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From rhetoric to reality

A few sniffer dogs with the Mumbai Police had to be hospitalised recently. Overworked, the dogs were apparently battling fatigue. The plight of these dogs found empathetic listeners at a seminar on inclusive education for children with mental retarda tion at primary level. A guest speaker likened the lot of overburdened teachers to that of the dogs, pleading that in order to have good educators the curricula for special educators needed to be overhauled

Impassioned teachers, all they want is a change in how teachers are trained and the children are taught.

The participants held forth in a similar vein: A child needs to think, dream and imagine. A teacher needs to have time, patience and care. The child is not for education, but education is for the child.

The participants mocked, reparteed, challenged, all the while exhorting each other to be better teachers. An administrator had no hesitation in admitting that the proliferating teacher training institutes had master trainers who had barely managed to pass their own diploma courses after two-three attempts. “With half-baked educators, are we on the train to nowhere?” she questioned. “We teach teachers how to swim on land. We never push them into the water.” It wasn’t just speaker after speaker spouting theories. Conceding that inclusive education was still in its infancy stage, they implored each other to do “their own bit in their own way” in a gradual shift away from segregated education. They came up with facts and figures.

A teacher mockingly intervened, “With all these figures, we should be awarded honorary degrees in cosmetology.”

The seminar was organised by Swayamkrushi with its motto of “guiding the challenged towards independence.”

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