TOI: Plans to set up India's first inclusive edu centre: April 01, 2008 | Learning Disabilities

A NEW LEARNING CURVE

She plans to set up India’s first inclusive edu centre ......Anahita Mukherji I TNN

Mumbai: Forty years ago, as a student, Roda Billimoria used to wonder why special children went to special schools and “regular’’ children went to regular schools.

A few years ago, the foundation that she started began Maharashtra’s first Diploma in Integrated Education, possibly the first in the country. And now, she’s in the midst of plans to set up a fullfledged institute for integrated education—complete with a school, teachertraining college, research facilities, a documentation centre and a resource-cumpedagogy unit. For Roda, a Colaba resident and student of Cathedral and John Connon School in Fort, the journey towards inclusion began when she joined St Xavier’s College. She then met people from diverse backgrounds, travelled to Mumbai’s distant suburbs, and came face to face with poverty.

However, it was later, while studying at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences that Billimoria who was deputed to the BM Institute of Mental Health in Ahmedabad, was confronted with something she failed to understand. The institute had one school for regular children, and an adjacent one for special children. “I just could not fathom why there had to be two schools. Even the teacher-training courses were different for both schools,’’ she says.

Throughout her life, Billimoria has been driven by the belief that “a child is first and foremost a child and ability, disability, their unique gifts are all secondary.’’

She has spent a lifetime in the field of education. Her accomplishments include a PhD thesis that explored the facilities for students with disabilities in Mumbai, a Fulbright travel grant to study in the US, a Masters in education from Upsala University in Sweden under the author of the normalisation principle and another Masters from Sydney on the Australian government policy of taking full responsibility for children with special needs. Roda also set up the Shapurji Billimoria Foundation to promote integrated education a decade ago.

Five years later, the foundation began a thoroughly unconventional DEd in integrated education, affiliated to SNDT University. The course aimed at creating teachers equipped in dealing with children with different abilities and needs in one classroom.

“Out here, the learning is exciting, practical and hands-on,’’ says Usha Bhatia, principal of the teacher-training course. Not only do students go out on field visits to regular schools and those for the disabled but are also taught by a whole array of guest lecturers from India and abroad. These include experts in the field of theatre, tribal art and education. During the course, students also experience what it’s like to have a disability. For instance, while studying visual impairment, students have to cross the road after being blind-folded.

An exercise that Niloufer Rakhangi, a youngster who recently completed the DEd course, particularly enjoyed involved creating a blueprint of one’s own ‘inclusive’ school. Rakhangi drew her “ideal’’ school, replete with ramps for disabled students and specially designed desks that took into account students with different needs.

Despite recognition from the National Council for Teacher Education and a write-up in two UNICEF publications, which said that the foundation was the only one in India to offer a full-time course in integrated education, Billimoria says they are desperately in need of land. “We still don’t have our own premises and have been moving from one place to the next like refugees,’’ says Billimoria.

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