Common human needs : career education and vocational guidance with students who have disabilities

Abstract

'These kids have a lot of fear about the future. They typically don't receive much encouragement and have difficulty envisioning or making plans for their future. Frequently, students will askfor the answers to their more worrisome questions, such as, where am I going to live, who am I going to marry, what kind ofjob am I going to have? They really want to be guided as to what to do with their life. ' (A guidance teacher) Would you imagine that this guidance teacher is talking about a 'normal student'? Would you rather think of this teacher as describing her experience of working with students who have a physical or sensorial disability? Or would you say that the students involved are those with intellectual disabilities? The simple answer is: 'It really doesn't matter'. For no one can choose to grow, or not to grow, from being a child to becoming an adult. It is a process which simply happens, whether or not one sees, hears, walks, looks, thinks, or functions as 'the norm' would have it. While there are common human needs that are not given up by virtue of having a disability, on the other hand, there are some very special needs that result from one's disability. If career and educational guidance can benefit the' normal' student, it must be of fundamental importance to,any educational programme that includes special educational needs provisions. The greater the degree of special educational needs, the greater the need for career and educational guidance. At the extreme end of the continuum of special educational needs provisions, Special Schools were developed on a functional curriculum model: essentially a career education and vocational guidance programme. But why is it that so many students with disabilities are still unseen, unguided and 'uncareered'? Why is it that career guidance for Paul (see True Life Story 1) was considered to be unnecessary? Where does career education and guidance stand in relation to the developments undergone by Maltese society in the disability sector?