Little Robin is clearly enjoying his class. The eleven-tear old suffers from Down syndrome, the specific gene mutation that significantly slows down and restricts development of body and brain. On a normal circumstance, Robin will be attending school for mentally handicapped children or special school.
In Hamburg College, he seated next to Paul who is of the same aged but is not disabled. In Germany, just over 10% of all special needs students take part in an integrated education of programs. This is in contrast to Portugal where the figure is 70% and Norway is 100% record.
“Paul helps me with my study and I am enjoying it. You know, basically I am true with both of us studying together does not really slow me down.”
“Paul and me are Germans too.”
Accordingly, one of the guiding principles of this college is “koud” because it is perfectly normal to be different. In other words, comes from the root word differences and individual development levels of knowledge and respective interest will always exist. This also applies to non-disabled children as reflected by the way age groups are divided up.
Instead of the grade 1 to 10 system, the private Hamburg College is split into four study groups not tied to age. Robin for example attend study group 2 made up of 24 girls and boys who comprise age group four to six.
“Students know about their differences in position and age and as a result, well aware of the individual prerequisites and other made educational targets. This undoubtedly helped us as pupil study together across age group and pass on a position to assist one another. That is, kids ascend on the path transforming them from being needy and dependent to being helping hand with something which is immensely important for their educational growth.”
This is done in respective whether the older people are disabled or not. At the same time, this kind of age ignoring system provides teacher the opportunity to effectively focus on individual students. Ten-year old, who let us say particularly good in mathematics are fast and able to learn things which they would not even hear in conventional schools unto two years later. Generally speaking, individual lessons alternate with traditional small group as well as the whole study group.
“Not every child responds to the same tasks. We would rather establish first where the child is head on and how he/she would proceed on the event that we separate tasks. Also the learning speed varies greatly, I mean, some kids are slow at learning, others achieve more quickly. We tried to take this into consideration.”
By way of learning that, we will see robin leaves school after 10 years. Many of his non-handicapped fellow students will go on and obtain their college’s baccalaureate up in additional three years. No doubt Hamburg College considers it as perfectly normal to be different and still be able to form a collective.
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