Higashi School: It means hope

The Boston Herald

BEVERLY BECKHAM

A child is born, a normal, healthy, beautiful child. He rolls over when he should, sits up like all babies his age, crawls, stands, walks, says "mama" and "dada," and when he smiles, he lights up a room.

But when he's about a year-and-a-half he stops using words, stops looking at people and doesn't reach out anymore. He doesn't smile. He frowns, screams, bites his hands, bangs his head on the floor and tears at his face and his hair. He repeats this behavior day after day.

What causes this? No one has an answer. Neither the cause nor the cure of autism is known.

Yet this syndrome affects 1 of every 700 babies born and is four times more common in boys than in girls.

For years autistic children were deemed uneducable and uncontrollable and were locked away in institutions where they were sedated and physically restrained. Then behaviorists came along and argued that autistic children could be taught by using a system of rewards and punishments. But few were successful in getting in touch with the person trapped underneath the bizarre, ritualistic actions.

Then in 1964, in Japan Dr. Kiyo Kitahara opened a small, private school for normal children, which she called The Higashi School. Approached by some mothers of autistic children, Dr. Kitahara agreed to enroll their profoundly troubled sons and daughters in her school because they had nowhere else to go.

Higashi in Japanese means hope, and it was hope that her school dispensed. Children who couldn't speak, who couldn't communicate in any way, who weren't toilet trained or able to feed themselves or able to complete a task or play a game, learned to do these things under Kitahara's tutelage. By engaging autistic children in all school activities, by anticipating their behavior, expecting success, and involving them in strenuous physical activities, a hard-working group of dedicated teachers broke through what had seemed an impenetrable wall.

In 1987, after successfully educating 3,000 autistic children from all over the world, 30 percent of whom were Americans, Dr. Kitahara opened the Boston Higashi School in Lexington. It looks like a hundred other New England schools with its red brick building, its shiny floors, its walls decorated with maps and posters and kids' drawings. But its philosophy is unique.

The school focuses on the children, not on the children's handicaps. Every teacher is constantly encouraging, constantly telling kids, "You can," not "You cannot." Classes are small, with one teacher for every six children. The teachers are tireless. They wear sneakers and gym clothes and eat lunch with the kids and put in 11-hour days.

Katy Ritchey arrived at Higashi five years ago. She was then 4 1/2, but she drank from a baby bottle, wore diapers and often banged her head against doors.

"You had to watch her every second," her mother says.

Two weeks later she was toilet trained, her bottle was gone and she sat in a restaurant and ate a grilled cheese sandwich.

When Scott Tedeman arrived he was 5, but he couldn't speak at all. In months he could recite the alphabet. Five years later, he talks non-stop.

This learning doesn't just happen. Higashi's curriculum is structured and repetitive. Teachers smile, coax, encourage and reward. But they also expect and demand a child's best.

Joseph McLoughlin, age 6, is one of the school's newest students. He is the first child to come from Ireland, his expenses paid through the generosity of an Irish-American who prefers to remain anonymous.

Pat and Bernadette McLoughlin, who have three other children, were told by their family doctor that there wasn't much that could be done for Joseph. Autistic kids are still institutionalized in Ireland.

But the McLoughlins refused to give up on Joseph. They read about the success of Boston Higashi School and became determined to send their son to America.

The McLoughlins took their life savings, sold the family farm, and with funds raised by neighbors and the donation of their American benefactor came up with enough money to pay for a year of residential schooling for Joseph.

But how will they pay for next year and the year after?

Pat McLoughlin doesn't know. Something will turn up, he says. You have to have faith. We have this year. Joseph is being helped now. Things will work out, God willing.

At lunch the other day, 100 children, 29 day and 79 residential students, filed in to the cafeteria with their teachers, took their seats, talked quietly and ate without incident. After they finished, they all helped clean up. Joseph was one of them.

Hopeless and uneducable? Hardly. But for autistic children, even this is nothing short of a miracle.