Don’t handicap people with disabilities

Give them a normal education and the chance to achieve their full potential

ARCHANA JAIN

COLLEGES all over the country have recently opened and crowds of new students are thronging their corridors. What is unusual this time is the fact that there are many differently-abled people who have taken admission in regular colleges. For instance, an estimated 118 persons with different types of disabilities have entered the portals of Delhi University. This may not, in itself, seem a big number. But it is an encouraging sign, nevertheless, going by past records when people with disability hardly attended college.

When you look at the choice of subjects-streams they have opted for, however, you do a double-take. The most common choices have been music, arts and Sanskrit. Not for them the clamour for popular streams like Commerce, the Sciences, Computers, Maths, and so on. It may be a little perplexing for the reader to understand the reason behind such choices.

If you go a little deeper into the background of these students, the picture becomes clearer. Apparently, most of them have received their schooling at home. Or they may have gone to school for a few years and then dropped out due to the problems they faced.

Therefore, given the general lack of a solid educational grounding, there is this tendency to opt from the fine arts or languages. This is not to say that opting for such subjects is a bad thing, but is this choice dictated by inclination or compulsion?

What emerges is that our educational system is not geared towards including the physically/mentally handicapped child in mainstream schools. This is because it is either clueless about the necessity of grooming each individual to achieve his/her full potential, or it is just too lethargic to bother. A progressive, open-minded individual leads to a progressive, open-minded society. After the family, the school is the second most important influence in shaping a child’s mind and personality. Hence, it is important for every child to grow in the nurturing environment of peers and teachers.

The Disability Rights Act, 1995, which was enacted for the benefit of the disability sector, stipulates in clear terms that all persons with disability, up to the age of 18 years, are to receive free and unconditional education in government and/or private schools. However, the directive is being openly flouted and these children are often denied admission on some pretext or the other. As a result, they are forced to receive their education either at home or in schools set up especially for them.

Now special education may be useful but it is not the ideal solution. Why? Since a special school admits only those who are handicapped, students there are not exposed to interacting with normal children on a one-on-one basis in their formative years. This impairs their confidence to interact with wider society later. Besides, they are treated with kid gloves here and are provided a sheltered, made-to-order environment. Later, when they grow up and are faced with the outside world, life can become extremely difficult.

In a way, segregation never goes away. And this is detrimental not just to the child with disability but to a normal child as well. Normal children just do not get to see a disabled person often and so for them the disabled kid, and the term ‘‘disability’’, always remain outside the purview of their understanding. A child with disability will always remain ‘‘different’’. Someone to be helped and sympathised with, perhaps, but the understanding that disability is just a ‘‘condition’’ and could have occurred to anyone is not understood sufficiently.

To confront and change this scenario, it is vital that more interaction between a normal child and a child with disability is encouraged. The government should wake up to the fact that, by ignoring the educational needs of the differently-abled, they are not harnessing the vast potential of a huge segment of society.