Where disability is no bar

A HUGE EFFORT is being made in Census 2001 to compile the number of disabled in the country and the extent of their disability. It is appropriate that the management of South India Educational Trust (SIET) should invite Dr. Gordon Porter, a well-known advocate of inclusive education from New Brunswick, Canada, to conduct a series of workshops on education for the differently- abled.

Accompanying him was Zuhy Sayeed, Director, Canadian Human Rights Education Foundation and representative for Inclusion International to the United Nations Panel of Experts on opportunities for the disabled.

Zuhy Sayeed is the daughter-in-law of the founder of SIET and has an impressive background of work in the field of community living. Dr. Porter and Zuhy Sayeed were in Chennai recently to talk to teachers, parents and educators about the strategies to make education inclusive for all children.

In a free-wheeling conversation and later, in an interactive session with the audience, Dr. Gordon Porter outlined his programme for the education of the disabled in general, and the intellectually challenged in particular.

In the interactive session, he was joined by Zuhy Sayeed in clarifying the doubts of the participants. Excerpts:

What is 'inclusive' in the system of education advocated by you?

The philosophy behind this movement is simple. We want children with disabilities to go to the same school as their brothers and sisters. We want them to be in the same classes as well. We want the system to be revamped so that the education of the disabled children is an integral part of the general education.

A thousand questions crop up after this explanation. What about the syllabus and the packed classrooms where normal children rarely manage to catch the teacher's attention? What happens to rules on MLL (Minimum Learning Levels)? Board exams? Peer adjustment?

Dr. Porter was emphatic that these hurdles can be levelled out. All it needs is the will of those involved in the education of the intellectually challenged. The grounds for such integration are strong, solid and convincing.

It is only in a regular school, among normal children that the differently-abled will get an opportunity to interact with their peers. Children who are intellectually challenged learn mainly through imitation. Where education is inclusive of them, they are constantly exposed to activities in the classrooms and outside, which include music, theatre, science experiments, computers and sports. Our statistics show that 98% of the disabled children in India do not go to any kind of school, Dr. Porter said. You can make sure that they attend school if the syllabus is adapted to their needs. Once the parents know that their "challenged' children will be accepted in any school in the neighbourhood, we can hope to see all of them getting the education they have a right to.

Isn't it more sensible to set up schools with facilities to meet their special needs?

Netherlands has 14 kinds of special schools for the differently- abled. That is an excellent number for a country so small in size. But a study shows that segregating these kids has not produced the expected results. Now they are doing away with the system to integrate the education of the disabled with mainstream courses.

Conventional thinking dictates that only children with a certain intellectual level can be enrolled in a certain grade.

The result is a rigid syllabus and a rigid system of teaching which very often only the bright students can handle.

You must agree that even in a normal class there is a vast variation in academic levels. Don't teachers cope with slow learners?

This integration is not a one-way street. For the normal children, the classroom becomes a representation of the world outside. They learn to understand and appreciate the abilities of those who on the surface are different from them. A getting together like this ensures all round development of normal children, making them truly caring, socially-conscious human beings.

We do not say it is easy. Setting up special schools, bringing these children out of the closet as it were and into the set-up designed to meet their special needs, proving that they can develop self-supporting skills and then getting them to join the workforce, have not been easy. The physically handicapped today have a much better deal. What we suggest now is the next logical step in the integration of our mentally challenged children. It is based on human rights, equality and democracy.

Work done in Canada and other countries shows that intellectually challenged children with the least segregation get the highest scores in their exams.

Educational philosophy in India has generally promoted segregation of the disabled on the belief that children with special needs must be taught by instructors with special training and aptitude. We believe the teacher need not be an angel with a missionary zeal to be able to handle them. With training and right strategies any teacher, who recognises the potential of a child can teach them. Teachers, educators and parents have to respond to this challenge. We need ideas; we need training to implement them. There must be a groundswell of awareness and commitment from the parents. They can bring about the necessary change in the thinking of the school authorities with the help of sympathetic government agencies.

According to Zuhy Sayeed, teachers need to appreciate the fact that there are different kinds of learning. Why should they assume that learning is synonymous with cognitive achievement?

In a regular school, the child learns emotional integration and behavioural coherence. Doesn't a teacher learn to handle a bright kid who has adjustment problems? Aren't there normal kids who throw tantrums in the class, who are cranky and ill-tempered?

When an intellectually challenged kid leaves school, he finds he has friends in normal children. He has grown up with them through the school years. He is now socially adept, which is a tremendous boost to his confidence level. Isn't this the main purpose of sending a child to school?

How can we forget that every one of us is only a hair's breadth away from becoming disabled? How would we like to be treated?

In the workshops, Dr. Porter wanted to share the methodologies that have worked in Canada and help adapt them to the circumstances here."What we teach may differ but the process of teaching is the same the world over. We need to invest more time, money and effort in good quality teaching".

How many such children can be accommodated in a class?

We have to follow the rules of 'natural proportion'. The more skilled the teacher is, the more diversity she can handle in the classroom. To accomplish this we need to initiate dialogue, use TV and the print medium and work with the government.

In the end, what was well understood was what was left unsaid.

Before we even give a thought to this revolutionary concept, we need to change our attitude towards these children. We need to shed our prejudices and inhibitions and above all our arrogance before we decide to wear the mantle of outriders of change.

We need to know that these children are differently-abled, not under-abled.

GEETA PADMANABHAN

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