Dated: 14th February 2010

Children with disability: Making them feel special rather than disabled

There is no dearth of children with disability in India. As far as statistics is

concerned, more than 10 children in every 1000 are having some form of disability, be it
physical impairment, mental retardation or autism. Surprisingly the numbers are on the
increasing side, which may be just because more children are now diagnosed with the
problem compared to early days when they were secluded and put into oblivion. But
even if the disability is now identified, not much attention is being paid to take care of
the child. In most of the cases, the child may be able lead a normal life if proper care is
taken at the initial years by their parents and family. For this, it is important that parents
and family members of such child do not look at the disability as a problem rather they
need to accept it as a challenge. The family members should not feel embarrassed at
having such a child and never isolate them from the general community. They should
understand that their child is not disabled but is someone with special needs. It is
important to realize those needs, attend to them and encourage the child to overcome
the challenges. However, providing special attention does not mean that such children
are overprotected. Social development of such children is only possible if they are
exposed to the real world. Thus the thin and blur line between protection and
overprotection makes the task more difficult for the parents.
The article may make the readers feel that parenting is a problem in case of such
children. No, the problem is much deep rooted; it is to do more with lack of awareness,
and acceptance of the issue. The matter can be sorted out if there is a provision to impart
appropriate training across the country to such parents for handling their children and
sensitizing to their needs. However, the big question is how to open such training
centres at a large scale covering all regions of the nation? Even if we resolve the
infrastructure issue, do we have adequate resource persons for spreading awareness and
imparting training? The answers to these questions may not be simple and single but the
readers may definitely provide their own opinion for moving ahead with the concern. It
is high time that children with disability are not tolerated in one corner of their houses,
but treated as someone special requiring additional attention and affection from their
parents, family and society at large.
 Providing education to children with special needs

There are different ways of imparting education to special children in India. One
can find number of special schools for visual and hearing impaired children, children
with behavioral disorders like autism, dyslexia and mental retardation. Such schools
provide day care, intervention programmes, behavioral therapies, customized training
and formal as well as non-formal education for children with special needs.
Nevertheless, these schools are mostly found in cities and urban areas and that to with
handsome fees. Villages and rural areas so far lack the luxury of having schools for
special children, especially the underprivileged ones. Yes, for villages, where formal
education facilities are not adequate, such special schools are perceived as a sheer
luxury.
Now even if we can afford that luxury of opening special schools in villages, one
question that comes to the mind is do we really need them? Is it worthwhile to set up
new schools particularly for children with special needs where there are trained
teachers, all kind of specialized facilities, therapies and intervention programmes along
with teaching? Or else, is it more beneficial to bring these children into the mainstream
schools along with the not so special children.
Well there can be different sets of opinion on this matter, but for me, the concept of
inclusive education makes a lot of sense. Inclusive education will help in the overall
social development with the special child getting the exposure of the real world and the
common child getting the opportunity to embrace them as a part of their normal world.
The government of our country has also started taking some initiative on this front by
bringing forth the proposal and initial phase of implementation of inclusive education
under the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan. The implementation of the concept is not at all easy but
is not even impossible.
The most important aspect that one has to look at is the acceptability of children
with special needs among the normal students, teachers and other stakeholders
associated with the school. There is huge task of spreading awareness among the general
students such that they empathize with the special children and not sympathize with
them. They need to understand that they are not abnormal but only special requiring
more attention. Another aspect that needs to be taken care of is equipping teachers with
specialized training for educating such children. Apart from trained teachers, the
schools will definitely require additional trained resource persons for providing
customized therapies and intervention programmes to special children. Next, there will
be a need for flexibility in the pedagogy, subject content and examination pattern for
such students. They may be allowed to give examination through open board system; on
which entities like National Institute of Open Schooling is working to some extent. There
are many other nitty gritties of integrating the education of special children with
mainstream education, which all of us as a part of the society has to look into, for its
effective implementation.