Karuna Vihar’s approach to education is innovative and creative and strives to benefit not only our kids but our staff and the larger community as well. Our commitment to inclusion of children with disabilities in mainstream schools is an example. Inclusion is the ultimate goal of most people concerned with rehabilitation and special education. This can’t be achieved, however, until India’s education system changes radically. At present, the almost uniform approach to learning in Indian schools has the child a passive recipient of knowledge and the teacher a figure of authority and power who lectures, threatens, punishes and examines. Here in Dehradun, this is particularly true. Innovative schools are rare and activity-based learning almost unheard of.

Over the years, we have been involved in a number of individual mainstream placements of children with learning problems or physical impairments. Often, they become “token” students, referred to whenever a principal wants evidence that her school is socially enlightened but otherwise ignored. Their mere presence in a mainstream classroom is considered good enough; scant concern is given to their intellectual needs or whether they have been integrated socially.

This is not surprising, given that the other children in the class are treated in the same way. While the average classroom is not ideal for anyone, typical children are still better able to cope with it than can those with learning problems. For children with disabilities to succeed in a mainstream class, fundamental changes in teaching, classroom geography, behaviour management and the overall philosophy of education will be required.

Realistically, this is not going to happen any time soon. The Indian education system is enormous and will take years to change in any significant way. Meanwhile, the inclusion of children with disabilities is a priority of the government of India as well as the dearest wish of every parent. It is also an issue of justice, economic necessity and plain common sense. Segregation of children with special needs, while occasionally appropriate, has long outlived its usefulness as a concept for most children most of the time.
What to do? One of Karuna Vihar’s most significant and lasting contributions has been the training and empowerment of young women. We have identified girls with promise and intelligence but little education and have trained them as personal attendants for individual children with disabilities. Over the years, these young women have been eager to learn more about disability and how best to look after the children in their charge. Some of them have done higher studies, some have become qualified special educators and several have married into educated families; almost all have shown a dramatic increase in self-esteem and confidence.
We plan to expand what has been an informal program into a focused pilot project which will address two areas of need: the inclusion of children with special needs in mainstream schools and the employment of young women from disadvantaged backgrounds.
One of our strongest beliefs is that inclusion benefits everyone, not only those with special needs. Nowhere is this more clearly demonstrated than in the provision of classroom assistants. Our program will train young women to assist to children having trouble keeping up in school. This will include, but not be limited to, children with disabilities, and will free the teacher to spend her time more productively responding to the different learning styles of her students. It will also provide meaningful employment to young women who might otherwise marry at 18 and be stuck in a limited life.
Even children in mainstream classes, with no diagnosed disability, struggle. They find it difficult to grasp what is being taught, and their difficulties increase each year. These children would also benefit from activity-based learning, personal attention and a flexible, accepting attitude on the part of their teachers.
Trained classroom assistants could help meet these needs. While providing support to teachers which will allow them to spend more time on teaching and less on crowd control, assistants can also engage with children one-to-one as well as in small groups. Having two adults in a classroom automatically changes the power dynamic so common in classrooms in India. Further, teaching in small groups encourages child-to-child learning, cooperation and creativity. And finally, without such support in the mainstream classroom, it is difficult to imagine how children with disabilities can be included in any meaningful sense.
No such program exists in Dehradun at the moment. Indeed, we are not aware of anything like this in the entire country. We are convinced that well-trained teaching assistants can make a positive change in the lives of children because we have seen it happen in our own school. Young women with no higher education have become confident and creative para-professionals, dedicated to their careers and to the children in their charge.