A Teacher’s Lot is Certainly a Different One

Say «teacher» and a clear image forms in people’s minds. People usually think that teachers, if female, are intense, persistent creatures, and if male, are a little strange. Teachers themselves have a particularly self-conscious view of their role. They tend to feel isolated and to grow away from friends who work a standard office day. The teacher’s job imposes exceptional stresses and conflicts, and this have the power to isolate teachers from everybody else, to alter their outlook and even their characters.

Young teachers who have had college lectures on «discipline in the classroom situation» or «the deprived child» are not properly warned of the emotional impact children make on them. They sit and brood about the children’s needs and always feel that they could be doing more. Of course that’s true, but the best teachers are the ones who can switch off, by doing whatever work is necessary. If a teacher falls ill he can’t afford to stay in bed till he gets well. Extremes of behavior are more common in the classroom than people would believe. Many teachers discover in themselves depths of bad temper, even rage, they never knew they had.

But the rewards of the job are so special that teachers learn to maintain high expectations, to apply them generally. The experience, they have at school, have a great influence on their attitudes to job and people. Most of the generalizations about them are rooted somewhere in truth – teachers are different – but few people bother to find out why.

Active vocabulary

female

creatures

particularly

self-conscious

exceptional

characters,

properly

behavior

depths

expectations

experience

influence

attitudes

generalizations

imposes

deprived

Answer the questions

1. What is the teachers’ a particularly self-conscious view of their role?

2. Why do they tend to feel isolated and to grow away from friends who work a standard office day?

Defectology

Defectology is a branch of science that is concerned with the study of the principles and characteristics of the development of children with physical and mental defects and the problems of their training and upbringing.

There are a number of special pedagogical sciences in defectology, including surdopedagogy (for bringing up and training children with hearing defects), typhlopedagogy (for children with visual defects); oligophrenopedagogy (for mentally retarded children); and logopedics (for children with speech defects). Defectology also includes problems of training and bringing up children with compound defects (blindness with deafmutism, blindness or deafmutism with intellectual impairments, etc.). Defectology includes in addition a special branch of psychology that deals with the psychological study of the development of children with the abovementioned defects, as well as surdotechnology and typhlotechnology, which are involved in the development of the technical means of training, correcting, and compensating for the defect. In defectology there is a continual differentiation and development of new fields (for example, the study of children with temporary arrests in mental development and of children with motor impairments); included in defectology are problems connected with the general education and vocational training of adults with defects, such as vision or hearing impairments.

As an integrated branch of knowledge, defectology takes shape as a result of the development and convergence of its various fields and the establishment of general principles for the development, training, and upbringing of children with different types of defects. Of great significance in elucidating these principles is the adoption of a complex, multilateral approach to the study of anomalous children, with the participation of educators, physicians, physiologists, psychologists, and other specialists.

The clinicophysiological and psychological study of anomalous children is the scientific basis of the special pedagogical sciences that are included in defectology. The data compiled from this research provide the basis for answering questions concerning time length, systems, and methods in the training and upbringing of children with some type of developmental disturbance; the data also assist in the resolving of problems concerning ways and means of correcting and compensating for developmental defects through a system of special training and education, including preparation for socially useful labor.

Defectology is closely allied with a number of related sciences, including neuropathology, pathophysiology, general and medical genetics, pathopsychology, educational and child psychology, general pedagogy, and linguistics. It in turn provides unique material for these sciences and for the theory of knowledge.

Soviet defectology was formed in the struggle against idealist concepts in the principles of the development of the anomalous child; these concepts had given birth to a theory about the severe limitation of possibilities of development in anomalous children, reducing the principal task of defectology to the adaptation of anomalous children to elementary physical labor. Favorable to the development of Soviet defectology were the legislative acts of the Soviet government, whereby the training and education of anomalous children were included in the national system of public education; later, general compulsory education of these children was instituted, and special scientific research institutions and educational institutions for training defectology specialists were created as well. Problems of defectology are being worked out scientifically in the USSR at the Scientific Research Institute of Defectology of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR (Moscow), at institutes of pedagogy and psychology in the Ukrainian SSR (Kiev), and in certain other scientific institutions, as well as in subdepartments of departments of defectology at pedagogical institutes. Considerable scientific methodological work is being conducted by teachers of special schools. Collections that have been published include Training and Educational Work in Special Schools (1940-57) and The Special School (1958-68). The journal Defectology has been published since 1969.

Abroad (aside from socialist countries), instead of the concept of “defectology,” the more limited concept of “special education” is applied, which narrows the field of defectology as a science and which has to a considerable degree a pragmatic tendency. Also common in the Federal Republic of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland is the narrower concept of “therapeutic education” (Heilpddagogik).

GLOSSARY

neuropathology is the study of disease of nervous system tissue, usually in the form of either small surgical biopsies or whole autopsy brains. Neuropathology is a subspecialty of anatomic pathology, neurology, and neurosurgery. It should not be confused with neuropathy, which refers to disorders of the nerves.

pathophysiology or physiopathology is a convergence of pathology with physiology. Pathology is the medical discipline that describes conditions typically observed during a disease state, whereas physiology is the biological discipline that describes processes or mechanisms operating within an organism. Pathology describes the abnormal or undesired condition, whereas pathophysiology seeks to explain the physiological processes or mechanisms whereby such condition develops and progresses.

Pathophysiology can also mean the functional changes associated with or resulting from disease or injury. Another definition is the functional changes that accompany a particular disease

anomalous children – a birth defect is a health problem or a physical abnormality that a baby has at birth. It can be very mild or severe. Some birth defects are life-threatening, in which case a baby may only live for a few months. Birth defects are also referred to as "congenital anomalies" or "congenital abnormalities."

Answer the questions

1. What is defectology ?

2. What problems does it include?

3.What kinds of specialpedagogical sciences are there in defectology

4. What related sciences is itallied with?