Education for the Physically Challenged in Kenya

  

Date Posted: 7/8/2014 1:51:59 PM

Posted By: Wishstar  Membership Level: Gold  Total Points: 7507

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Education for the Physically Challenged in Kenya

According to the government of Kenya, free primary education is a right for every child. It's aim was to ensure that the child is provided with education irrespective of his/her state of life. Despite all this, physically challenged persons still have difficulties in accessing regular education. Over the years such students were taken to special schools. Some schools viewed this as segregation of the physically challenged.

Special schools came up for these persons where they were taught and also given a number of special services. Unfortunately, such a development was viewed as more of eliminating such children from others than provision of quality education. As a consequence the physically challenged children were found to develop poor self esteem mainly as a result of isolation. These in turn deprives them of interacting socially with others.

Integration that was introduced was aimed at assisting persons with disability in developing and fully participating in their social life, equity and development.
Despite the government introducing free primary education in 2003, marginalization of children who are physically challenged still exists in the society. This is evident even at homes when parents insist on enrolling their physically challenged children to special schools with some even being left at home without any educational access. The problem lies from lack of information on how integration of special need children in regular schools can boost self esteem and academic performance. This can be avoided easily if a chance is given to them to learn with others in regular schools through integration.

If we go back to the traditional African society, persons with disabilities were not tolerated and were viewed as unworthy. Some communities also viewed these kind of people as deviants in society. As time went, special schools were established to accommodate these children. However, this

was in some way extending stigmatization and segregation and this attributed such people as being different in how they learn, think and perceive as compared to those who are not physically challenged. Such an initiative alienates the physically challenged from the others thus lowering their self concept as they mostly interact with others of the same situation or even a more severe one. This greatly reduces their competence and alienate them from the others. This implies that they are made less persons than who they really are.

Integration should be encouraged as it assists the children with special needs to fully interact with others. Integration therefore can open doors to such students and they child will have higher chance of fitting well in the society. The child will competently grow and become sure of what he is worth and live to know the joys of life.

The experiences of the child increase as a result of exposure and gain of new information. He can therefore put effort in school and get good grades as well as other rewards.
Integration is also a means of enabling disabled children to learn in their natural environments. It offers transformation of the system of education into a resourceful and more humane system to those who are challenged physically.

However easy it seems, integration of children who are physically challenged to regular schools need adequate preparation and support. All relevant stakeholders should work together, including parents and teachers so that they may come together towards the achievement of the requirements of such children.

Though the physically challenged children need education like the non challenged ones, they also need to acquire self help skills that will enable them develop strong confidence which in turn enables taking their slots with normal children in the natural setting. As such children begin socializing with the non challenged ones that are more likely to develop competence which is definitely a boost to their self esteem.

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