Is RCI facilitating Inclusive Education?

The operative word in Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan is ‘Sarva’. This organization was created specifically to provide education to ALL. Students with special needs deserve the same access to education that typical students normally get. Why, then, is the Rehabilitation Council of India behind the curve?

          RCI has designed teacher training courses for teaching students with different disabilities. There is the Autism course, the Intellectual disabilities course, the course for teaching deaf children, blind children, and so on. This is excellent for teaching concentrated populations of students with similar disabilities in a segregated school setting. But how would any of these courses help in an inclusive mainstream school? Surely there are not going to be 30 students with autism, or 30 deaf students, etc. in a regular school. Realistically, it would be a mix of students with students with various different disabilities. How would a teacher trained in a narrow specialty be able to teach students with several different needs? Besides, doesn’t specialization come at the end of generalized study?

          I recently heard about a cognitively typical child with muscular dystrophy who couldn’t attend a mainstream math class because the classroom was on an upper floor, and he couldn’t access it in his wheelchair. Where is the justice in that? Is this the shiksha that is envisioned?

          Teaching courses have to be designed to the cognitive level of the student, not type of disability. Would Steven Hawking be in a class for orthopedically impaired children, or would he be in a class for gifted children? Teachers have to be trained to teach students with any disability who are  cognitively at the same level. Then classroom instruction can be designed for a certain level of academic need and difficulty level. So there could be a course for teachers to teach students with a mild to moderate level of cognitive impairment. Another training course would prepare teachers to teach students with severe to profound disabilities. This way, students with mild to moderate needs could be mainstreamed with cognitively similar children, with special education support. Students with severe to profound difficulties would, of course, need to be educated in segregated settings academically, while still providing social integration and life skills instruction with their typical peers. Teachers trained thus would be able to work with students with any kind of disability, instead of being narrowly trained and broadly ineffective.

          While public sentiment is tending towards inclusive education, the powers that be need to facilitate such a process with the right and effective methodology to make it a reality.