5. Having Hope with Down’s Syndrome

An example from a television program on the educational training of intellectually disabled children will serve to illustrate the importance of having hope (Motivational Work Part 1: Values and Theory pages 27 – 28)

The TV team depicts how the staff of an institution is trying to teach a Down’s syndrome child to talk. His intellectual impairment means that he has difficulties learning to express himself in words. The program traces his development through clips filmed over the course of several years, and initially, little progress seemed to be made, despite his daily training. By the time he reaches the age of 12, his speech has started to improve, so that by the age of 14 (when the last recording was made) he is singing in the choir in a production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute.

How the Staff Found Hope

The interesting question is how the staff found hope to keep working with the boy, day in, day out, year after year, without any apparent reward for their efforts. The institution where they work is based on anthroposophy, a humanistic school of thought which believes in a child’s own capacity for development. In the same way as the mother in the earlier case (Daga), having faith is their only support when there is no positive feedback. So even without any distinct linguistic improvement on the part of the boy, the staff’s ideology gave them hope of success.

Through their philosophy, the staff found the hope and thus the energy needed to continue. However, when they saw the first signs of success, it was much easier for them to keep up their positive belief.