HANDICAPPED PEOPLE AND INTEGRATION AT SZU

Introduction

A characteristic of a high developed society is shown by how the society deals with handicapped people. In early days it was a shame to have a handicapped child but today disabled people are accepted by our society and considered as "normal" citizens.

About one per cent of all born babies have some kind of disability. Disabilities are physical, mental or learning handicaps. The reason for their handicap could be that their mothers smoked, drank alcohol or took drugs during the pregnancy. It could also be because of a premature birth. If a baby is born 2 months too early for example, it has a 50-50 chance of staying alive. About 90 per cent of these children are disabled.

Kinds of disabilities

There are many different kinds of disabilities:

Blind (visually impared person)
Blind children can develop in the same way other babies do. When they learn the ear-hand coordination very early they have a good chance to live a normal life.

Deaf (acoustically impared person)
They can develop like blind people. Deaf people have their own language, but this language has the big problem that only very few people are able to communicate together in this way. In the United Kingdom for example only 55.000 of 8 million deaf people are able to understand the sign-language or to do lip-reading. Among the "normal" people less people know the sign-language.

People with the Down´s syndrom:
The Down´s syndrom is caused in 50 per cent of all handicapped cases, because the mother was older than 35. The Down´s syndrom is a kind of cerebral palsy which causes many disabilities. The greatest handicap is the learning disability. At the age of 40 there is a high risk of Alzheimer´s disease. Some years ago people with the Down´s syndrom only reached the age of 30 - but luckily today these people can live up to 60 years.

People with Autism
Autism is a very rare handicap - only 11 of 10.000 babies are born with this kind of disability. People with Autism often have major problems in language and speech. It is also very difficult for them to hold eye contact with other people.

Physical by impared people:

- Epilepsy:
Grand Mal is the most common form of epilepsy, involving attacks with sudden black outs.
- Spasticity:
This is a kind of cerebral palsy. Spasticity affects some or all limbs.

Shame

A handicapped child is often a shame for the mother and so she gets depressed. Parents, who first wanted to have two children don´t want to get a second child if the first one is handicapped. On one side they say that the handicapped child will need most of their time so that they won´t have enough time for the second one and on the other side they are afraid that the second one will be handicapped too.

Integration at SZU

The history of our school began in 1945: it´s purpose was to offer war invalids training to enable them to enter working life.Young physically handicapped students attended the classes, eventually "non-handicapped" students were incorporated. This system is also called "reverse integration" (because disabled students are given preference above "non-handicapped" ones). The system of eduction of handicapped students with normal students is often called main streaming.

Up to today the main aim of our school hasn´t changed. The education of handicapped students with "non-handicapped" students has led to the fact that today approximately 300 of 800 impared students can receive the same education like "non-handicapped" children. So the impared students have the chance of integration into normal life. This model of school integration prevents the creation of disabled ghettos.

Friendships between handicapped and "normal" students can develop naturally and continue after school. Such friendships are for "normal" persons a new and important experience because you forget that your friend has a handicap and you learn to treat him like you treat your other "normal" friends - I mean you are not "overfriendly" to him. And for the handicapped student it is also important because he/she stays in contact with society and doesn´t become an outsider. Another advantage is that a disabled student is not left alone with his/her problem.

There are no special curricula for handicapped students. Because of this the handicapped students keep up with the "normal" level. But to achieve this some extra services have to be introduced - of course they are not only for the disabled students:

Each room of our school has been planned to cope with the needs of handicapped students

The school-doctor, several physiotherapists and three specialists take care of the students

A boarding school for about 80 students which is connected to the school makes it possible for handicapped students from the whole of Austria to attend the SZU

There are a maximum of 24 students in our classes

Class division in main subjects, support-teacher and team-teaching enable individual attention for each student.

Each handicapped student can receive free tuition from his teachers to balance weaknesses.

A team of teachers devote themselves to looking after the disabled students

A one-year orientation course should prepare handicapped students for further training at SZU

Vocabulary