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Bibliographies : Save the Children (UK)
Introduction
The flow of information is predominately
north-south, and in relation to the field of special and integrated education,
this has been true for many decades. 'Solutions' found in Western contexts have
been exported to developing countries and not surprisingly have more often than
not failed to meet the needs of those countries. More recently, maybe because
of the increase maturity of international exchange, programmes are being
implemented in the so-called developing countries which take the best from
international experience, build on the good in indigenous practice, and result
in a culturally appropriate sustainable programme. Some of the more interesting
lessons from these programmes relate to the way in which success can occur
within very severe resource limitations - the communities where they operate
are usually very aware that resources are scarce and finite and so have many
years of expertise in resource creativity and management.
Save the Children Fund's (SCF) experience of integrated education programmes in Asia and Africa is increasingly demonstrating that minimal resources and lack of resources are not the main obstacles to successful integration. In fact, disability programmes seem to thrive best when resources are minimal, and community self-reliance is optimal. Throwing money at a programme more often suffocates it. It is more often the planned and careful use of resources over a long period of time, and the careful choice and capacity-building of human resources which contributes towards sustainable, effective and successful programmes.
This paper is primarily aimed as stimulating discussion rather than providing in-depth conclusions at this stage. But whether or not there are lessons to learn from the South, we will not know unless we first take an interest in what is happening in developing countries, and at least open to the possibility that 'they' may have something to teach 'us'. I will present examples from SCF's integrated education programmes in Africa and Asia, beginning with some research results from Lesotho.
Lesotho
Lesotho is small country in the middle of South
Africa with a population of 2 million people. In recent years there have been
droughts which have increased levels of malnutrition. Although about 78% of
children attend primary school, there are very high drop-out and repeater
rates. Girls outnumber boys in schools because boys are required for herding.
Particularly in the poorer mountain areas, schools lack basic infrastructure
such as classrooms, latrines and water. Other problems include overcrowding, a
high percentage of over-age students, exceptionally high pupil-teacher ratios
(often 100:1), poor pay of teachers, un-affordable fees and poverty of
parents.
The integrated education programme in Lesotho is a national programme which aims to include all primary schools. It is being implemented by the Ministry of Education with support from international non-government organisations and United Nations agencies. the programme has the following characteristics:-
Over a month in 1995, a small collaborative research project was undertaken focusing on two out of the ten pilot schools. The first of these schools was described by the implementing special education department as having a very 'positive' response to the programme. The school was deemed to be positive according to the following criteria:
We were very interested to find out why this particular school had responded so positively particularly as it was in a very remote rural mountain area, eight hours by road from the capital, Maseru, and in one of the poorest districts of Lesotho exhibiting all the problems listed above.
The research team used a variety of techniques including observation, semi-structured interviews, storytelling, diagrams and profiles to show networking and progress, and focus groups. Teachers, children, parents and community key people were involved, and all the findings were shared and analysed with the teachers, district eduction officers and district resource teacher.
Initially, the whole research team had a level of scepticism about the apparent success of this school; we wondered whether they were just trying to impress the Ministry, and whether they really believed in integration. I personally was totally unprepared for what we actually discovered, and found the whole experience very humbling. Some teachers with over 115 children in their classes had started to respond to the needs of children with hearing, visual and physical impairment. They have begun to assess, plan and implement programmes for children who were struggling in the classroom. They had begun to learn sign and Braille, and involve children in helping each other. They spend extra time at lunch, after school and sometimes even on Saturdays to help children who need it. They visit families and take histories, and have even been making referrals and taking children to clinics when parents do not have the resources. In the word of the teachers themselves:
'this programme has lessened the drop-out rate and the repeaters... it benefits all children ... My job satisfaction has improved; I enjoy teaching more even though I work longer hours. The programme has equipped us with different techniques for our so-called normal pupils' (class teacher).
