INTRODUCTION:

The Salamanca declaration (UNESCO, 1994), a landmark international statement proclaimed the fundamental right of education to every child. All the international representatives in the conference including India agreed to a dynamic new statement on the education of disabled children, which called for ‘Inclusion’ to be the norm i.e. children with special needs must have access to regular schools with a child centered pedagogy.

The International Classifications of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) provided a standard language and a conceptual basis for the definition and measurement of health and disability (WHO, 2001). The proclaimed statement of the Salamanca declaration and the standard definition conceptualized by ICF took shape from the Right to Education [RTE] Act – 2009 in India, which spells out that, ‘Education’ is the birth right for each and every children between the age group of 6 to 14 years. The main aim of this act is ‘Education for All’ and by an amendment in 2010, the act extends the facilities to the special children for inclusion. The concept behind inclusion is to avail appropriate environment to special children for their whole development and to enable them to make use of their residual abilities in most effective way to compete with their non-disabled peer groups. Inclusive education is a process intended to respond to student’s diversity by increasing their participation and reducing exclusion within and from Education. Thus is the initiative to reduce exclusion and to increase inclusion of the special children to the mainstream of the society. They can live a social life without any inferiority feeling and with the same steps as compare to their non-disabled counter part at every stage of life. For this, he or she

* Assistant Professor in Special Education (Visual Impairment), Department of Disability Studies, Rabindra Bharati University, 56A, B. T. Road, Kolkata – 700 050, W.B., India.

has to be an expert in the daily leaving skills as per the requirement. All the activities performed by a man from his wakeup at morning till to go to the bed at night are called daily activities. This also includes academic activities including tactual skill, sign language etc. These skills develop rapidly once the child starts walking and even more rapidly when the child goes to school.

THE CHALLENGES FOR ‘INCLUSION’:

Personal Challenges:

Each of children especially exceptional children is different from other with respect to their degree of impairment. Every disability gives rise to special educational needs and services. This must be met in appropriate and suitable way. Early identification also helps those children in reducing their sufferings. It helps to prepare appropriate assistive devices and services for them. But maximum of those children can not able to avail these facilities due to lack of awareness of their parents. Financial crises of the family are another main problem to avail the required services for these children. In India maximum of the population think that, to teach a special children is a pointless matter and therefore, they are not allowing their kids to school. But, various conference, seminars, and awareness programs at block, district and state level helped them to know the reality and the rate of inclusion is slowly increasing day-to-day in India. Various stakeholders are also involved in the process of inclusion.

Social Challenges:

The word ‘Blindness or Visually Impaired’ is born with society and is as old as life itself. The attitude towards visually impaired have varied from culture to culture. ‘Buddhism’ perhaps the only religion that teaches its followers to care and protect visually impaired people. It has been reported that, ‘Buddhist’ believers established first school for the visually impaired in Japan, where the pupils were taught messages through music (Ratnakar, G.P., 2017). Real inclusion implies learning at the highest level and developing the potential of each child. It is not possible without the support and involvement of family and community.

Slow Change in Community Attitude

The community 'Durga Pujas in West Bengal are referred as ‘sarbajanin’ (Open to all), but people with disability hardly have any access to them (Sing, S. S., 2018, The Hindu). Two 100% visually disabled visitors complained that, the characters in Braille written in the Pandal were too close, with not enough spaces. According to ‘Shuvojit Moulik’ of Civilian Welfare foundation (Kolkata), the change in the attitude of the organizers towards disabled is very slow. (The Hindu, 16/10/2018, pp: 7)

Visually Impaired enjoying the Braille- enabled idols in Kolkata on Monday,15^th October, 2018 (The Hindu)

Physically Disabled, who use wheel chair, soak in the festivities at a Durga Puja Pandal. Monday, 15^th October, 2018 (The Hindu, Kolkata Edition)

Therefore it is seen that, in maximum festive events disabled people were discouraged or neglected and it seems that, the negative attitude of the community is changing in a slow pace towards inclusion of disabled in each and every social activities.

