Special children and their very special needs

“Special child”, is a new nomenclature popularized and now standard jargon by the Aamir Khan movie, “Tare Zameen Par”.  This actually did more for special children than decades of efforts by various non profit and governmental organizations.

There are 3 types of learning disabilities that people can have. Dyslexia, Dysgrahia and Dyscalculia.

Dyslexia is a reading disability resulting from the inability to process graphic symbols.

Dysgraphia is a learning disability resulting from the difficulty in expressing thoughts in writing and graphing.

Dyscalculia or math disability is a specific learning disability or difficulty involving innate difficulty in learning or comprehending mathematics.

Some kids have all 3, and this makes it extremely difficult for them to cope with certain subjects, especially Maths and Science. Unlike what most of us would expect, the Government has an excellent program for testing and certifying these learning challenges. They have also an excellent set of guidelines for schools and boards in dealing with these challenges.

Unfortunately, the school systems have not been able to implement these. Whilst it may be easy to criticize the schools and the education system, the reality is that all of them are working under extremely trying conditions. Coping with normal children, simply because of the humongous numbers and the skewed supply and demand is a herculean task. Attempting to factor in kids of various special needs would probably be near impossible.

The various boards, State, CBSE and ICSE too have very friendly and flexible rules for such kids. The issue however is the education system. As an example, ICSE allows kids, not only special kids, but any kid to choose an alternative subject in lieu of Maths and / or Science. However, the alternative subject must be offered by the school. Not many schools in India offer the option of dropping these subjects. And this leads to special kids going through an extremely traumatic experience of dealing with what could very well be Greek or Gibberish.

The solution in my mind can only come with an improvement with the overall education system. Currently children and schools are a statistic. A small number which is a part of a much larger number, a much larger problem, of primary education for all.

In the meanwhile, it is up to those of us who are aware of the issues, to do whatever little we can to make life and school as much of a joy as we can for these special children.