A host of mentally retarded children are faced with educational limited choices

Scenes from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream were played on the stage of the social service center in the Obolon district of Kyiv. The cast was very good and practically no one would have guessed that the young people onstage had varying degrees of mental deficiency. The drama studio was in existence for eight months and had won the grand prix of Lviv’s Untrodden Path contest and a diploma and prize for the best performance in Lublin (Poland). The cast includes volunteers – senior students from normal schools Nina Davydovych, Oleksandra Klementovych, and Yevhen Zhulyd. With the latter, the theater has become so important that he even missed the last school bell [part of the graduation ceremony]. And there is also a grownup volunteer, stage director Vitaly Liubota. He started by doing a New Year party for the special children as requested by the parents of the Sunbeam Social Organization and then decided that he had to keep up the good work. Moreover, the children turned out to be extremely interesting material; they are very friendly, ingenious, diligent, with a strong sense of responsibility, and they see the world from their own special perspective. Mr. Liubota tries to select roles and costumes disguising most of their physical shortcomings. He consults their parents in studying every actor’s individual features and the effect of every rehearsal. He looks forward to working out a special method of retarded mental adjustment to reality with the aid of the theater. One of his pupils is a young man who spent four years at a welfare boarding school. His IQ was determined at below average; under the law, such children are to be institutionalized at boarding schools of the ministry of labor and social protection. Another option is being in parental custody and no education. Meanwhile, world learning has registered spectacular progress in the social adjustment of mentally and physically challenged children; they are not isolated but encouraged to take part in the life of society as much as absolutely possible.

It is hard to imagine the problems facing the parents of such children in trying to push through this integration in Ukraine.

In Ukraine, the problems facing such parents striving for such integration defy the imagination. First, there is controversial legislation: the constitution guarantees the right to education, but there are no laws providing for the education of mentally challenged children. Another discrepancy is the children’s right to live with the family and the need for children with a medium and slight degree of mental deficiency to receive an education separately from their parents at special boarding-type institutions of learning. Formally, such children are allowed to go to regular schools, but this entails many problems: the schools being unequipped to handle such integrated instruction, protests from parents of healthy children, and social ostracism.

Now that this society is struggling on its way from the industrial to the information phase, the social vulnerability of mentally handicapped individuals dramatically increases. It becomes increasingly difficult for them to compete on the labor market and even fit into the daily life pattern with its growing hi-tech use. Many parents believe that a way out is in the institution of special schools for children with aggravated mental problems, allowing those with lesser retardation to attend regular schools.

The Day asked Hanna Kolupayeva, candidate of science in pedagogy and academic secretary of the social pedagogical institute under the academy of pedagogic sciences, to share her views on the feasibility of integrating such children into regular schools according to acceptable models of integration given the Ukrainian realities.

H. K.: Our institute has started a pedagogical research experiment. It will last seven years and is meant to integrate children with mental problems into regular educational establishments. Previously such children were mostly enrolled in boarding schools and could not go to normal schools. Now we want them to have a right to attend regular schools and preschool institutions – or at least be entitled to such temporary enrollment – if their parents so desire and if their mental and physical condition suffices. Naturally, all parents want their children to go to regular schools, so that they can study together with normal children. The teachers, however, oppose the idea, because they simply do not know how to deal with such children and how to instruct them on a par with the rest of the class. We are working on regulations containing procedures whereby problem children could enroll in normal schools and what limitations should be imposed. Such integration cannot be interpreted unequivocally, so we work with different models.

“Physically handicapped children but with normal intelligence might well go to a regular school, if their parents and the school administration so agree. Our experiment shows that normal children studying together with handicapped children realize at an early stage that this world is homogenous, that people are divided into talented, ordinary, and physically and mentally afflicted individuals. Such communication helps one learn to be tolerant, sympathetic, and understanding. Healthy children are not impeded in any way, because their challenged fellows study according to a special, individual curriculum. Parents of healthy children sometimes object to such joint instruction, but good organization eliminates the problem. In fact, parents notice that their children enjoy helping children with problems like pushing the wheelchair to the blackboard or out of the classroom during recess. It is in the children’s nature to look after and feel in charge of somebody, a rare privilege these days as many families are content with having only one offspring. Such responsibility also helps maintain the team spirit in class.

“However, not all children with physical and mental problems should study at an ordinary school, and parents vociferously objecting to institutionalization ought to know better. An opportunity to go to school on a par with healthy children will not solve their problems; not all such children can master the regular curriculum unaided by special instructors. On the other hand, isolating such children from their families is also undesirable. Where is the optimum alternative to secure such children’s adequate development? Thorough examination is necessary, of course, but many parents are prejudiced against it. Our institute is the basis of the republican psychological-medical-pedagogical consulting center. Here children are not qualified for institutionalization but only examined. Our experts deal with cases difficult to diagnose, because different ills often show similar symptoms. We always proceed from the children’s interests, not from their parents’ ambitions. Every case is unique in its own way, every problem young person requires an individual approach. It would be wrong to say that all physically and mentally handicapped children should be institutionalized. If there are indications against enrollment in a regular grade school, we work out a temporary enrollment pattern (for example, attending certain lessons in a certain class).

“We also arrange for the enrollment of several similarly handicapped children in a regular class, assisted by a special instructor, speech therapist, and psychologist.

“Should we discard special boarding schools? By no means! We must be reform-oriented, not destructive. All children must be dealt with to help them develop normal social habits and learn to accept the realities. Parents are perfectly right in saying that children with physical and mental problems must not be isolated. There are cases when a child shows no progress for a long time, then suddenly we see a real breakthrough. No one can say when it will happen, if at all. However, we can’t pass a verdict for life, because it is very difficult to determine which functions of the organism are preserved and to what extent. I see our future with rehabilitation centers where children receive corrective aid during the day and spend the rest of the time with their families. Today, we have strategically changed our vision of such anomalies. Now we focus not on defects, but on what is preserved by nature. Proceeding from this, we are building a strategy of such children’s further development. ”