SPECIAL EDUCATION A MATTER OF RIGHT NOT CHARITY

Education can play an important role in the rehabilitation of persons with disabilities. It gives them self-confidence and enables them face the challenge of living in a society that is generally insensitive to the needs of handicapped people. Special education for people with physical or mental disabilities is not a new idea and has existed in various civilizations and cultures including that of early Islamic Arabia. In more recent times, the first special education centre for special people was set up in the UK. If we look at the history of special education in the subcontinent, it began in the late 19th century. The first special education center for the blind was set up at Amritsar in 1887. Aligarh too had arrangements for teaching students how to use the Braille system, although the scale of that exercise was quite small. When Pakistan was created there was very few special education centers. Only two teaching institutes existed for the whole of the country for teaching children in Braille. Later, Fatima Jinnah showed interest in the rehabilitation and education of special people, while most governments promised a lot but did little. In General Ziaul Haq’s time, considerable attention was given to this issue, probably because the general’s own daughter was handicapped. If we look at the global level, only one university exists in the US for special people. So the overall situation is quite bad by all standards. According to estimates of the World Health Organization, roughly 10 per cent of a country’s population can be termed as having special needs or disabilities. This means that in Pakistan there are approximately 14 million special people. According to one survey, the country has 4.6 million special children in need of attending school. For this large number of students, there are just 146 special education centres in the country. The breakdown is as follows: 54 with the federal government, 52 in Punjab, 16 in Sindh, 20 in NWFP and four in Balochistan. In addition to this non- governmental organizations operate over 230 such centres. The grand total comes to just over 375 and is clearly not enough to meet the needs of educating the country’s four million-plus special children. Do a bit of math and you can find that only seven out of every 1000 special children is getting an education. As far as teachers are concerned, the figures are similarly lopsided. There is only one teacher for every 650 special students, and several thousand more are needed to bring the teacher-student ratio to a manageable level. There are several reasons for this absolutely dismal state of affairs in Pakistan which lags well behind even India and Sri Lanka in this regard. First, there is no political commitment and will to provide decent education opportunities to special children. Whatever the government does is done with the attitude that the disabled do not really deserve a proper education as a matter of right but that should be anyway provided it out as an act of charity. This is probably why even after 56 years the country does so badly in educating its special people. Second, around two-thirds of the population lives in rural areas. In Pakistan, policymakers tend to focus only on the urban centers. In rural areas, where the majority of the population lives, there is no concept of special education. People even do not know what it is. The government must re-orient its focus. The government should launch an awareness campaign and set up special education centers in rural areas.