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On September 14, a 9-year-old autistic child in Shenzhen, south China’s Guangdong Province, died after leaping off the fifth-floor balcony of his home, not long after he was suspended from school for biting other students. He was still wearing his school uniform and carrying a schoolbag at the time.
On the afternoon of his suspension, his mother took the boy home upon the school’s requirement, where she locked him inside and left.
The mother believed that her son wanted to go back to school, but when he could not open the door, he instead opened the window and jumped down from the balcony.
The tragic death of the boy called public attention to the difficulties autistic children face in finding acceptance in regular schools.
Autism is a neural disorder characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, and restrictive and repetitive behavior.
Inferred from international data on the disease’s prevalence of one in 166 children, China now has about 1.64 million autistic children, said a report released by the China Philanthropy Research Institute in April. Currently, autism is classified as a mental disorder in the country.
Rejection
Several days before the death of the 9-yearold autistic child in Shenzhen, a 15-year-old autistic boy living in the same city was also dismissed from school.
The boy, known as Longlong, was accepted into grade five of Baocheng Primary School in Baoan District as a temporary student this spring.
Lin Xiyu, principal of the school, said that the school accepted Longlong on a probationary basis even though he wasn’t the usual age for fifth graders in China, which is typically 11 years old.
The boy’s mother, a nurse, said that in the beginning, the school was friendly. She recalled that the boy’s head teacher Cai Shulian held a class meeting, calling on students to help Longlong.
Longlong’s mother accompanied him to class for some days, and then after she returned to work, the boy went to class alone.
Cai said that Longlong behaved well when his mother was present, but after his mother left, he began to act strangely. For instance, he waved his fists, rubbed saliva on classmates’ textbooks and desks, and screamed in class. “His behavior was disruptive and frightening to students in the class,”Cai said.
Right before the start of this fall semester, Longlong’s mother received a message from his teacher on his removal from the school.
Nonetheless, Longlong’s mother continued to hope that the school would accept the boy, so she continued to send the boy to school in the first few days of the new semester. On September 4, Longlong went to class and found that his desk had been removed. That evening, his mother received another message from the teacher saying that the school could not accept him into the class.
Cai said that although she was sympathetic to Longlong, she faced pressure from other parents and her own inexperience in special education.
The school received a letter signed by parents of 19 students out of a total of 46, opposing Longlong’s presence in the class, according to Cai.
In the letter, parents expressed their concern about the Longlong’s disciplinary and hygiene problems. “Autism is a disorder,” the letter said. “There are special schools for such children. Why should a child like this be put in this school?”
Longlong grew up in a single-parent family, and was diagnosed with autism at age 4.
In September 2006, when Longlong was 9 years old and in the third grade, he was asked to drop out of a regular school for posing safety hazards. One year later, Yuanping Special Education School in Shenzhen admitted him, where he stayed for four years.
Longlong’s mother said that the therapeutic class in the special education school taught students no more than counting simple numbers and reading English letters. She thought that Longlong could learn much more, so she hired a private tutor for the boy, and Longlong completed courses in grade four.
Longlong had a relatively high IQ and learning ability among students in the school, according to Zhong Guojian, the boy’s teacher. “Despite his relatively low self control, Longlong showed no aggressive behaviors in the four years he spent in the special school,” Zhong said.
Attending a regular school could help the boy associate with other children and integrate into the society, Zhong said.
In May, Longlong’s mother transferred him to Baocheng School, which is the regular school that is closest to their home. Yet she did not expect that the boy would be forced to leave again months later.
Solution
Like Longlong’s mother, many parents with autistic children would like their kids to be educated in regular schools.
According to a study sponsored by One Foundation, which has funded more than 114 therapy centers primarily serving autistic children in China since 2011, 49.19 percent of such parents hoped their children could attend regular schools, yet only 10.43 percent of school-age autistic children had been accepted into one.
In 1994, the Ministry of Education issued a regulation, stating that disabled children, including children with minor mental disabilities, can be accepted into regular schools. It also stipulated that children with moderate mental disabilities can be accepted into regular schools that are capable of educating such children.
Nonetheless, the regulation said that children should be evaluated by competent agencies before being accepted into regular schools, except for in rural areas where such evaluation is unavailable. Additionally, no more than three disabled children can be placed in a class.
According to the regulation, local education authorities should provide preemployment and on-the-job special education training to teachers, and normal universities should offer special education courses. If a class has disabled children, the teachers of the class should be evaluated on both their performance in regular education and special education, and their additional efforts should be rewarded.
