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The school with assorted chairs……..Shalini Umachandran
Education for the disabled requires creative and flexible thinking.Should disabled children enter mainstream schools Should they continue in a special environment There is no one answer that fits all The large,airy classroom has timetables,posters and pictures on the walls,chairs scattered around,books stacked in a corner and alphabets on the blackboard exactly like any other schoolroom.Take a closer look though,and youll find the timetable has slots for physiotherapy and speech therapy.And each chair in the room has a different design.
Each child here needs a special chair depending on the extent and kind of disability, says Sheela Lakshmi,principal of the special school at the Spastics Society of Tamil Nadu (SPASTN).Organisations like the SPASTN work with children who have mild to profound disabilities,teaching them to care for themselves,study,learn vocational skills and eventually integrate with the rest of society.
Special schools start by assessing the childs abilities and draw up a teaching methodology based on the extent of the disability.Most special schools have early intervention programmes for ages 0-5,focusing on areas such as language,avoiding secondary disabilities,and teaching parents to care for the child.Programmes include physiotherapy,hydrotherapy,speech,music therapy,language and more.
Children are assessed periodically for motor skills,memory and perception and,often,the teaching methodology has to be changed depending on how the child progresses.Being a special educator requires creativity and you keep improvising on the job, says Sheela.
After the age of five,some children are ready to enter the mainstream,others continue at the special school.Our curriculum is as much in line with regular schools as possible, explains Rajul Padmanabhan,director,Vidyasagar,a special school in Chennai.We just customise it to include various therapies and different teaching methodologies.
Children are also taught activities of daily living (ADL) such as bathing,brushing teeth,dressing,awareness of numbers and alphabets.Parents of children at SPASTN run a mock shop so that students can learn how to deal with money.Special schools like Mumbais St Josephs high school in Dombivli take wards on weekly visits to supermarkets,restaurants and banks.
There is no set age for disabled children to enter mainstream schools;the decision rests with the special educator.Siddharth GJ,now an assistant manager at IndusInd bank,for instance,left Vidyasagar and joined the regular stream at Boston School in Class IX.Bhavna,now a 23-year-old college student with cerebral palsy,went into the mainstream Lady Andal for Class XI.Adjusting to a regular classroom can be a little difficult at first, says Siddharth who has cerebral palsy.But it is fun.
The sheer numbers in a mainstream school can disorient a child from a special school where there are usually just eight students to a class.Then there is the difficulty of understanding and being understood by others.But the stimulation and learning from peers is extremely valuable.Besides,regular children also learn to be sensitive to people with special needs, says Madhumathi Achutan,director of SPASTN.
Regular school and college authorities do not really teach pupils to deal with special children but voluntary organisations step in to help.The Bangalore-based Association for People with Disability teaches sign language to the friends of special children.Schools such as Vidyasagar and SPASTN have inclusion wings whose staff go to the regular schools to explain the needs and abilities of special students.
At the college level,Vidyasagars inclusion unit sometimes does an orientation session with the lecturers.The peer group is older and we leave it to them to work out how they deal with a disabled student in their midst, says Sujatha Sriram who works in the unit.A number of disabled students in mainstream colleges say theyve found great friends there.People were old enough to understand and accept me and that was wonderful, says Siddharth.Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and more recently,the Right to Education (RTE) Act have come as a ray of hope.The fact that no school can turn away a disabled child is fabulous, says Vidyasagars Rajul.
Disabled children who cannot study further are given joboriented training.Many disabled children take regular board exams whether CBSE,ICSE or state board with the help of scribes and communication devices.But it hasnt been easy for special schools to fight the system.
Each time,we have had to battle with the state to get facilities for the children, says Rajul,banging on a thick,blue,bound book full of government orders that Vidyasagar has got the TN government to pass since 1993 so that disabled students could take communication devices,charts,scribes and even music into the exam hall.
Children who are academically inclined but cannot take regular board exams follow the Open Basic Education (OBE) system which allows students to choose subjects.They are then sent up for school-leaving certificates through the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) which gives them nine chances over the course of five years to take exams.The school curriculum and exam system needs to be broadened so that all children will be fit for jobs after school.This will not only help disabled children,but even regular ones who cannot go to college, says Rajul.
Even without a policy change,schools and colleges are making efforts to include students with disabilities.At Kolkatas Birla High School for Boys,ramps have been constructed and disabled students are put in the first row in the class so that teachers can give them more attention.We have granted permission for caretakers to stay with the child,if necessary, says principal Mukta Nain.
Special educators are aware that not all disabled children can be mainstreamed.There are some severely and profoundly disabled children who will not be able to go far in either the academic or vocational stream, says Radhike Khanna,vice-principal of SPJ Sadhana School,Mumbai,a 37-year-old institution for special children.We just keep such children stimulated with various activities and teach basic communication.
Accessibility is a big stumbling block to education for the disabled.Tariq Ansar,who has just started BA history at Loyola College in Chennai,says the college is still making arrangements to have all his classes shifted to the ground floor.They have had many disabled students before me so all the lecturers understand me and are helpful, says Tariq,who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair to get around.
Sometimes making a classroom accessible can be as simple as changing seating or putting in hand-rails.Recently,the Delhi-based AADI (Action for Ability Development and Inclusion ) in collaboration with the National Trust,an autonomous body of the social justice ministry,and Saarthak,a voluntary organisation working on mental health,started an initiative called Sambhav.
A national resource centre for people with disabilities was built within AADIs school premises.The resource centre aims to educate families and policy-makers about utilising minimal resources to make everyday objects disabledfriendly.To ensure participation,accessibility is a necessary step.Accessibility to the physical environment,transportation,information and systems of utility are crucial, says Rohit Chaudhry who heads the centre.
Schools say that there is a shortage of special educators.Many parents of special children spend time in school,not just helping out with their own child but also assisting the class.Some eventually undergo training and join the staff.Vidyasagar as well as SPASTN run one-year diploma and degree courses in special education.
During the lunch break at SPASTN,a group of little boys plays cricket with a plastic bat and ball in the corridor.They grin sheepishly and slink away when Sheela scolds them for breaking the rules.How many times must I tell you to play outside, she calls out after them.And then turns to say,Theyre a lot like any other children,they just walk or talk differently.And thats what we want the rest of society to understand. (With reporting by Sruthy Susan Ullas in Bangalore,Diya Banerjee in Delhi,Somdatta Basu in Kolkata,and Sharmila Ganesan-Ram and Sudeshna Chatterjee in Mumbai)
TECHTONIC CHANGE
Technology comes as a boon for many disabled people.Computers,reading software,MP3 players,scanners and cell phones not only help them reach out to the world but also stay informed.Braille is fairly outdated now and people prefer to read online, says copyright lawyer Rahul Cherian,who set up bookbole.com with friends Sachin Malhan from Mumbai and Reuben Jacob from Kochi.
Bookbole.com is a free,collaborative site where the disabled share books,journals,manuals and even class notes that have been scanned and converted into an accessible format and uploaded.Right now,theres a lot of educational material being uploaded because students find it tough to get books that are easy to read.The iPhone manual is also one of our most downloaded docs, he says.Another site with books in accessible formats is bookshare.org,though it is a paid service.Members download books in a compressed,encrypted file that can be read aloud by software or displayed on a computer screen.
Kalpana Rao,the mother of a 23-year-old girl with cerebral palsy,says scanners and software have made her life so much simpler.Earlier,I had to read everything to her.Now I just scan and convert books into word documents.And Bhavna reads or listens to them, she says.
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