EDUCATION-CUBA: Disabled Children Get Self-Esteem Boost

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Apr 9 2002 (IPS) - The lives of hundreds of Cuban children with different levels of physical-motor disabilities made a 180-degree turn after they began schooling at the Special Education Panama Solidarity School, in the island’s capital.

“We want them to recognise themselves just as they are and to learn to value themselves. Self-esteem is very important if they are to integrate socially,” Esther María La O Ochoa, director of the institution, told IPS.

Since 1989, when the school first opened its doors, 422 disabled boys and girls have graduated and are currently employed or continuing their education in regular schools, or have gone on to university.

“Verónica, a young quadriplegic, does everything with her mouth. Her disability doesn’t prevent her from studying law at the university, because she is very intelligent. Nine young people who passed through this school were able to continue on to higher education,” said La O.

She rejects criticisms that the specialised school segregates children with physical-motor limitations from the rest of the school-age population.

“On the contrary, we do not deny integration. We seek to teach each student to value him or herself and to be psychologically prepared to enter a regular school,” stated the director.

Mabel Cedeño, 14, will have to use a wheelchair for the rest of her life due to osteogenesis imperfecta, a genetic disease that prevents skeletal growth and is characterised by easily broken bones, often from no apparent cause.

Cedeño will soon be leaving the school that has been her educational “home” for more than eight years. She will continue at a regular school in the Cuban educational system.

“I want to study art instruction and to do my practical teaching experience right here. This month I take the entry exam for the programme,” Cedeño told IPS.

The Panama Solidarity School currently has 160 students, 16 of whom live with their families. There are 141 employees, including teachers and technical, service and administrative staff.

In Cuba, there are more than 55,000 children and adolescents who receive special education in the 428 institutions that have specialised personnel and equipment to help the students live with or overcome their physical or mental difficulties.

Minors with mental disabilities, or who are deaf or hearing disabled, blind or visually impaired, autistic or suffer speaking impediments, physical-motor limitations or other disabilities receive training and education at these centres.

More than 21,000 people work in this area of the Cuban educational system, with some 14,400 instructors trained in the various disciplines of special education. As such, there are approximately 5 teachers for every 12 children who – for now – cannot attend a regular school.

The newest of these special institutions, inaugurated in Havana in January with 44 students, ages 3 to 19, provides education and attention to autistic children and adolescents.

One of the main objectives of this new centre is “to apply a humanising conception in the education of the autistic child to achieve independence and improve quality of life.”

Official figures state that 180 Cubans have been identified with autism, 166 of them under 18. Autism is a lifelong developmental disability caused by physical disorders of the brain, and is manifest in the alteration of communication skills and in abnormal ways of relating to people, objects or events.

Specialised treatment for an autistic child costs as much as 10,000 dollars a year in industrialised countries, but all education is free in Cuba.

The director of the Special Education Panama Solidarity School said that a resolution of the Labour Ministry stipulates that two percent of the municipal jobs in each Cuban town or city must be reserved for people with disabilities.

An estimated 3,000 students graduate each year from the socialist-run island’s special education institutions.

A study conducted last year in Havana determined that 46,433 of the city’s 2.2 million inhabitants have some degree of disability. The research found that 13,978 of that total have been diagnosed with some form of mental retardation.

A census of population and housing, slated to take place in September, will provide complete data on disabilities throughout the population of approximately 11 million on this Caribbean island.

President Fidel Castro announced earlier this year that progress had been made in research of 80 diseases, which would allow scientists “to devise ways” to break the chain of genetically transmitted disorders.

Cuba spends more than 10 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on its educational system, which is free of cost at all levels, as are all health services.

Castro points to Cuba’s education and health as examples of how his socialist regime respects basic human rights. The country’s human rights situation is up for evaluation this month by the Geneva-based United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

Data from UNESCO (UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) shows that in most developing countries less than one percent of children with disabilities are able to progress in the educational system.

International research indicates that 10 percent of the world populations suffers some sort of disability, including paraplegia, Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s diseases, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, autism, spinal bifida, among many others.