Challenges in Inclusive Classroom Management:

The term ‘inclusion’ describes educating a child with special educational needs fulltime in the regular classroom (Hick and Thomas, 2009; Valle and Connor, 2011). Inclusion settings allow special children to study in the normal classroom with their non-disabled sighted peers. To compete with their peers, special children must undergo placement readiness training to be expert in Braille, Sign Language, and other academic related skills. To read and write Braille is somewhat difficult and time taking than print reading. In the case of Braille, an extra dot slipped in by mistake, a dot missing, or a contraction wrongly used, can alter the entire meaning of a word of phrase to a much greater extent than a spelling mistake in print. The visual impaired students were also slower than their non-disabled sighted peers in word recognition skills. It is observed that even better touch readers were achieving about 55% of the reading speed of average sighted readers (Prasad and Prakash, pp - 99). Tactual feeling of visual impaired persons also decreases with increment of their age. Low vision students can use their residual functional vision for their academic activities. They also can use magnifying glasses to maximize their potentiality in seeing. Some time it becomes difficult to understand sign languages for hearing impaired children if they do not have expertise in the concerned skill. They can use hearing machine according to their requirement. Besides, the immediate challenge for those managing inclusion and special educators is to maintain the ‘quality of the education’ though the first achievement of the inclusion is ‘equity’. Placement is one of the big challenges for inclusion (Rayner, S, 2002).

Challenges from Stake holders:

Inclusion classrooms are a wonderful concept but teachers require a lot of training, patience and compassion to manage it successful. In recent years, the practice of inclusive education has been widely embraced as an ideal model for education, both in South Africa and internationally (Maher, 2009). No doubt, this is an ideal practice, but can not be implemented properly till the date because of the denial of the school management. In various state of India, state governments have no clear policy to recruit special educators for elementary and secondary schools. Though there is a policy to reserve 25% seats for children from weaker section including disabled children in local schools, ‘Inclusion’ is getting rare success due to the negative attitude of school managements including state governments. Goa is still in behind in this field. Goa yet to pass rules on new RPWD Act-2016 gazetted by the center in December, 2016. Associations frustrated over the state government inaction. The Department does not seem to have realized the seriousness of the act and its implications. Again, the inclusion of 21 disabilities has made the task even more challenging (The Hindu, 12/11/2018). Not only Goa, but this attitude of various state governments put negative and bad effect on special education. Simply, appointing some itinerate teacher in at cluster level is not sufficient. There must be some policy for recruiting special educators in pre, elementary and secondary schools. Successful inclusion depends on the attitudes and actions of school principals (Zollers et. al, 1999) and the investment of other school personnel as they create the school culture and have the ability to challenge or support inclusion (Ainscow, 2002). Availability of various assistive devices and barrier free infrastructures for disabled children are among other big challenges for school managements. Adequate funding is a necessity for inclusion and yet it is rare. Schools often lack adequate facilities, qualified and properly-trained teachers and other staff members, educational materials and general support. At the same time a flexible curriculum has major role in inclusion. Sadly, lack of resources is pervasive throughout many educational systems in India. Therefore, the first and foremost step in initiating inclusion is to bring about policy changes in educational administration and there is a need for a proper planning and management of capacity building of all concerned persons, who promote inclusion.

Challenges from Ministries:

In the present system, special education is under the administrative control of the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, while integrated education is under the administrative control of the ‘Ministry of Human Resource Development’. Therefore, operationally the system poses problems. For example, NCTE prescribes six month training in ‘elementary education’ for those primary teachers who employed in inclusive setup after getting trained from RCI recognised institutes, while there is no such provision for those teachers who trained from NCTE recognised institute though it is an important criteria in inclusive setup. That is early identification and assessment of disabilities of children at pre-school and elementary level. ‘NCTE’ reluctant to recruit them, who passed from ‘RCI’ recognised institutes at secondary and higher secondary level schools. This put a bad impact on special education programme as well as on inclusion process.

Socio – Economical Challenges:

Many policy makers don’t understand or believe in inclusive education, and these leaders can stonewall efforts to make school policies more inclusive. This can exclude whole groups of learners from the mainstream educational system, thereby preventing them from enjoying the same opportunities for education and employment afforded to traditional students. India, having developing country maximum families in the rural India are below the poverty line and facing financial crises, which raises the maximum problems for them to survive. Due the lack of awareness, parents can not able to identify defectives in their children on immediate basis, and later identification increases the struggle of the children. Family disturbances in poor families, poor health services, and other social factors make create barriers even for traditional learners, and these challenges make inclusion all but impossible.

CONCLUSION:

An effective policy is required from the government side for proper implementation of inclusion to run the inclusive education more significantly. Funding must be increased so that schools can make the infrastructure changes that are needed. Research has found that without support, the burdens associated with implementation quickly become overwhelming to school officials and they swiftly revert back to a special education model of education delivery (Wildeman and Nomdo, 2007). Including this, attitude towards inclusion must be changed. State governments must do the proper arrangement to increase the special educators and regulate them properly by implementing policies for their recruitment and learning up gradation. Various IT-enabled assistive devices must be used for better access in teaching learning activities. Inclusion is an Ideal practice, if successful; India can able to add this population into its workforce by mainstreaming them. It will be a good new not for them but for our nation also. It all will be possible only when the teachers in inclusive classrooms must incorporate a variety of teaching methods in order to best reach students of varying learning abilities.

