The Lebanese Curriculum Puts Special Education at Risk 

“I suffered. It took me almost a year to make the best yet hardest decision. Leaping from one school to another and assembling his medical reports to guarantee him the best education due to his special situation. It was a rollercoaster: exhausting but worth many lessons.”

Although the tuition fee is high, Mrs. Hamdan was able to find the right school for Rami, her child with autism.

Rami’s case is similar to that of many who have educational difficulties or what some call students with disabilities. His needs for special education and mental treatment make it harder for his parents to find the best institution that can help in pursuing his education, which is his basic right. Not much attention is given by the government to the education of students with special needs. The problem lies in the fact that schools, especially public ones, lack the special equipment used for educating these students, have extremely high tuition, and teachers who are not well-trained to deal with their special needs. The stated problems make it harder for students with special needs to study a proper curriculum because the implemented Lebanese curriculum does not meet the students’ needs.

According to a Human Rights Watch report in 2018, the number of children with disabilities in Lebanon was about 8,558 of which only 3,806 were registered in either public schools, private schools, or government-funded institutions. The Human Rights Watch also assured that most of the registered children didn’t attend educational facilities. In other words, students with learning difficulties in Lebanon may experience three different scenarios that depend mainly on the budget of the parents and their awareness with regards to special education.

In the first scenario, parents do not have enough money to enroll their children in a special organization and thus end up in a public school that does not provide the quality of education they need. In the second scenario, they can afford enrolling their child in a specialized school where fees exceed $10,000 per year. In the last scenario, parents are sometimes unaware of their children's learning disability and get them enrolled in a school that discriminates against them and thus makes their case worse. Some students who suffer from learning or mental disabilities are excluded from many schools. According to Human Rights Watch, one main reason could be the lack of reasonable accommodations, poor training of staff and discrimination during admission, lack of the concept of inclusion, and finally expensive tuition fees.

As per Lebanon’s Law 220 which secures the basic rights of the students with disabilities, stating “all children should have access to education free from discrimination” the Ministry of Education in Lebanon forces all schools, private and public, to accept all students equally even if they have a disability by stating on their website the following “learning is a right for everyone.” The issue with this statement is not the content but the way it is applied in public schools. Private schools that adapt the special education program usually get a lot of funds most of which can be international. They also have most of the needed equipment to help children accommodate to the new environment and develop their skills.

The Basic Needs

In this respect, special educator Tala Badr who works in a private school asks the following question: “considering everyone is competent, do we have the needed equipment?” the answer was simply "no". The main element that public schools need is funding because these programs are expensive. She insists that money is needed in order to provide the child with the best education.

Students with disabilities need more requirements than regular ones be it in the classroom or outside it. Thus, Badr emphasizes“these children might need more than one teacher to cooperate with them and sometimes up to seven teachers: one for the speech, one for the psycho-motor activity, one to teach the subject, etc.…” This explains the two types of special education that depend on the student’s case.

For example, students who have severe cases undergo segregation education where each one has a special class and specialists that deal with each and every problem, he/she has. The second type is inclusive education where the student is capable of joining a larger class but needs a specialist who could help him/her in every subject and skill. 

Well-preparation is important to adopt a special educational system. This leads to the following question: Are Lebanese schools prepared? Lara El-Khatib who holds a Ph.D. in Education and is a part-time professor at the Lebanese American University (LAU) believes that Lebanese schools don’t seem to be prepared at all because “there is no understanding that variability is the norm.” Inside schools, there is a lack of speech therapists and occupational therapists who are considered a basic need to have a better special educational system. This process of having specialists inside the class with the students is called inclusive education and is considered highly important. El-Khatib clarifies that this kind of education requires a team group including specialists and trained therapists.

The difference in educational systems within schools

Lebanese schools adopt two different systems: French and American. That is, students either study from American books imported from outside Lebanon or apply the French schooling system. “Even when it comes to activities and routines in special education, we are still applying traditional ways from the French system, that are maybe long forgotten by the French themselves”, El-Khatib explains.

