Inclusive and Supportive Education Congress International Special Education Conference Inclusion: Celebrating Diversity? 1st - 4th August 2005. Glasgow, Scotland

home about the conference programme registration accommodation contact

INCLUSION : POLICY and MANAGEMENT

(Russian Perspective)

Irina L. Pervova
St. Petersburg State University
St. Petersburg, Russia
pervovai@mail.admiral.ru

Russia made several sufficient steps towards Civil Society development in the last decade. State, Family and Education as the three main Society Institutes reflect both achievements and disadvantages of changes on the move.

With regard to the disabled population, the State tries to balance between economics and moral issues, mainly performing “a nice face at a bad game”. The recent small additions to minimal pensions of people with disabilities can’t cover living expenses of the most marginalized group of population, so they have to be cared for either by their families or in huge institutions with miserable conditions. Social services for this group of people are undeveloped even more than the rest of the population.

The unstable economic situation and crucial social changes have brought unemployment, poverty, health deterioration, increase of alcoholism, drug addiction and AIDS. The process of social disintegration in Russia is dramatic due to enormous income differences appearing in a short time. Struggles for “a piece of bread” for the majority of the population, psychological tensions, bad housing and poor medical care have all lead to the families’ dissolution.  

The Institute of family in current Russia is under a serious change. Young couples prefer either not to have children at all, or have them later in life due to economical and career reasons. Reproductive abilities of the current young generation decrease rapidly both in men and women due to poor ecology, stress, substance abuse and sexually transmitted infections. From the traditional conservative family type with two or three generations “under the same roof” Russia moves to no child unions, single parent families and separate living. The annual nation population decay of one million people is really dramatic. The yearly consistent increase in the number of children with different kinds of disabilities increase is significant. The majority of children with disabilities are raised by single mothers, and/or grandmothers. The birth of a child with developmental problems quite often results in father’s departure from the family. A mother has a choice of keeping her child facing the resulting economical consequences and social stigma, or giving him/her away to an institution.

There is no state system of foster families in Russia, so children who lost their parents, or have been referred from dysfunctional families by the state, are brought up in state institutions - “Children’s Houses” (orphanages). Children Houses are of two types: mainstream and for children with special needs. Institutions for disabled are designed according to segregation principle based on the type of disability. Statistics shows that within a year after graduation from orphanages, at the age of 17-18 years, about 30% of young people become street loiterers, have neither job, nor place to live, 20% start delinquent careers, and 10% commit suicide. The cause is determined by such factors as   the absence of follow up social services, no financial support, unsatisfactory social and vocational training at the institutions, inadequate values and expectations, negative social attitudes of the outer world, etc. In public opinion children and youth from orphanages are thieves, robbers, alcoholics and drug users, and those with disabilities are even more profound in their antisocial behavior.

Given the current conditions of long-term social and economic crises and the   underdevelopment of mass conscientiousness, a complete integration and inclusion of people with disabilities into Russian society is just a dream. Nevertheless this does not mean that it is not possible at all, or that absolutely nothing is happening in this direction.

Every person with, or without disabilities has unique characteristics, interests, abilities and needs, every person can contribute to society’s development and both the individual and a society would benefit from this process.

Lev S. Vygotsky, in his theory of child development, underlined the role of the child’s communicative surrounding as a central factor in the development of high psychological functions. He recognized the developmental process as the sole process where each following stage of development is dependent on the previous one and each form of reaction depends on the previously achieved one. The material tools, methods, and socio-psycho-physiological institutes and apparatuses were worked out over thousands years and are designed for normal psycho-physiological organization. The methods and traditions of bringing up children are also designed for a normal development, especially in the early stages of growth.

In his social-cultural theory, Vygotsky differentiates between cultural and biological processes of development, which have a very close connection. His insight to differentiate a primary defect from secondary complications of development is one of the key points of his theory. According to Vygotsky, such high psychological functions as high forms of memory, mentality, and character are the product of cultural development, but not of biological maturation. Due to that, cultural development itself in abnormal individuals is possible.

Vygotsky argues for the necessity of system change in cultural education for abnormal children in order for them to develop their high psychological functions. Vygotsky did not see any limit to this potential in the framework of his concept of approximate development. The biological deficiency of an abnormal child limits the individual’s ability to acquire human culture both by himself and within the normal time frame, but a person with a disability is in fact able to be culturally developed, and can develop high psychological functions, if the system meets his/her educational needs. In reality, an individual often turns out to be uncultured and deficient, or has only managed to acquire some of these higher psychological functions, and the reasons can be found in the environment.

Vygotsky concludes that which appeared in the process of the child’s development as a secondary formation can be prevented and/or removed as a result of medical and pedagogical treatments because the underdevelopment of high psychological functions and high character formations as a secondary complication are less stable, more interactive, treatable and removable than the underdevelopment of lower, or elementary processes directly determined by the defect.  

The starting point for inclusive education is that all children with special educational needs should have access to education and receive it. This means that all children have a right to an appropriate education and both those with and without special needs can obtain mutual benefits from closer association with each other.

In Russia, three centralized agencies (ministries) are responsible for providing educational services to children, depending on their age, health conditions, and whether they have developmental disorders. These agencies are the Ministry of Education and Science, Ministry of Health, and Ministry of Labor and Social Care. The Ministry of Education and Science is responsible for mainstreaming, education of children with sensory disabilities and mild mental retardation. The Ministry of Health provides medical care and education in hospitals and forest schools for children with temporary and long-term medical conditions. The Ministry of Labor and Social Care cares for children with profound disabilities providing pensions, a very limited list of services, placement into special residential children schools and institutions. Interdepartmental barriers between these ministries exacerbate the complex social, scientific, practical and financial problems in Russian Special Education.

