In ancient times, the children with special needs were considered as “unfit.” They were deprived of all sorts of human rights and facilities that existed in the society. Instead of compassion, people had some hatred tendency towards them. It was even believed that they are possessed by evil spirits.
During the middle age these children were exploited and tortured in the society. They were neither assigned any normal work nor considered as a member of the family. This type of temperament used to make the child remain more isolated from others.
As time passed, after the industrial revolution in Europe people developed a positive attitude to educate the specially abled persons of the society. The idea of survival of the fittest declined and the revolution changed the shape and structure of the social norms and customs. The emerging society facilitated better education, leisure time and merriment for all. The philanthropic institutions and benevolent people had shown their interest to give integrated education.
Samuel G Home one of the volunteers was deeply impressed by the thoughts of Seguin, established a residential for the special needs in Massachusetts, USA as by and by more such homes evolved. In the USA, the estimated prevalence of exceptional or gifted children for special education is approximately 13.5% of the school going children (between the ages of 5 and 19 years) out of which it is estimated that 3% are gifted or creative with their superior cognitive abilities and 10.5% are physically challenged. This glimpse is found in India towards the middle of the 20th century. The persons with disabilities act (PwD Act 1995) has made integration of students with disability a legal responsibility of the Government.
In general, the gifted children are superior in reasoning power to that of other children. They show promising skills in music, dancing, poetry, creative writing, dramatics, graphic arts, creative scientific exteriority, and unusual imagination. They do not find intellectual stimulation in the traditional classwork, school books, syllabus and methods of teaching adopted for the average student. They lose their talent when they are bound to face the normal school curriculum programs. Due to their special abilities, they show significant achievements in learning rate, reading aspects, memorization, and span of attention. While the general education pattern fails to nourish the special child in a planned way for a prospective future, there is obviously a question of social education.
India, like other countries, needs a well-planned system of special education in general schools both private and government schools to save the colossal waste of human energy and man power. Special or integrated education is a modified program which involves some unique tools, techniques, and research efforts in improving instructional arrangements to meet the needs of gifted children. Hence, the growth of facilities related to integrated education helps in getting mainstream facilities for all the special needs children.
The work of placing the learning disabled is an important educational service. The aim is to prepare the child as an efficient citizen of the country and to adjust in suitable work with supply of proper educational facilities to maintain livelihood. Such a service integrated with home support, also enables us to know the challenges that arrive in other aspects of living.
Education not only involves pre and post school activities in terms of the child’s age but is also concerned with home living, leisure time, work training and performance. Our education needs to encompass a much wider range of subject-matter and practical experience. And this can be done by the integration of a multidisciplinary team. Many of the skills which are required for teaching the special needs children are carried out by the people with little training – provided by volunteers and teachers. This should be encouraged by joining everyone’s hands in this service by launching special programs for rehabilitation and remedial services of the special needs through the integrated system of education.
LEARNING KNOWS NO BOUNDS
This post is a part of “International Day of Persons with Disability” blog hop hosted by Sakshi Varma – Tripleamommy. #IDPD2024Bloghop. Access all posts of this bloghop at https://tripleamommy.com/2024/12/02/beyond-barriers-amplifying-voices-for-inclusion-marking-idpd-2024/
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