Everyone Must Blossom in the School

Mary Ellen Mark is finishing her last day of photographing at the two special education schools for disabled children in Reykjavík, Öskjuhlíðarskóli and Safamýrarskóli. She worked at Lyngás as well, a care centre for severely disabled youngsters. “Of course it is horrible being disabled,” she says. ”I don’t want to make it look like it is easy for these children. On the other hand the children are provided with a very special and warm environment here in Iceland, within an educational system that respects the children, where they get to be themselves. Every  effort is  made to challenge them, and to help them learn as much as possible.” 

            Now Mark will start to select the photographs she considers to be the strongest, taken in the six weeks she has spent with the children and their teachers. “I wish I was starting the project now,” she says with a sigh. “When you immerse yourself in a fascinating project you gradually start to know the system. You get to know the children and the caretakers and slowly they start to trust you. Never underestimate these kids one bit. They may be disabled, mentally and physically, but perhaps they sense and understand things at a deeper level than non-disabled children. If people don’t like you and don’t trust you, you are not going to get great pictures.”

            Mark began photographing in the schools on the first day she was invited there. She feels strongly that from the outset people should know what she is doing. “I will not be sneaky or play games with the children. It is important to take out my camera immediately,” she says. She has in the past created remarkable photo series of people from around the world, people who often live in special or unique circumstances, on the fringes of society, or hidden from view in some way. Like the lives of the children in Safamýrarskóli and Öskjuhlíðarskóli.

            In many of her best-known projects Mary Ellen Mark has focused on groups of people who need special care or assistance. One of these projects is Ward 81, a book of photographs taken in a locked psychiatric ward at the Oregon State Hospital in 1976. Ward 81 housed seriously mentally ill women. Mark was given permission to spend 36 days in the ward. In 1979 she traveled to India for LIFE magazine to document Mother Teresa’s Missions of Charity. On completing the assignment, Mark felt a need to present a more comprehensive story of the missions, so in 1981 she returned to Calcutta and spent two months photographing Mother Teresa and those who received her assistance. The photographs were published as a book in 1985. In 1983 Mark traveled to Seattle to photograph street children for LIFE magazine. At that time, Seattle was considered the “most livable city in the US.” There she earned the trust of a group of street children and spent three weeks photographing them. She completed the photo essay for LIFE but returned later that year with her husband, filmmaker Martin Bell, to continue working with the teenagers for two months. The outcome was the book Streetwise, as well as a film by the same name that was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Feature Documentary category. More large-scale projects from Mary Ellen Mark’s career include A Cry for Help, a book focusing on the homeless in the US, and Falkland Road, an intimate look into the daily life of prostitutes working in the Falkland Road area in Bombay, India.

            Mary Ellen Mark has visited Iceland several times in recent years, and expressed an interest in learning about the circumstances of the disabled children there. In autumn 2005 she spent ten days working in Iceland. She asked to visit Öskjuhlíðarskóli, a school for disabled children in Reykjavik. School was just starting after the summer holidays, yet the principal was open to the idea and sent the request to the students’ parents for consideration. Two days before Mark was to return to New York she was invited to visit the school the following morning to photograph.

            “This school is wonderful,” she remarked after the visit. “I can feel that the children are allowed to be themselves. It is obvious that the people who work here love them.”

            “I have visited other institutions for the disabled where the administration is ashamed of the people they care for and would prefer that you do not meet them. In Öskjuhlíðarskóli the children are respected for who they are, everyone is filled with love and warmth and that is why the atmosphere is so uplifting,” she said. Over the years, Mark has often photographed people who are struggling with handicaps. “These children are unpretentious and honest. That type of purity has always attracted me. The disabled certainly lead more difficult lives, but their lives can also be full of action and humor. These are just children, who happen to have handicaps that other children do not have. I would like to come back and spend more time at the school.”

It’s amazing what the teachers accomplish

In the autumn of 2006 Öskjuhlíðarskóli was made up of some 100 students, aged six to sixteen, in grades one through ten. The students are from Reykjavík and the neighboring municipalities and have various handicaps and disabilities; some are in wheelchairs, a substantial number are autistic, some have Down syndrome. Safamýrarskóli, Reykjavík’s other special school for the disabled, is three and a half kilometers to the east. It has been open since 1982 and is situated next to the Lyngás care centre. Safamýrarskóli is an elementary school and in 2006 there were seventeen severely disabled students. Some of them attend Lyngás during after-school hours, while others are in day-care in Safamýrarskóli.

            The students in Safamýrarskóli are substantially more disabled than the children at Öskjuhlíðarskóli. Fourteen students are completely bound to wheelchairs. Many have extreme difficulties expressing themselves or mastering simple things and some must be fed through a tube. The disabilities of the Öskjuhlíðarskóli students range from hyperactivity and developmental problems, to acute physical disabilities and problems with communication. The school is defined as being for students with multiple disabilities, yet the levels of ability vary considerably. The principals of both schools point out that the students attend the special education schools as a result of their parents’ decision. A basic educational policy in Iceland calls for “a school without differentiation” and the Elementary School Act states that an educational institution should meet the needs of all students, irrespective of their abilities. Children with disabilities are assigned a support assistant if they attend a regular school. Some schools have special education departments, for example autistic children are integrated with regular classes several times a week. In recent years, parents have increasingly chosen to enroll their disabled children in regular schools rather than special education schools. In regular schools, disabled children have more interaction with non-disabled children. But, in the special education schools there is a greater pool of knowledge when it comes to teaching children with severe learning disabilities. The principals of the special education schools point out that they are an important option for parents of children with special needs. Those parents I spoke with agreed. 

            On that day in September 2005, when Mary Ellen Mark visited Öskjuhlíðarskóli, she made an effort to really get to know the workings of the school. One of the things she did was travel on the bus when students were being driven to a swimming lesson. She saw how the students enjoyed the water and how the teachers used swimming to strengthen and stimulate the children. Mark got into the pool to photograph them and formed a special connection with one of the boys, Alexander Viðar Pálsson. Alexander was ten years old and clearly loved being in the water.  He smiled at Mark a lot and she was drawn to his joyfulness and bravery.

            Alexander is central to the photo essay that appeared in Morgunblaðið after Mark’s first visit to Öskjuhlíðarskóli. Alexander’s parents, Steinunn Sigurd and Páll Hjaltason, say that he is a happy boy who enjoys life. Alexander is severely disabled and unable to speak, but according to his parents has made considerable progress at the school.

            “First, Alexander was at a wonderful pre-school with other disabled children. We were anxious when the time came for him to start school, and considered sending him to a regular school,” say Steinunn and Páll. “Then we went and looked at Öskjuhlíðarskóli. We had been told that schools like that attracted both caring and skilled employees, and that is certainly the case. We have nothing but admiration for the teachers and the work carried out at the school.”

            Like other parents of disabled children in the two schools, Steinunn and Páll are worried about the recent talk of whether the schools should be closed. “It’s a nice idea to have everyone in the same school environment, but it’s just not realistic,” Páll says. “Some children simply cannot cope with the traditional education system. Nobody knows the cause of Alexander’s disability or whether he will improve - Alexander is writing his own story as he goes along. But he is continually surprising us by doing something new. Still, he has to learn everything from scratch, and to do that he needs a completely protected environment.”

            Páll and Steinunn both agree that Öskjuhlíðarskóli is great for their son. “Alexander is so happy there. The school needs to be supported and housed in better facilities to keep their remarkable work going. Despite the conditions it’s amazing what the teachers accomplish.”

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