Do you think peer interaction will help autistic children overcome the limitations of being under the spectrum?.Parents, and teachers of mainstream schools in the city talk about the challenges of inclusive education
CHENNAI: When Vidyashree* and her family moved from the US to Chennai with her autistic son, she was surprised by the amount of time it took for her to find a mainstream school that would admit her child. “We visited quite a number of schools in the city but very few were forthcoming about admitting a child with special needs,” she says. “I was shocked that the concept of inclusive education had not gained a lot of traction here.”
Many parents of children with autism and other neuro-developmental disorders are dismayed that inclusive education of autistic children hasn’t gained ground yet in India. The schools that do so have a minimal intake due to several factors that tie their hands and leave them helpless. CE takes a look at how autistic children have been educated along with their peers in mainstream schools, and the challenges faced by both parents and teachers to sustain incusion.
“The dream of every parent of an autistic child is to see him/her get integrated into mainstream society,” says Aishwarya Venu (name changed), a management professional whose son was within the spectrum. “Though autism is characterised by impaired social interaction and communication, the sooner the child is exposed to such instances, the easier it will be for him to push himself out of the spectrum,” she says, adding that it is for this peer interaction that autistic children should be made to study with non-autistic peers in a classroom. Other therapies like occupational therapy and physiotherapy can be followed either side by side, or within the school, if they have the facilities.
Schools that practice inclusive education take special care to ensure that this is done through a standardised method. “As a special educator, I do the assessment and evaluation on admission and then guide them to their respective classes,” says Sujatha Sriram, special educator and counsellor at Montfort Matriculation School. “Peer socialisation is a part of the culture of every school and once they form a ‘buddy’ group, we can assist in adjusting the child to the class.” The schools also employs shadow teachers — degree holders trained to work with autistic children — to give them transition prompts, such as to open their books and take pencils and so on. “Here, we do not label children and base the time spent with their peer group on holistic activities,” says Ramalakshmi K, coordinator, Elina (Special Education Department), HLC International School. “We have the practice of co-teaching in the same class where there may be two or three teachers in a classroom, looking after each of the special groups. We have a functional curriculum, combined with sports and art activities,” she explains, saying that the ‘together time’ that the children have has increased from 60% to 77%, and many autistic children have been weaned off their support systems.
Sujatha shares her opinion on teachers training and says, “If there is a child who needs an adaptive pencil because of his condition, some educators will apply that to every child with autism as well. So we tell teachers on what accommodations the child needs — alternate curriculum, simplified question papers, shadow teacher, etc,” she adds.
From a broader perspective, however, the common complaint most schools have is that the demand for more inclusive schools is stretching the few resources they have. “None of the schools admit children based on the Right To Education Act; it takes a lot of pleading and convincing from the side of parents to admit them,” says Sujatha. “Admission of children with special needs in mainstream schools has decreased due to expenses. Who will pay the special educators — parents, school or the NGO who is coordinating? The frequency of visits of special educators is not enough and is mostly spaced out to observe the child. At the same time, the educator is also supposed to take on the role of a physiotherapist, occupational therapist, and speech educator due to lack of funds to pay individual persons.”
She says there are few persons trained in trans-disciplinary approach who deal with all of the above — roughly 10 in Chennai. “Schools are not able to make inclusion as a process. We can admit only a certain number of autistic children in each class, beyond which there are resource and infrastructure problems,” she explains.
Another problem is that NGOs that provide assistance to schools, are hesitant to share information about their services with one another. “So if a school hires an educator and a therapist from an NGO, and a trainer from another NGO, they’re not proactive about sharing their treatment plan with each other. This results in monopoly of information, and shoddy planning.”
Sometimes parents too can be unccoperative. “The most frustrating part is certain parents avail the use of inclusive education during admission, but refrain from letting the child avail special education classes. They insist their ward will write the same question papers that their peers write. They refuse to believe their child needs that extra help or is really that backward,” she says.
Aishwarya, however, has no patience for such parents. “They cannot expect results overnight. Austistic kids need help with socialisation, life skills, and also academics as a whole. When the school notifies parents that their child has autism, they cannot get defensive or worse, give up; instead, they must seek help…in the form of therapy (occupational and cognitive). The self-esteem of a child develops when he/she is 7-8 years. Given the right kind of guidance during this time can help autistic children push themselves out of the spectrum.”
Individual attention, a necessity
The importance of occupational, cognitive and physiotherapies in inclusive education cannot be stressed enough. “Some children are extremely sensitive to light, others to loud noise,” adds Aishwarya. “In fact, my own son used to throw tantrums if a drop of liquid (from someone washing their hands or at a dinner table) fell on him. Sometimes, it was enough for him to imagine that some liquid had fallen on him to set him off. He would remove all his clothes and scream...and continue scremaing. I used to travel with three sets of clothes every time we used to go out!” Such behavioural differences make autistic children hard to deal with in a normal school unless the latter has trained professionals. Since such professionals weren’t available in normal schools at the time, Aishwarya had to take her son to a professional occupational therapist, who would “dunk him in a bucket of water, again and again, to get rid of his fixation! Today, I have to run after him to dry himself up after he gets wet!” she laughs. But she wonders if this kind of individual attention, which is a necessity with many children, can be given to an autistic child in any mainstream inclusive school.