4 -10 April 2002
Issue No.580
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 4 -10 April 2002 Issue No.580 |
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Working as a team
Years of marginalisation have spun a vicious circle, further disabling special-needs children. Amany Abdel-Moneim reports on a move toward integration
Eight-year-old Reem Omar and seven-year-old Mohamed Ismail are disabled, but attend ordinary classes at Tor Sinai Primary School. They are being encouraged to be themselves, set their own goals and develop their own interests and talents.
photo: Adel Anis
"At first, I rejected the idea. I couldn't imagine how such children could cope in ordinary, over-crowded classrooms," says Manar Galal, Reem's teacher. Then, during a training course at the Support Education Training Integration (SETI) centre, Galal watched films of successful projects to mainstream special needs children in education. The films changed her mind; and Reem's experience has convinced her that integration is a good idea.
"Reem's presence in class forces me to repeat myself to make sure she understands. Now, other students who tended to lag behind have been able to catch up too," Galal says. Afaf Sabri, director of Tor Sinai Primary School, believes that the other children benefit from being exposed to children with special needs through developing greater compassion and understanding. "So let's work together as a team," Sabri says. Today, Reem's work is better than that of some of her classmates.
Mohamed's teacher believes that government schools should open their doors to children with special needs. Teachers also need training, and "the best results will not be achieved without the parents' full involvement," she adds.
Citing her experience, Sabri says the other students' parents initially rejected the idea, and the first two months were extremely difficult. "We had to organise meetings three months before the school year began. Now, children with special needs mingle normally with the others and the idea has been accepted, " she adds.
Tor Sinai Primary School is participating in a pilot project for children with special needs, who have long been sidelined in Egypt's social and educational process. At last, in a recent conference, Minister of Education Dr Hussein Kamel Bahaaeddin spoke of the need to end their isolation and announced a national programme that will integrate them into state schools.
The preliminary phase will be executed by UNESCO's Cairo and Beirut offices in collaboration with Save the Children UK, the Caritas Association (an NGO) and the ministry's elementary schools programme. The process will include training courses on teaching special-needs students, in which 270 schools are participating.
While the integration of children with special needs has long been a priority worldwide, the pilot project involving Tor Sinai and other primary schools only began in Egypt in 1999, aimed at preparing such children to gradually adapt to the national curriculum. Its success led the minister of education to initiate a nationwide programme.
Alaa Sobeih, disability adviser for Save the Children UK's Middle East and North Africa department, agrees: "Integrated education is the term used to describe the process of bringing children with special needs into mainstream schools and recognising that they have the right to be treated as equal citizens and active members of the community," he said. "Inclusive education," on the other hand, is a wider process incorporating the idea that disadvantaged groups generally can be accommodated once their diverse needs are recognised.
"It is our duty to help children with special needs become productive members of the community, rather than a burden to it," says Hanan Nichola, deputy head of the Family Rehabilitation Department, which is in charge of the integration project in Cairo. The pilot project, she explains, is the direct outcome of the first agreement between the Ministry of Education, SETI, and UNESCO, the last of which funded the academic year 1999-2000. Save the Children funded the project's second phase in 2000-2001.
"The project aims at bridging the gap between the disabled and the rest of society. SETI works as a mediator between parents and children, on one hand, and officials, on the other," explains Nichola.
Six primary schools were chosen in Alexandria, Cairo and Minya as testing grounds for implementation. "They are mostly state- run and located in poor areas, apart from one private school, in Minya, which is affiliated to the Upper Egypt Association, an NGO," Nichola says. "We have a total of 26 children with special needs to be integrated (one child per class). The project concentrates on integrating children at the kindergarten level.
According to the Centre for Information and Decision-Making Support, specialised centres offer services to about 23,000 disabled children in Egypt. Statistics from the World Health Organisation (WHO) show that 10 per cent of the world's population suffers from some form of disability. According to Sobeih, "even were Egypt's disabled population just five per cent of the total, with three per cent mentally disabled, only one per cent or so would be receiving appropriate services."
Osama Madbouli, an education expert, points out that the lack of a support system and integration facilities keep special needs children lagging behind, educationally as well as socially, and cripple them even when they have the capacity to cope on their own.
Because society and the state stereotype the disabled as useless or burdensome, the government has not paid enough attention to children with special needs. "The disabled are always at the very bottom of the government agenda in education, funding, employment opportunities and even within the family, where disabled children are marginalised by their siblings," asserts Madbouli.
What is missing, as most people involved in the project underlined, is the media's role. "People should deal with children who have special needs properly and with respect," Nichola notes. Madbouli further points out that many families need help to understand that disabled children can lead independent lives. Parents need a hot-line to help and guide them in emergency cases, he argues.
"Many families simply don't know where to go when they discover that they have a disabled child," says a woman whose daughter has Down's Syndrome. "Some physicians are unaware of the health problems that accompany disability. Programmes should be designed for physicians too, at least to assist them in making a correct diagnosis.
The main problem is background and socialisation, according to sociologist Samia Rafiq. "We have been taught not to look at people who look different. If a child stares at someone with Down's Syndrome, the mother says 'Don't look, it's rude,' but without explaining why; it is just a taboo. This situation prevails in most societies where institutional care for the mentally challenged is unavailable or inadequate -- even though such care makes integration easier and more acceptable."
The disabled are still isolated, "and this is a major obstacle to our rehabilitation programmes," remarks Thoraya Metwalli Hussein, head of the disability programme at the Ministry of Social Affairs. "We have to change such negative perceptions if we want any of our ambitious programmes to make headway."
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