The French and American systems adopted by some schools have different philosophies and different views on things although they both require teamwork of specialists such as occupational therapists and speech therapists. El-Khatib elaborates that the American system highly depends on the parents’ role with regards to their kids’ therapy and education because it is essential to follow up on every step at home.

The various ways of teaching

“Transforming the content into active and experiential learning where you don’t just give the idea to parents but you tell them why it makes sense and why they will need it, will make the kid’s journey easier for both, the student and us, to get efficient and fast progress”, assures Mona Nabhani, Ph.D. in Education and a part-time professor at LAU.

There is a misunderstanding among schools and teachers concerning the variation in skills special students might require. The capability to grasp and understand the information varies from one student to another, that’s why the curriculum is not common among all students.

The problem is not always related to reducing time or material. El-Khatib considers these procedures “superficial” because that’s not the only thing special students need. 

Accommodation vs. Modification

“Information must be presented in more than one way, so the problem is not adding 30 minutes to an exam duration or eliminating some chapters,” Badr says. To elaborate, there is a difference between the concept of accommodation and modification which implies the importance of the role of special educators at schools. Accommodation is what El-Khatib referred to as superficial and not all special students need that; some of them might need more. 

Modifications in the Lebanese curriculum is what students need the most. The Ministry of Education doesn’t offer a modified curriculum to special students; they all receive the same material and are expected to sit for official exams in Grade 12, according to Badr. Modification is changing the whole curriculum until it meets the special students’ needs. “Not all students can follow the same curriculum, I make a curriculum with different objectives and goals for each and every student,” says Badr, shedding light on the problem in public schools. 

Training of teachers for special education

In addition, students might have shadow teachers when in class, but this is not enough. “Anyone can be a shadow teacher; they only supervise the student”, Badr explained.  However, at some point, this might have detrimental effects. Badr insists that special students need more than shadow teachers; they need special educators who are able to modify the curriculum for them, help them with solving exercises, improve their critical thinking, and teach them new skills.

To stress the previous idea, Nabhani, regretfully said that teachers are not trained to create an individualized plan for slow learners or for students with disabilities and at the same time catering for the others in the same classroom. In fact, the problems are major and many to such an extent that special students are not exempted from Grade 12 official exams no matter what their case is.

The fate of special students regarding official exams

“We see a lot of students who drop out of school before they reach Grade 12 because of this issue, and thus don’t enter university” Badr said annoyed. She urged the government to take this issue into consideration because those who are not dropping out of school, are getting other nationalities that will allow them to escape the official exams and therefore enter university. 

Searching for another nationality is a predicament because not all students have the ability to acquire another citizenship. Consequently, students would be forced to take the one decision that will stop their educational journey unless the Ministry of Education imposes new rules that will help students and work in their benefit.

The $100 million solution

To every problem, there is a solution. Since the special education program needs massive funding and the Lebanese government is unable to provide it, the Ministry of Education obtained in 2016 a loan of $100 million from the World Bank, with no interest and three years grace period. The aim was to establish a number of public schools that will help all children aged between three and 18 years have equal accessibility to schools without having to pay expensive tuition fees. 

This money will help buy the needed technology for schools whether for regular or special students and develop the curriculum when needed. However, this money was never used for unknown reasons. The privilege is still present, and the money can still be used whenever the Minister of Education in collaboration with the Council of Ministers agrees to ask for it

The challenges remain to be critical while the curriculum is still stuck in the late 90s waiting to get freed and reformed. The goal of drastic changes is designing a curriculum that can fit all students equally. Some special students along with their parents are suffering in Lebanon because not all schools are equally accessible to special students. Segregation and inclusion are both important methods that schools need to take into account. Once the differences are known then the child will have hope for a better education. Rami says with enthusiasm and with eyes full of hope: “I want to be remembered in a way, to discover something, and I will.”