REFERENCE:

1. Ainscow, M. (2002): ‘Using research to encourage the development of inclusive practices’. In Farrell, P. and Ainscow, M. (Eds.). ‘Making Special Education Inclusive’. London: David Fulton.

2. Campbell, J., Gilmore, L. and Cuskelly, M. (2003): ‘Changing student teachers’ attitudes towards disability and inclusion’. Cited in ‘Journal of Intellectual and Developmental Disability’, 28(4):369-379.

3. Das, J. P. (2015): ‘Reading Difficulties and Dyslexia – An Interpretation for teachers’, Sage Publication India Limited, Mathura Road, New Delhi – 44, pp:6.

4. Deshprabhu, S. (2014): ‘Inclusive Education in India – An Overview’, Published by ‘Kanishka Publishers, Distributors’, New Delhi – 110 002, pp: 1 – 166.

5. Donohue, D. and Bornman, J. (2014):'The challenges of realising inclusive education in South Africa', Published in South African Journal of Education; 2014; 34(2), pp: 1-14.

6. Elite Academy (2018): ‘UGC – Net Guide for Education’, pp: 26, 27.

7. Hick, P. and Thomas, G. (Eds.) (2009): ‘Inclusion and Diversity in Education’, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

8. Maher, M. (2009): 'Information and advocacy: Forgotten components in the strategies for achieving inclusive education in South Africa? Africa Education Review, 6(1):19-36.

9. Prasad, J. and Prakash, R. (2012): ‘Education of Handicapped Children – Problems and Solutions’, Published by Kanishka Publishers, Distributors, New Delhi – 110 002, pp: 1 – 140.

10. Ratnakar, G. P. (2017): ‘Visually Impaired Children – Behaviour and Epidemiological Factors’, Published by Commonwealth Publishers (Private Limited), New Delhi – 110 002, pp: 1 – 10.

11. Rayner, S. (2002): ‘Managing Special and Inclusive Education’, Sage Publication

12. Scruggs, T. E., and Mastropieri, M. A. (1996): Teacher perceptions of mainstreaming / inclusion, 1958–1995: a research synthesis. Exceptional Children, 63(1):59-74.

13. Sing, A. J. and Virk, J. K. (2014): ‘Inclusive Education’, Twenty-first Century Publications, Patiala – 147 002, pp: 87 – 108.

14. Sing, S. S. (2018): ‘Puja Pandals in Kolkata remain out of bounds for the disabled’, published in The Hindu dated on Tuesday, 16^th October, 2018, pp:7.

15. The Gazette of India (2009): 'The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act,2009', published on 26th August, 2009

16. The Hindu (12/11/2018): ‘Goa yet to pass rules of new disability Act’, published on Monday, November 12, 2018 in Noida/Delhi Edition the daily paper, pp: 4.

17. Valle, J. and Connor, J. (2011): ‘Rethinking Disability’, New York: McGraw Hill

18. Wildeman, R. A. and Nomdo, C. (2007): ‘Implementation of Inclusive Education: How far are we?’, Occasional Paper, Idasa Budget Information Service.

19. Zollers, N. J., Ramanathan, A. K., and Yu, M. (1999): ‘The relationship between school culture and inclusion: How an inclusive culture supports inclusive education’. Qualitative Studies in Education, 12(2):157-174.

20. http://www.csie.org.uk/inclusion/unesco-salamanca.shtml, downloaded at 3.16pm dated on 21/11/2018.

21. https://www.thinkinclusive.us/barriers-to-inclusive-education/, posted on September, 14, 2015 and downloaded on 18-11-2018 at8.16 pm.

22. https://wehavekids.com/education/Top-Challenges-Teacher-Face-in-Special-Needs-Inclusive-Classrooms, posted on February, 12, 2018 and downloaded om18-11-2018 at 8.21pm

23. http://www.who.int/classifications/icf/en/, downloaded at 3.10pm dated on 21/11/2018.

Received on 22.11.2018 Modified on 04.12.2018

Res. J. Humanities and Social Sciences. 2018; 9(4): 711-714.

DOI: 10.5958/2321-5828.2018.00119.5