There has been unrest in our newspapers recently about standards of literacy in schools. To those of us who daily are in touch with children who have difficulties in learning to read and write, periodic public forays into the standards issues are usually unhelpful, unwarranted and uninformed. Comparisons between the standards of literacy achieved by different generations of school children are difficult to make, on the one hand because our functional literacy requirements differ from yesterday’s and on the other because the conditions of learning and performance in schools have undergone immense change during the last couple of generations.

There have been some exciting changes in education during the late 70s and early 80s. Of particular significance has been the emphasis on the processes of learning rather than the lockstep, content-oriented curriculum. This has enabled special education teachers to develop a fresh view of children with learning difficulties, discarding notions of their deficits and instead monitoring their current development and learning strategies, and the personal and environmental constraints which operate to limit their learning potential. This approach concentrates on the whole child, establishing strengths, building confidence through success, developing risk-taking behaviours, teaching problemsolving strategies, and learning to become an independent learner.

The employment status and social adjustment of two groups of hearing-impaired young adults were compared with those of a group of normal hearing adults of comparable age. One of the hearing-impaired groups had graduated from units (special classes) in regular secondary schools. The rates of unemployment were similar for the hearing-impaired and normal hearing groups, but other intergroup differences in employment characteristics were apparent. In general, the social adjustment of the two groups of hearing-impaired groups was similar to that of the hearing group, although there were indications that the School for Deaf graduates had experienced more difficulty in coping following school graduation.

This paper is a partial report of an investigation into the integration program at two A.C.T. special schools catering for moderately and severely intellectually handicapped children. Teachers and parents of the children at the special schools completed questionnaires concerning the conduct and outcomes of the program. The opinions of teachers at the regular schools were obtained by personal interview.

Overall there were positive attitudes expressed towards the program. Areas of concern include the level of support required for the regular class teacher, the level of preparation the handicapped children required before integration commenced, a worry of parents that handicapped children may be exposed to unnecessary pressures in the regular school system, and the fact that mere exposure of a handicapped child to a regular school environment may not lead to effective integration in the larger community.

Developments in curriculum content and method for severely handicapped students are reviewed as they have appeared in published literature over the last ten years. Curriculum content is presented from a normalisation perspective, referring to selected domains, criterion of ultimate functioning, environment, functional and age appropriate skills. The review of curriculum method indicates effective instructional skills to be maximising of instructional time, task analysis, data collection, applying levels of assistance, management of consequences, trial distribution, and generalisation. The implications of these developments are greatest for educational administrators who face changes in location of instruction, management of classes and level of skills needed for teachers of severely handicapped students.