Although the Ministry of Education requires autistic children to be appraised before being placed into regular schools, in many cases, they are not.
Before entering Baocheng School, Longlong did not undergo required evaluation either. Cheng Xuecai, an official with the Baoan District Education Bureau, said that the boy should have been evaluated before enrolling in a regular school.
However, when Longlong’s mother took him to a designated evaluation agency, the Forensic Psychiatry Appraisal Institute under the Kangning Hospital in Shenzhen, the institute rejected her request.
The institute’s director, Li Xuewu, said that they had never before received a request to evaluate an autistic child for school attendance, and the institute was not certified to conduct such an evaluation.
He said that if the school insists on such a screening, the institute can produce its opinion upon receiving a written application endorsed by a school and education authorities.
Actually, most parents with autistic children allegedly conceal the illness for fear that their children would be denied admission once the schools learn of their conditions.
When school management suspects a child to be autistic, and contacts his or her parents about it, parents may dodge the issue, arguing that their child is normal and does not need an autism evaluation, said Dai Yaohong, council member of the Shanghai Middle School Ethics Education Association.
“But above all, some schools and parents reject autistic children for fear that they will disrupt class order and affect other students’grades, said Xu Guangxing, a professor at the Psychology Department of Shanghai-based East China Normal University.
Parents sometimes object to autistic children out of safety concerns. On September 27, a group of parents protested outside of Shiji Primary School in Beijing’s Chaoyang District, demanding the school to expel an autistic student from their children’s class.
These parents told Beijing Times that the student in question, nicknamed Li Ming, hit classmates and teachers with chairs, pushed classmates around, and cried loudly in class. Li’s classmates collectively boycotted class and were waiting for the school’s decision.
Li’s father insisted that his son be allowed to stay, saying that doctors said his son is probably high-functioning autistic, and could improve by staying in groups.
In regards to current problems in integrated education such as shortage of special education teachers in regular schools, and the conflict between parents with and without autistic children, Gao Yurong, Executive Deputy Director of the Children Welfare Research Center under the China Philanthropy Research Institute, suggested that schools should permit autistic children’s caretakers to sit in class, so that when an autistic child loses control, the caretaker can take the child away from class.
Gao also called on the government to give financial incentives to regular schools accepting autistic children. He said that schools can use government subsidies to hire special education teachers and reward those who excel.
On the afternoon of his suspension, his mother took the boy home upon the school’s requirement, where she locked him inside and left.
The mother believed that her son wanted to go back to school, but when he could not open the door, he instead opened the window and jumped down from the balcony.
The tragic death of the boy called public attention to the difficulties autistic children face in finding acceptance in regular schools.
Autism is a neural disorder characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, and restrictive and repetitive behavior.
Inferred from international data on the disease’s prevalence of one in 166 children, China now has about 1.64 million autistic children, said a report released by the China Philanthropy Research Institute in April. Currently, autism is classified as a mental disorder in the country.
Rejection
Several days before the death of the 9-yearold autistic child in Shenzhen, a 15-year-old autistic boy living in the same city was also dismissed from school.
The boy, known as Longlong, was accepted into grade five of Baocheng Primary School in Baoan District as a temporary student this spring.
Lin Xiyu, principal of the school, said that the school accepted Longlong on a probationary basis even though he wasn’t the usual age for fifth graders in China, which is typically 11 years old.
The boy’s mother, a nurse, said that in the beginning, the school was friendly. She recalled that the boy’s head teacher Cai Shulian held a class meeting, calling on students to help Longlong.
Longlong’s mother accompanied him to class for some days, and then after she returned to work, the boy went to class alone.
Cai said that Longlong behaved well when his mother was present, but after his mother left, he began to act strangely. For instance, he waved his fists, rubbed saliva on classmates’ textbooks and desks, and screamed in class. “His behavior was disruptive and frightening to students in the class,”Cai said.
Right before the start of this fall semester, Longlong’s mother received a message from his teacher on his removal from the school.
Nonetheless, Longlong’s mother continued to hope that the school would accept the boy, so she continued to send the boy to school in the first few days of the new semester. On September 4, Longlong went to class and found that his desk had been removed. That evening, his mother received another message from the teacher saying that the school could not accept him into the class.
Cai said that although she was sympathetic to Longlong, she faced pressure from other parents and her own inexperience in special education.
The school received a letter signed by parents of 19 students out of a total of 46, opposing Longlong’s presence in the class, according to Cai.
