OPINION> Commentary
Salute such teachers
(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-09-10 07:39

It is said the best teacher teaches from the heart, and not from the book. A teacher must have a special heart to teach the blind, the deaf and mute and the mentally disabled children.

This heart needs to be as tender as a parent's to take care of the special needs of his or her special students. It must have the tenacity to help his or her students overcome their physical defects. It must help them build confidence in life and find a path for their future.

With the country's 23rd Teachers' Day today coming in the middle of the Paralympics, our tributes should first go to such teachers.

A teacher, who teaches physically or mentally disabled children, makes his or her students progressively realize that their disability should never prevent them from enjoying a life of their own.

There are 1,667 special schools for the deaf and mute and the mentally disabled students, according to statistics from the 2007 National Report on Education for the Disabled. And the total number of such students in these schools reached 580,000 by the end of 2007, accounting for more than 80 percent of such children of school age.

Back in 1989, only less than 6 percent of deaf and mute and mentally retarded children received education. The progress China has made in this regard in the past two decades is tremendous.

Of course, such progress would have been impossible without thousands of teachers who have committed themselves to the cause of helping the disabled help themselves.

Compared with their ordinary counterparts, these special teachers need to make much more efforts in classrooms. A teacher said that she had to use both sign language and facial expression while trying to express what she was saying to her mute and deaf students. Sometimes, she had to demonstrate in the style of a performance to let her students understand what she was talking about.

Those who teach mentally retarded students have to play the role of a nanny when their students cannot manage their own lives. A teacher recalled how she had to comfort her students who could not control themselves and disturbed her class.

Their special job tests not only their wisdom but also their patience and their willingness to extend care and love to the needy. Their contribution deserves our warmest respect.

(China Daily 09/10/2008 page8)