'the programme benefits everyone. The non-disabled benefit from interaction; they learn a lot from disabled children such as social responsibility. We have been asking the question 'how can we cater to individual needs' for a long time, but it was not until this programme that we understood how to do it... to stop this programme would be like asking a repentant sinner to return to their sins! Education is for all' (District Education Officer)
The children themselves were one hundred percent in favour of the inclusive approach;
'disabled children and non-disabled children should not be separated.... we would be losing our good friends .... we help each other; we make those who can't see feel what they don't know, we push those in their wheelchairs if they can't walk .... we (disabled children) lend them things they have forgotten, we help them in subjects they don't know' (disabled and non-disabled children's focus group)
The team concluded that the conditions which seemed to contribute to the positive approach to integration were:-
The team felt that teachers seemed to be genuinely motivated by a sense of community responsibility, religious conviction and humanitarianism, and they did perceive it as empowering in the sense that many felt that their teaching skills and job satisfaction had improved. The disabled and children were definitely making progress in their learning and socially, and there were no examples given of children who were not improving. teachers had dealt with constraints through extensive collaboration, frank discussion, personal commitment an above all through the support of key people such as the DEO and DRT. The team felt that 'enthusiasm is top to bottom and sideways'.
One child with cerebral palsy had been identified through the programmes, and had started to attend school once a wheelchair had been obtained from the local clinic. She began to make progress not just academically but in terms of her basic self-help skills and overall confidence. Then the wheelchair broke and no-one knew how to repair it. But by then the various different parts of the community were concerned for her welfare and had all gained a lot from seeing her improvement. So a neighbour lent a wheelbarrow and other school children pushed her to school. Now the neighbour needs the wheelbarrow and she is stick at home. But he teachers visit her and send older children to teach her, her friends visit her and teachers are currently negotiating the constrains are real, but what seems to be the crucial factors is that there is a real body of people with a real interest in her welfare who are prepare to pool their resources and put themselves out to help
Even prior to the integration 'programme', a feasibility study had shown that about 19% of children already within primary schools had some sort of impairment or some difficulty in learning. 'Disabled' children were taken care of by extended families and often socially well integrated. An ethos of inclusion was a natural part of traditional rural society, and exclusion seemed to be a result of some sort of threat to the whole, whether real or imaginary. This could be true of some types of negative superstitions about disability, and also when the lack of knowledge about how to help the child threatened the physical survival of the family. Where the integration programme had been most successful, it had built on these existing inclusive impulses and practices.
In Swaziland, another country in the middle of South Africa, one child with brittle bones was being pushed to her local school in her wheelchair everyday be fellow pupils. However, the road was basically a dirt track and the ride was a rough one, resulting in frequent broken bones. The community got together and tarmaced the road in order to enable her to have a smoother ride. This obviously improved the situation for the whole community, and demonstrates how a focus on disability can be a catalyst for a broader community development.
The other school in the research project in Lesotho was located near the capital and was better resourced. Although the district itself is one of the better off economically, the retrenchment of mineworkers from South Africa has contributed to community disruption with disputes over grazing, burning of houses and violence.
The Special Education Unit were concerned that this school was responding 'negatively' to the programme based on the following criteria:
The Unit remembered that they were anti-integration during the feasibility study. They felt that the teachers saw their role as teachers of bright children. The 'puzzle' in this case, was not only that the school was in the comparatively well-resourced area and near the capital, but that for many years, there had been a hostel for physically disabled girls who were attending the school, therefore teachers were used to teaching disabled children. The team felt it was not logical that they did not want training to help the children they already had in their classes.
The research results were extremely interesting and the team felt they had learnt far more than they expected to. The team felt that they learnt important lessons about the very real difficulties teachers were facing, and the conditions which constrained programme implementation. These were:-
Although the teachers had more resources than in the other school, and they were very near the capital, they complained a lot about lack of resources. But the research team felt that there was no evidence that lack of resources were the main problem in preventing successful inclusion.
Examples from Asia
In a poor province in China, with a
population of 56 million, the Provincial Education Committee is implementing an
integrated kindergarten programme. To begin with they were concerned to improve
on general access to eduction, and realised that a large number of those
excluded from schools were disabled children. They felt that although special
education would be the preferred option, they could not afford it, and so
integration was a cheap alternative. A few years later they were stating that
'integration is not just a cheaper way to work, but a better way to work - all
children benefit'.
Chinese kindergartens often accommodate over 2,000 pupils, and classroom sizes are larger with over 50 children. This programme focused on encouraging teachers to work in teams, using a range of child-focused methods such as small group work and peer support, and basically implementing the philosophy that all children are individuals and that teaching should respond to this reality. Resource inputs were kept to an absolute minimum, because the project was intended to be replicated throughout the province, and the province was poor. In fact, experience had shown that where there were high resource inputs into a pilot project, it mitigated against replicability and sustainability. Local materials and junk materials were used to produce any teaching aids required, and were made by teachers themselves.