In the letter, parents expressed their concern about the Longlong’s disciplinary and hygiene problems. “Autism is a disorder,” the letter said. “There are special schools for such children. Why should a child like this be put in this school?”
Longlong grew up in a single-parent family, and was diagnosed with autism at age 4.
In September 2006, when Longlong was 9 years old and in the third grade, he was asked to drop out of a regular school for posing safety hazards. One year later, Yuanping Special Education School in Shenzhen admitted him, where he stayed for four years.
Longlong’s mother said that the therapeutic class in the special education school taught students no more than counting simple numbers and reading English letters. She thought that Longlong could learn much more, so she hired a private tutor for the boy, and Longlong completed courses in grade four.
Longlong had a relatively high IQ and learning ability among students in the school, according to Zhong Guojian, the boy’s teacher. “Despite his relatively low self control, Longlong showed no aggressive behaviors in the four years he spent in the special school,” Zhong said.
Attending a regular school could help the boy associate with other children and integrate into the society, Zhong said.
In May, Longlong’s mother transferred him to Baocheng School, which is the regular school that is closest to their home. Yet she did not expect that the boy would be forced to leave again months later.
Solution
Like Longlong’s mother, many parents with autistic children would like their kids to be educated in regular schools.
According to a study sponsored by One Foundation, which has funded more than 114 therapy centers primarily serving autistic children in China since 2011, 49.19 percent of such parents hoped their children could attend regular schools, yet only 10.43 percent of school-age autistic children had been accepted into one.
In 1994, the Ministry of Education issued a regulation, stating that disabled children, including children with minor mental disabilities, can be accepted into regular schools. It also stipulated that children with moderate mental disabilities can be accepted into regular schools that are capable of educating such children.
Nonetheless, the regulation said that children should be evaluated by competent agencies before being accepted into regular schools, except for in rural areas where such evaluation is unavailable. Additionally, no more than three disabled children can be placed in a class.
According to the regulation, local education authorities should provide preemployment and on-the-job special education training to teachers, and normal universities should offer special education courses. If a class has disabled children, the teachers of the class should be evaluated on both their performance in regular education and special education, and their additional efforts should be rewarded.
Although the Ministry of Education requires autistic children to be appraised before being placed into regular schools, in many cases, they are not.
Before entering Baocheng School, Longlong did not undergo required evaluation either. Cheng Xuecai, an official with the Baoan District Education Bureau, said that the boy should have been evaluated before enrolling in a regular school.
However, when Longlong’s mother took him to a designated evaluation agency, the Forensic Psychiatry Appraisal Institute under the Kangning Hospital in Shenzhen, the institute rejected her request.
The institute’s director, Li Xuewu, said that they had never before received a request to evaluate an autistic child for school attendance, and the institute was not certified to conduct such an evaluation.
He said that if the school insists on such a screening, the institute can produce its opinion upon receiving a written application endorsed by a school and education authorities.
Actually, most parents with autistic children allegedly conceal the illness for fear that their children would be denied admission once the schools learn of their conditions.
When school management suspects a child to be autistic, and contacts his or her parents about it, parents may dodge the issue, arguing that their child is normal and does not need an autism evaluation, said Dai Yaohong, council member of the Shanghai Middle School Ethics Education Association.
“But above all, some schools and parents reject autistic children for fear that they will disrupt class order and affect other students’grades, said Xu Guangxing, a professor at the Psychology Department of Shanghai-based East China Normal University.
Parents sometimes object to autistic children out of safety concerns. On September 27, a group of parents protested outside of Shiji Primary School in Beijing’s Chaoyang District, demanding the school to expel an autistic student from their children’s class.
These parents told Beijing Times that the student in question, nicknamed Li Ming, hit classmates and teachers with chairs, pushed classmates around, and cried loudly in class. Li’s classmates collectively boycotted class and were waiting for the school’s decision.
Li’s father insisted that his son be allowed to stay, saying that doctors said his son is probably high-functioning autistic, and could improve by staying in groups.
In regards to current problems in integrated education such as shortage of special education teachers in regular schools, and the conflict between parents with and without autistic children, Gao Yurong, Executive Deputy Director of the Children Welfare Research Center under the China Philanthropy Research Institute, suggested that schools should permit autistic children’s caretakers to sit in class, so that when an autistic child loses control, the caretaker can take the child away from class.
Gao also called on the government to give financial incentives to regular schools accepting autistic children. He said that schools can use government subsidies to hire special education teachers and reward those who excel.