International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) |Volume VI, Issue XI, November 2022|ISSN 2454-6186
Special Needs Education: A Basic Human Need.
Dr. Stephen Musila Nzoka
Kenyatta University, Kenya
I. INTRODUCTION
If a typically growing and developing child needs education to better its life in the process psychologically known as nature-nurture controversy, how much more will a child with a disability need education be it specially or regularly offered?
In fact, ‘specialty’ should refer to the facilities and equipment used by the learner with a special need to access education whilst education remains constant. Indeed, the end justifies the means. In any case, education equalizes opportunities, modifies human behaviour, makes a learner self-reliant while reducing the effects and stigma brought to bear by the various impairment all of which are mainly developmental. These disabilities are brought about by intellectual impairments, learning difficulties, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, speech and language disorders, emotional and behavioral disorders, visual impairments, autism spectrum disorders, physical impairments, multiple handicaps as well as those with gifts and talents. Consequently, early educational and medical interventions would be necessary to both minimize individual differences found in these people and render them productive, self-dependent and responsible members of society. I personally bear witness.
II. DEFINITION OF SPECIAL NEEDS EDUCATION
Special needs education describes any instructional strategy that attempts to provide an appropriate form of education to learners whose physical or mental condition makes other instructional methods unsuitable and ineffective. Thus, learners with hearing impairment learn mainly through Kenya sign language. Learners who are visually impaired chiefly learn to read and to write using braille through the sense of touch and large print by those who have low vision (Nzoka 2021). Further, these categories of such learners include, but not limited to:
● Intellectual deviations such as gifted and talented learners and those learners with intellectual challenges i.e. mental retardation, cerebral palsy.
● Sensory impairment i.e. those learners with auditory impairment and visual impairment.
● Those learners with communication disorders such as learning disorders, autistic spectrum disorders and speech and language impairment.
● Behavior disorders including learners with autism, emotional disturbance, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and social maladjustment.
● Multiple and severe disabilities namely, severe physical and intellectual handicaps, cerebral palsy,