The Sunday Mail
Dr Christine Peta Disability Issues —
Why should disabled girls and women be pushed to a corner, where they are denied a chance of getting an education?
Some people still consider the education of a disabled female as a luxury. Yet with or without disability, a literate woman is of greater value to herself, her family and her community.
Research has indicated that two out of every three illiterate people in the world are women (Boylan, 1991).
Tsitsi who lives in Epworth and is physically disabled from polio, says she does not know her date of birth but she thinks she was born in 1976.
At about the age of two, her mother left her in the custody of her mother’s younger sister in Bikita as she went to work as a nanny in the low density suburbs of Harare.
Tsitsi was made to do all the housework that would make the mother’s sister’s life easier, whilst other children of her age including mother’s sister’s children were attending school. She would be tasked with minding mother’s sister’s baby, cleaning the house, washing clothes and dishes and fetching water from the well using a 20-litre container. All this she did whilst other children of her age were in school.
After about 14 years, Tsitsi’s mother was informed by a villager that she met in the city about Tsitsi’s struggles.
“My mother was late in coming back to the village because when she got to the city, she was not only working as a nanny, but she also became a commercial sex worker, so she was busy both during the day and during the night.”
However, having learnt about Tsitsi’s plight, her mother moved her from sister’s homestead so that she could go and live with her maternal grandmother in Gokwe. The grandmother took the opportunity and enrolled Tsitsi to start grade one at a local rural school.
“My grandmother sent me to school for the first time, when I was about 16 years old. But the school was far and I would get there at 11 o’clock when others have started learning at 8 o’clock because I didn’t have crutches or a wheelchair. The teacher would beat me up for late coming, I gave up after a few days of trying, so I am not educated.”
In many developing countries, teachers are not well prepared to work with disabled students (Boylan, 1991). It is, therefore, not surprising that in spite of the fact that Tsitsi did not have assistive devices, her teacher would beat her up for late coming, thereby pushing her out of the mainstream school.
It appears that some schools may be ill-equipped to cater for the needs of disabled students in both a human and physical resource sense.
Danai, who attended a primary school in Glen-Norah says: “I have poor eyesight because of albinism, and my family is poor so they could not afford to buy me glasses. But when my mother came to ask the teacher to let me sit in front of the classroom, close to the writing board, the teacher got angry because he thought that I had said bad things about him to my mother. From that day he made life difficult for me, he would make me sit at the very back of the classroom and at the end of it all, I failed all my Grade 7 exams.”
Apart from being ill-treated in some schools, disabled girls are often discouraged from pursuing mainstream education, the fallacious belief is that no-one in the corporate sector would want to employ them because they are disabled.
Saru, who attended a school for the deaf in Gweru, passed her Grade 7 exams with flying colours, but she was denied the opportunity to further her education on the grounds of her condition.
“My teachers and my parents said I should not go to Form One because I am deaf, so I joined a traditional dance group of a Chinese man, but after one year the Chinese man died and I had nothing to do except to sit at home and wait for a man to come and marry me.”
Denying girls and women with disabilities access to high school and further education is a serious violation of their human rights. Higher education is generally regarded as a critical element of development, which is likely to open up opportunities for a better future with the probability of doubling up employment opportunities (Chataika, 2010).
Yet research has indicated that very few people realise that given good education, a woman with disability can become whatever she wants, she can become a medical doctor, a lawyer, an administrator, a nurse, a computer programmer, a radio and TV broadcaster, a lecturer or a musician (Boylan, 1991).
Due to her lack of education and in her adult life, Tsitsi found herself with limited livelihood options. She asked her mother why she did not send her to school, the mother explained that she thought that it was not necessary because Tsitsi is disabled.
Illiterate, raped and impregnated twice by a neighbour, Tsitsi was left with no choice but to become a vegetable vendor who even struggles to count and change money, as she makes an effort to fend for her two sons. “But my mother regrets not sending me to school, she likes Paul Matavire’s songs and now she says ‘I don’t know why I didn’t see that Paul Matavire was singing well but he was blind, I wish I had sent you to school’.”
Tsitsi narrates that if she had known the identity of her father, she could have sought assistance from his father’s family and attended school.
“My mother said she was sleeping with too many men so she does not know my father. But she thinks my father is Isaac, of the Gumbo totem, but she does not know his surname or where to find him.”
In India, it is estimated that only about one percent of disabled girls had access to education in the first 40 years following independence (Boylan, 1991).
However, the result of Unesco’s Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action on Special Needs Education (Unesco 1994), to which Zimbabwe is a signatory, has come to the fore (Chireshe, 2011; 2013, Mpofu et al, 2007; Musengi, et al 2010).
Special education encompasses the process of including children with special educational needs in mainstream classrooms, thereby creating an opportunity for them to learn together with their non-disabled peers (Chireshe, 2013).
Zimbabwe has policies that are related to inclusive education which include the Education Act of 1996 and the Disabled Persons Act of 1996 which prohibits the discrimination of people with disabilities within the national education system (Chataika, 2010, Chireshe, 2013).
Nevertheless, the narratives that are presented in this article indicate that legal instruments may not necessarily result in appropriate action being taken by stakeholders on the ground.
Way forward
Special schools are a historical hangover of a past which looked down on disabled persons as “broken” beings who should be in their own schools so as not to “contaminate” non-disabled students (Boylan, 1991).
That is not to say that such schools are not required to serve the unique needs of disabled persons, but it is to say that a perpetual focus on establishing special schools in our communities, may run the risk of denying disabled children the opportunity to interact with their non-disabled peers. In turn, non-disabled students may be deprived of the opportunity to develop a genuine understanding of their disabled colleagues.
There is need to sensitise families and communities about the need to enrol and support children with disabilities including girls, in mainstream schools and in turn, teachers are urged not to make life difficult for students with disabilities but to seek to understand and support them in their learning processes.
