstaking efforts of the blind child will encourage all the teachers as well as the students, becoming the propeller of the school's character education (quality-oriented education).
4.4. Evaluation
4.4.1. The stage-oriented evaluation principle:
In the spirit of inclusive education£¬we formulate following nine first-level criteria for evaluating of the demands on integrating visually impaired pupils into mainstream schools: They are file management, classroom teachers, educational environment, mental rehabilitation, social adaptation, learning ability, life skills, parents participation and teaching support.
Evaluation is carried out at three stages, respectively two months, one year and two years after integration. All people concerned, including classroom teachers, schoolmasters, parents and education administrators are required to start from "coming to know", to "getting familiar with", and then to "having a basic command of" the ABC of education for the visually impaired.
By explaining in detail the demands of the evaluation to the trainees during the training of teachers, we make them fully aware of the criteria for evaluation of each stage as the corresponding aim of such links in teaching as teaching, teaching research, guidance, management, evaluation and summing up.
4.4.2. The principle of uniform evaluation:
We use one evaluation tool for assessing all people concerned, including VI students, classmates, classroom teacher, schoolmaster, parents and itinerant teacher.
After evaluation£¬every participant must write a work summary and make suggestions on education and teaching reform, thus greatly reducing workload of local teachers and administrators.
4.4.3. The principle of early input of knowledge about teaching:
We subdivide the above-mentioned 9 first-level evaluation criteria into 20 second-level criteria with operable specific requirements in simple language in the form of a handbook containing detailed descriptions, various reference and evaluation tools. Early inputting a lot of knowledge about teaching enables village teachers to have a quick command of all the teaching points. The same principle can also be applied to screening, training and compiling of teaching materials and teaching reference, all achieving satisfactory results.
4.5. Planning
4.5.1. The principle of arousing social awareness and concern for inclusive education:
A leading group in charge of the Golden Key Project is set up at the province, prefecture, county and township levels respectively, under the auspices of the local education authorities, with the participation of the local department of public health, department of civil administration, Federation of Disabled Persons and Women's Federation, to jointly impulse the project implementation.
In the villages where the VI children are found, we give wide publicity to humanitarianism and inclusive education in order to mobilize the community public to participate the project implementation.
4.5.2. The principle of spreading the experience gained at a selected school to an entire area for rolling development:
By dividing a province into several major areas, we first of all establish a resource centre in one area in the first year as the core of development, and at the same time, select a city as a pilot for accumulating typical experience. >In the second year, we popularize education for the visually impaired children in the first area, and meanwhile, establish a resource centre and a pilot in the second area gradually for rolling development until the spread of education for VI children throughout the province.
4.5.3. The principle of providing professional guidance at various levels and forming a management network at prefecture and county levels:
By taking a prefecture resource centre as the core, we set up a guidance centre in each prefecture and train a supervisor in each county and a classroom teacher at each school. Besides, in each prefecture and county, we have educational administrators who have received professional training. In this way, a province-wide network of professional guidance and administrative management is completed, which serves as a connecting link between the higher level and the lower level.
4.6. Management
4.6.1. The principle of giving prominence to the key points for serialized management:
We start with record management. With VI children records and ophthalmologic file as the core, three other series of records are established, including teacher records, teaching records and evaluation records, to regulate education administration and teaching management.
4.6.2. The principle of being practical and easy to operate:
Whenever making a demand and formulating a form, we always do our best to make them well understandable and practicable, in the light of the reality of the local teachers and administrators.
4.6.3. The principle of being very patient with participants:
Because of the low work efficiency at the grass roots, instructions about every assignment must be given in great detail and orders repeatedly clear-cut. All the details of the key links of the project implementation must be in written language. In the process of the project implementation, very careful examination, check up and guidance are needed to avoid misunderstanding, omission or forgetfulness.
4.6.4. The principle of combining administrative order with project management:
In order to ensure high-speed development of education for the visually impaired, we must cooperate with the local government. In China most schools are established and maintained by the government. The orders from the provincial government can be conveyed through the prefecture and county bureaus of education to village elementary schools, carrying a good deal of authority.Under the support of the government's orders, we, as an NGO, can provide village schools with professional guidance, set clear demands at each implementation stage and assist the government with the project control and financial management.
4.6.5. The principle of appealing to reason as well as human compassion:
In China in a county with a population of 100,000, there are about 15,000 sighted children aged between 7 and 15 and 10 VI children between the ages of 7 and 15, showing a great disparity in proportion. The county bureau of education, therefore, no matter what heavy work they are shouldering, is required to care not only for education for normal children, but also for filling a gap in education for VI children, instead of only relying on administrative orders. Only when government officials are promoted into action by seeing NGO staff's spirit of selfless devotion to education for VI children and conscientious approach towards their work, and by knowing what a hard and miserable life VI children have who are unable to attend school, can a situation of sincere cooperation between NGO and government take shape.
