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Title: | Too late for too many : special education in Malta |
Authors: | Vassallo, Mario Farrugia Sant'Angelo, Victoria Sciriha, Lydia |
Keywords: | Education -- Malta Special education -- Malta Children with disabilities -- Malta Interpersonal communication in children |
Issue Date: | 1994 |
Publisher: | Media Centre |
Citation: | Vassallo, M., Farrugia Sant'Angelo, V., & Sciriha, L. (1994). Too late for too many : special education in Malta. Malta: Media Centre. |
Abstract: | The discussion in this book is highly political. Not political in the traditional Maltese party-political sense. But political in the sense that it seeks to focus on the hidden processes in society that are at play in the provision of services that are recognised to be the right of children who, for different reasons, have not been born, or have not grown to be, equal. In the realm of politics and policy in Malta, the terms 'welfare', 'special provision', 'care' and 'special needs' are used very frequently. Recently too there has been a conscious attempt to indigenise these terms through the resurrection of previously rarely used words like 'wens' and 'sedqa'. Throughout the years various governments have claimed that they had given substantial contributions to the development of new services, and, indeed, new structures were created. For a long time, however, it never dawned upon the state to involve itself in this area, and it. was primarily the Church, through its so-called 'charitable institutions', who had deigned to demonstrate its call for diakonia by actively setting up institutions for the care of less privileged persons. More recently, the flair for showmanship and media exposure has perhaps been too loudly optimised in Malta, as if to proclaim that the first ever private initiative in favour of the underprivileged has finally been taken. This monograph focuses on the facts. It seeks to clear the mists that successive generations of doers and claimers have generated in the area of educational provision for children with special needs. The facts have been very assiduously collected and analysed over the five year period during which the University of Malta supported the first of the envisaged two stages of the Action-Research Project which aimed to provide a thorough understanding of the needs and requirements of children with special needs, hitherto equally divided between special schools and mainstream ones. The withdrawal of the University's support took place despite very specific assurances to the contrary given to the University's Senate by its Chairman. Minute 72 (b) and (c) of the Senate meeting of 27 January 1993 specifically state: '(b) that the Establishment of the Institute [Institute for Child Development] will not affect or hamper any handicapped-related research that is being carried out by other University Departments or Institutes in this field; '(c) that the 1987 Action Research Project will continue to! Junction in its present form and not become part of the new Institute'. In reality, the exact opposite took place at the end of 1993. The commitment made to Senate was ignored by the University, and the Action-Research project was administratively stopped. This effectively meant that the emotionally disturbed children at the Mater Dei School in Msida and at the Sannat ESN Unit in Gozo could not be assessed. Neither could the team embark on the assessment of what is happening to children in mainstream schools. This restricts the present analysis to what is going on in six of Malta's special schools, with emphasis on social and health care provisions. It is unfortunate that the psychological data could not be fully incorporated in this study. This is primarily due to the University's decision to withdraw the ongoing support of a psychologist, who had been specifically recruited to work on this project, when only two of the six schools were completed. It is hoped that the discussion that this work will give rise to shall indeed be political in the best of senses: on how power will truly be used to provide the best services to those with the greater needs. That is the mark of genuine democracy; the rest is largely political mist. |
URI: | https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/97533 |
ISBN: | 990996563 |
Appears in Collections: | Scholarly Works - FacArtEng |
Files in This Item:
File | Description | Size | Format | |
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Too_late_for_too_many-a_study_of_special_education_in_Malta_1994.PDF Restricted Access | 30.18 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open Request a copy |
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