In Vietnam, a recent evaluation of the disability programme in Ho Chi Minh found that there were several cultural and political conditions which both promoted and obstructed inclusion. For example, there is a very strong commitment to support the eduction of young people - teachers are extremely dedicated and work long hours, every family however poor prioritises education for their child.
Part of this government commitment to the young people is a focus on improving health, and therefore schools have a role in encouraging good nutrition, and a teacher receives salary bonus points if her class children gain weight. Therefore a child with cerebral palsy who is underweight and not likely to gain much can actually prevent a teacher's pay rise!
So far it seems that awareness-raising at community level and support to families is actually more successful than trying to change school systems which are to an extent, very efficient for the 'normal' child, but extremely rigid. As parents of disabled children become more aware of their child's capacity to learn and right to education, they will themselves begin to make demands on local schools.
The Spastics Society of Northern India in Delhi began life modelled on a traditional Western special school, with their main focus on quality of provision. Over the last few years they have shifted dramatically towards more of the rights-based model of disability, and a commitment to reach larger numbers particularly from the poorer social sectors.
Influenced by a disabled Indian activists, they quickly took on board the concepts of empowerment and promotion of self-advocacy, but what is really interesting, is their ability to fuse concepts such as 'rights' and 'empowerment' with the best of Indian cultural tradition. Therefore they speak of 'rights with values' and stress that they are not promoting an individualistic concept of right, where every individual expects to get the best from themselves, but they stress that a struggle for rights must be in context of a commitment to the community and to inter-dependence, rather than independence.
One example of this concept comes from Africa, where parents of non-disabled children were asked how they felt about the integration programme. They were happy, because it taught 'social responsibility and patience' to their children who sometimes had to wait a bit longer for the teacher's attention, or to spend time helping someone who learned more slowly. In the West, most parents are concerned that their child will be 'held back' by children they perceive as being more of a drain on resources.
The real constraints of poverty
Having given examples of how
poverty is not an obstacle to inclusion, and can often even promote the type of
community self-help and mutual support which makes an inclusive society work, I
will now redress the balance. There are many types of poverty, and no-one would
deny that an absolute lack of basic material needs causes suffering and is
intolerable. But there are still communities in the world where a sense
sustainable living and the need for mutual support and sharing is an everyday
reality. Within these communities, the poverty is often lack of access to basic
information and skills which would make a dramatic difference to quality of
life, particularly for disabled children.
In the Lesotho programme, teachers lacked the simple knowledge that disabled children can learn and improve. Mothers with children with cerebral palsy lack the knowledge that a type of sitting position will enable them to swallow food and not starve to death. And yes, of course resources are needed, but within the context of overall community development - access is not about wheelchairs and ramps but about roads and basic transport for all. Aids and equipment are needed, but from sustainable sources and at affordable costs.
The poverty of 'developing' countries within a global context keeps them dependent on development programmes and the arbitrary allocation of sponsorship to attend 'international' eduction conferences. At a local level, what we could call poverty does not seem to prevent inclusion in to the mainstream, because at the local level there is fundamental equality. But globally, the huge discrepancies in power resulting in keeping three quarters of the world poor, really do result in exclusion from the mainstream. For a Zimbabwean woman to be physically present at an international conference does not mean the she is included. Exclusion can be maintained through language, emphasis on written traditions, bias in Western philosophy, isolation, and cultural ignorance as well as by finance.
Conclusions
The above examples have hopefully challenged some
commonly held assumptions such as;
A recent workshop held by SCF tried to pull together some lessons of experience from or integrated education work as a whole. These are:-
This paper has focused on school-based eduction programmes, but another key lesson 'from the south' is that education is more than schooling; it is a process within the community as a whole.
Inclusive education can happen even when a severely disabled child remains based at home most of the time. One situation would be where a family is discriminated against and deemed to be cursed, the child is lying in a back room, and the whole family is sliding further an further into absolute poverty.
Another situation would be where community members visit and support the mother, she is involved in income generation and neighbours help care for her child, older pupils come and help teach the child self-care skills and offer some basic stimulation.
An expensively resourced, segregated special school is not the only solution, even went the child has a severe impairment and the family is poor. We need to look beyond schools for inclusive education, and there are communities in 'the south' who have much to teach us.
Sue Stubbs
Bibliographies : Save the Children (UK)
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03/11/1998