Why Special Education Is Important

What labor and pains are not bestowed to clothe, feed and shelter the body; to shield it from blight and disease; to rear it up into a healthy and well-proportioned frame of vigorous humanity. Now suppose it was possible, that it was even quite easy, without that supply of accustomed food, which is necessary for health, strength, and comeliness. Now you can get an answer to the question why special education is important. Suppose there was such a thing as a community of men, capable of subsisting and continuing their race, but who, from poverty, indolence, or the act of God, for want of means, or knowledge to use them; should pass through life, should be alive and no more.

Introduction

Suppose this community of men should have eyes but see not, have ears but hear not, their senses all torpid, their limbs feeble, nerveless, incapable of muscular movement, all but lifeless and yet alive. What should we think of such bodies, of such existence, of such beings? What should we think of such fatuity and madness if they knowingly and designedly reduced themselves, and kept themselves in such a state? What none but a madman would knowingly do to his body. This proves the importance of special education. What no known community of men, raised above the abjectest level of savage life and placed on a soil and in a climate that yields a competent supply of wholesome food, who know that they have not only minds but souls to save. I say that the monstrous and unnatural cruelty, never practiced to himself or another, as far as the body is concerned, unless by an idiot or a savage.

Scope and Limitations of the Study

This study has to observe some research parameters, thus, its scope and limitation is detailed below serving as guide of the researcher.

Subject Matter. This study focused on determining the lived experiences encountered by non-SPED major teachers teaching special education, especially, those teachers handling learners with difficulty in remembering and concentrating.

Research Environment and Timeline.This study was conducted in the province of Zamboanga Sibugay focusing on the non-SPED major teachers teaching learners with difficulty in remembering and concentrating in SPED centers that offer special education.

Research Participants. This study covered non-SPED major teachers in Zamboanga Sibugay province and who are catering the special educational needs, particularly, of learners with difficulty in remembering and concentrating.

Research Design. This study employed qualitative research design, specifically, phenomenology, to gather important data on the lived experienced by non-SPED major teachers handling learners with mental disability.

The body is not starved, except in cases of cruel necessity. It is nourished and pampered, by whatever can provoke or satisfy the appetite as the healthy child is nursed and nourished up into the healthy man. Then why should the inward intellectual being be allowed to remain unnourished, neglected and stinted? Could we perceive it with our bodily sight if there is a body of a man, sound, athletic, well-proportioned but the mind within is puny, dwarfed and starved? We should pity it.

The mind does not grow by food, nor languish for the want of it. The province of education does that for the intellect which is done for the body when it receives the care and nourishment which are necessary for its growth, health, and strength. It is upon the whole, education, in the most comprehensive sense, which in the lapse of time, makes the vast difference, which actually, in the case of a civilized person, transforms his intellect, from what it is at birth, into what it becomes in the mature, consummate man.

Conclusion

Education is the means by which the mind of man, or rather let me say, by which man himself, considered as an intellectual and moral existence, attains his formation and growth. Education leads us to improvement and nourishes the spirit of observation, if well directed. It is the nature and efficacy of Education, as the great human instrument of improving the condition of man.