The initial attempts to develop rehabilitative services in Russia historically were based on common models of segregation and isolation. In spite of all the criticism of the Soviet period, the system of special education in Russia has a long and distinguished history. The first special school in Europe appeared in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1806 and was a school for the deaf, as were the earliest schools in many other countries, such as Britain, France, Holland and USA. The history of special education in Russia has many similarities with that in other European countries. Initially in all these countries, persons with disabilities were segregated from the mainstream population. Up to the middle of the 18 th century these persons were rejected and either killed or abandoned.

In Russia, persons with disabilities usually were offered charity and protected by the church and monasteries from the very beginning, which was a kind of natural integration. During the 19 th century in Europe and the US, persons with disorders began to be accepted and dealt with in different ways. Acceptance and charity resulted in the institutionalization of persons with disabilities; they were warehoused in residential facilities. Ultimately, the beginning of the 20 th century was marked by establishing special schools and attempts to educate and rehabilitate persons with different developmental disorders were made.   Thus, a long period of segregation in special education has gone through three main stages:

• rejection (killing/abandonment)
• institutionalization (residential facilities)
• separation (special schools and children houses).

In contrast with Russia, since the end of the 1980’s, special education in the West has gone beyond these three stages of development into integration and inclusion. Unfortunately, Russia still operates primarily on the level of separation, which means that persons with disabilities still are officially labeled according their disorder and get education in special settings. Nevertheless, there are energetic attempts to move special education toward integration and inclusion primarily by parents associations, advanced representatives of academic community and practitioners.

Integration is defined as a process of social adaptation, socialization and inter-acceptance of an individual with disabilities into society. Inclusion provides people with disabilities the opportunity to function in society on active level and to enjoy equality, respect and the right to be different. In order to implement these two processes into Russian special education, the five questions must be answered: who, where, when, how and by whom.

First, those students who can or cannot be integrated and included into regular education have to be identified. Next, integration and inclusion settings must be determined. These settings may range from special classes in regular and special schools to special schools themselves, remedial schools with flexible programs (currently experimental), or rehabilitation centers. It must also be decided when to start integration or inclusion, whether in pre-school, or school age; before or after directed training for every individual. In addition, the amount of time involvement into regular education for students integration must be decided. Should they be integrated with other children all the time, or for some limited periods in communal, social, leisure and educational activities?

It also is important to work out the content of the curriculum, which either follows the standards of regular or special education, or is individualized to meet the needs of a particular child. Additionally, it must be decided who is qualified to teach students with disabilities. Should they be regular teachers or teachers with background and training in special education? Russian specialists do understand all the advantages of integration and   inclusion. They realize that these processes increase the opportunity for personswith disabilities to participate actively in social life and to change for the better the common public attitude towards them due to their achievements.

Integration and inclusion expand the limited effectiveness of special education and its stigmatization. These processes can reduce the number of children referred to special schools, decrease the amount of time the students with disabilities spend in special schools, and improve the teaching skills of educators in regular settings.

There are two types of integration today in Russian Special Education: external and internal. External integration implies integration only on a social level, which means that students with disabilities are segregated on the curricular level, but participate in social and leisure activities with other children. Internal integration places students with a particular disability in one group, though within the group, there may be students with varying levels of disability. It also can mean placing individuals with different disabilities into the same group. Inclusion is well known in Russia, but unfortunately mostly on a theoretical level via foreign literature and professional exchanges. There have been some attempts to mainstream children with sensory disorders, but those attempts were not very successful for different reasons such as the child’s own discomfort, parent’s disappointment in results, or a lack of applied services and aids. Actually all of the mainstreamed students ended up back in special schools.

The system of special education for children in Russia includes: special schools, pre-schools and kindergartens, children’s houses,special classes in regular schools, special vocational technical schools, psycho-medical-pedagogical commissions and centers of rehabilitation. New types of remedial establishments have started to appear, such as centers of special diagnostics, prophylactic-preventive centers, etc. but they are still in the experimental stages of organization and management.

Disadvantages of segregation for disabled individuals in Russian society are still obvious and include such facts as lack or poor social acceptance and value, living below poverty norms, lack of support and supervision, no integrated services, no coordination of age appropriate services across the life span, lack of social skills, behavioral problems, learning difficulties and school/job rejection.

It is impossible to overcome overnight the consequences of so long and grounded stage of development as separation, however progressive changes can be seen particularly in the big cities (attention of administration, associations, programs, access to public places, mass media programs, transportation, etc.).

Policy makers and professionals clearly understand the necessity of changes in social institutes of care for disabled in Russian society: public policy (individuals have to be   valued and worthy of supports and services), legislation (public laws and statutes have to establish the purposes and goals of support programs and services), administration (management and evaluation of the programs services in program and fiscal areas), services (direct services and opportunities provided on a day to day basis, determining the quality of life of the individuals) and education (every child has a fundamental right to education, and must be given the opportunity to achieve and maintain an acceptable level of learning).

Russian Special Education system started to implement some integration aspects into education process, but for the time being it has been predominantly an internal trend.

Comprehensive planning for further integration, rehabilitation and inclusion of people with disabilities into Russian society must consider several factors, including national programs, individual planes and programs, systems of referral, change of social attitudes, material base, financial support, trained staff, and the voice of disabled individuals.   If the challenge is met, the potential contributions to the individuals with disabilities of Russia are immeasurable in terms of human value and life quality.

home . about the conference . programme . registration . accommodation . contact