Education and Disability

EDUCATION AS A RIGHT OF ALL PERSONS

While public education is ideally a right of citizens in every society universal access to schooling is only realized to varying degrees in countries around the world. In many countries, access to education is still denied or limited on the basis of gender, race, economic or social status, or disability. For individuals with disabilities, the right to education has been realized [Page 566]only in recent decades, a fact primarily true for individuals living in developed countries. As has been the case for girls and poor children in developing countries, most children with disabilities share the experience of being denied access to education. For these groups of children, education remains what it was in earlier times, a responsibility of the family. In societies where the families themselves are uneducated, the cycle of illiteracy and failure to realize individual potential is perpetuated.

Recognition of the right to education of all persons is relatively recent with international and national laws and legislation emerging only in the latter half of the twentieth century. At the international level, the first version of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was approved in 1959. Among the major principles in the convention is the right of the child to education. This right is inclusive of children with disabilities as defined in paragraph 23 of the convention. The right to education also is declared for children in the preschool years in another UN document published in 1993, the Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities. In 1994, the Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action provided further elaboration of the right to education by defining special education for children with disabilities or learning difficulties. In this context, it was emphasized that the educational approach should be child centered and based on the principle of inclusion in which children with disabilities are served as much as possible in the same settings as their chronological age-peers. For young children with disabilities, goals for education in the preschool years should focus on fostering the child's development and readiness for school.

Collectively, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, rule 6 of the UN Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities, and the Salamanca Statement provide a summary of universal standards for equalization of educational opportunity for children and youths. As such, they represent a declaration not only of the child's protection from discrimination, abuse, neglect, denial of access, and illiteracy but also of the right to care, support, and education. These documents make the rights of children explicit, representing practices pertaining to the education of children with disabilities. While the scope of these declarations is universal, a review of policy and practice on an international level indicates substantial variability in regard to access to education for children with disabilities. In most developed countries, some level of commitment has been made to ensure the right of children with disabilities to education. However, in many, if not most developing countries, children with disabilities are denied access to education with groups of other underserved children.

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