Our children: together we can do everything (VIDEO)

The presentation of documentary “Together” filmed at the initiative of the “Office for the rights of persons with disabilities” took place on the 6th of June. You could see common, from the first sight, Minsk school, its pupils, teachers and parents. But you can’t call it a common one. Integrated classes where children with and without disabilities study together were created on the base of this school. The topic of integrated education, which is very problematic for our society, became the basis of the film and the subject of discussion during the presentation.

Tatiana Bondarenko, deputy director on questions of integration in school №25, spoke to people who came to presentation: “Integrated education has been implemented only in junior school. We tried to create all the necessary conditions for studying and for correctional lessons for children with disabilities. And we can see that our work is giving positive results. Even those children, who because of their illnesses couldn’t hold a pen in their hands, now start to write… They model in clay, play at Lego room. But the main thing is that they communicate with other children of their age”. “My child will live in the world where every day he will face people without disabilities, - Elena Zverko, mother of a child with disabilities, joins the conversation – And he has to know how to communicate with them, be socially adapted and behave adequately. If he goes to a special institution where he will be surrounded only by disabled persons he won’t be able to study all the necessary things. That is why I have chosen a common school for my kid. And my son goes there every day with pleasure. He wants to study and to be among his friends and teachers.”

The leading inspector of the department of special education of the Ministry of Education joins the discussion: “Not everything is ok in our system of education. But there is one of the most important achievements – parents and children now have the choice what form of education to choose: to study at home, at special boarding-school, at common school. Every parent decides what would be better for his child.”

Parents of children with disabilities welcome this new opportunity. But there is a problem in the society – people are not morally ready to accept the situation when a healthy and a disabled child sit at one school desk. Very often parents of healthy children are against such kind of education, not understanding that by such attitude they hurt their own children raising them on some barbarous and outdated ideas that persons with disabilities should be isolated behind locked doors of special institutions.