Remarkable New Russian-English Media Resource Supporting Inclusive Education
An innovative educational tool with a myriad of uses has been produced by Perspektiva, a Russian disability NGO that has been at the forefront of disability media advocacy and training activities for the last decade. The DVD, innocuously entitled "Films concerned with Education," was issued in honor of Russia's first Inclusive Education Week, celebrated in Moscow in November (see separate story). It features two informative documentaries, subtitled in English, "Schools for One and All," and "About Love," and several animated and reality-based public service announcements (PSAs) that have publicly introduced the concepts of inclusive education on Russian television.
Taken together, the PSAs, which range from a joyous music video where a teacher leads about 100 disabled and nondisabled pupils in a celebration of rock, to animated and humorous clips showing blind, deaf and wheelchair using students in school with their peers, are exemplary uses of creative media to underscore simple messages about the power of inclusion to change children's lives. On the other hand, the two documentaries provide a picture of where Russia is now and is going next with respect to inclusive education for disabled pupils and students.
"About Love," is an award-winning documentary featuring opinions about love volunteered by youngsters with physical disabilities who attend a school in Moscow for children "in poor health." These pupils are loved by their teachers, parents and each other and they are obviously getting an education to the best of everyone's abilities. This film unabashedly makes its case for providing a degree of protection and intensive one-to-one assistance by dedicated teachers in what is probably one of Mocow's best special schools. Viewers from wealthier countries will notice the lack of assistive technology; for example, there is no question of wheelchairs, teachers carry or otherwise support children called to the blackboard. The glimpses of homelife reveal seriously inaccessible Russian apartments, illustrating the challenges of using wheelchairs or even walkers on a daily basis. The film's unique contribution, however, is how the director has kept the focus on the individual children, letting them tell their stories at their own pace and using the information from parents and teachers as supplementary to the main show. The kids are quite convincing on their own about their capacities to make use of any education on offer, special or mainstream.
"Schools for One and All" is a more straightforward but still engaging look at a variety of integrated classrooms in and around Moscow. We hear mostly from teachers and parents who are working together to pioneer this new approach. Rights rarely enter into the equation, the discussions are dominated more by recognition of the talent or intelligence of a particular student and why mainstream schools offer more to these students. Only one principal makes the point that disabled and nondisabled students benefit equally from inclusive education; and one parent, the head of a Down Syndrome NGO, points out that his daughter intellectually, emotionally and morally needs the stimulation and ambience of the mainstreamed school. The main weakness of this otherwise strong film is that the students are seen but not heard, talked about but not interviewed.
This resource will be an excellent tool to spark interest,discussion and further development of inclusive education in Russia. It is also an outstanding introduction for English speaking viewers to understand the level of development of the concepts of disability education and awareness in contemporary Russia. Finally, the first class media productions make this a rare education and training tool for how to present disability issues with authenticity, creativity, humor and brevity. Details: Perspektiva, on the web: www.obrazovanie.perspektiva-inva.ru
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