According to the World Health Organization, there are an estimated 24 million children with special needs in India. Like any other children, children with special needs too have ambitions and dreams for their future. Like all children, they too need quality education to develop their skills and realise their full potential.
Yet children with special needs are often overlooked in policymaking, which limits their access to education and their ability to participate in social, economic and political life.
How do you identify children with special needs? For education to be truly inclusive the needs gap analysis should take into account the full spectrum of reason for the differences in learning ability. These can be because of cognitive, physical or linguistic minority reasons (native tribal language speakers – adivasis).
Inclusive education means all children study in the same classrooms, irrespective of their ability. This includes not only children with disabilities, but speakers of minority languages too.
The context in India
In India, the majority of mainstream schools do not have an active programme and curriculum for supporting the needs of different learners. This reluctance on the part of the school management stems from the mistaken belief that having learners of different abilities will somehow dilute the experience of children who do not have special needs.
This notion is mistaken ab initio. It is vital for all students to develop empathy, connection, and a sense of a social responsibility which extends beyond meeting their own needs. One of the best ways to do this is to have children of various abilities learn together from an early age. All young people grow from encountering a variety of experiences.
What are some of the means by which inclusive education can be achieved?
Social emotional learning
Social emotional learning (SEL) is the process of developing the self-awareness, self-control, and interpersonal skills that are vital for learning, succeeding in the workplace, and creating healthy nourishing relationships in life.
SEL gives people—from childhood through the full life span—the tools they need to build and maintain positive relationships, control strong emotions, and express empathy. Developing these skills is the key to having happy well adjusted adults.
Deep meaningful connections and relations in life are the single biggest predictor of happiness, according to the Harvard Study of Adult Development. The world’s longest running social science experiment concluded that more than wealth, power or fame, it is the quality of our relationships that determine our happiness. Having a structured programme for social emotional learning in schools is vital for helping students gain the skills to find happiness.
Dr Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz, the directors of the Harvard study, assert that the most important factor for well-being in people is developing positive relationships with other people. The premise is simple and therefore easily overlooked. There is a deep link between mental health and the quality and depth of our connections with other people.
Creating structured programmes
Inclusive settings offer students many opportunities to learn useful skills, such as following daily routines, figuring out different ways to solve problems, using humour and sharing stories, and communicating effectively.
Ask anyone what they remember about their school days, and the majority will tell you it’s the friends they made.
Inclusive learning environments provide students with and without disabilities many opportunities to establish relationships with their peers. These relationships form the beginnings of friendships that are a source of fun and enjoyment, and an essential source of emotional support during challenging times.
Inclusion is all about students having a sense of belonging. In an inclusive classroom climate, instructional decisions are made on the basis of each student’s individual needs and not on labels, numbers and test scores.
Use of artificial intelligence and other technologies
The advent of AI and other new technologies is likely to have profound effects on how we live, learn, love and find meaning and connection as a species. Some of the most exciting uses of AI is in creating personalised models for children with special needs.
Digital reading tools can be a revelation for students who have reading challenges. Tools that offer text-to-speech software allow students to listen to passages of text or instructions rather than reading what’s on a page or screen. While this is helpful for all students at any given time in the classroom, it’s particularly useful for students with dyslexia and students who speak English as their second or third language.
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AI is still in its infancy, and every iterative improvement shall make this an increasingly powerful tool for inclusive education.
To prepare for this, we first need to reboot our school curricula. AI and data science should be compulsory subjects and taught in an age-appropriate manner from the primary education years.
Second, we need to rapidly upskill teachers and coaches to impart these skills to students. Third, we need to enable much closer interactions between software firms, schools, and regulators to update the curriculum frequently.
Tailpiece
The aim of a good education system is not to teach students what to learn but how to learn. Helping students to become knowledgeable, responsible and caring is an important priority for us all.
However, today’s young people face unparalleled demands in their everyday lives. They must achieve at school, understand and appreciate others, make the right decisions about social and health practices, resist negative influences both online and offline, and contribute to their family and community.
Planning and actively encouraging a programme for inclusive education will make a much healthier and vibrant society.
The author is the trustee of Sanskriti Group of Schools and an alumnus of London School of Economics.
Edited by Swetha Kannan
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