Essay Example - Effects of Poverty on Special Education Students

In a standard set up of a society, ranks exist, which place people in different statuses. Some are considered members of the high classes and others lowly. No one wishes for this kind of level, but it is natural for these rankings to exist. The only factor that can equalize the differences brought up by these alignments in society is education. It has the power to raise the ranks of the lowly, break the cycle of discrimination, and end poverty. In some nations, especially developing countries, there is disproportionate access to education with the most disadvantaged groups coming from low-income families, remote areas, and children from ethnic minorities, mostly girls (Tacoli, 2015). It became even worse when the concerns are children with disabilities. The chance for a poor rural village girl in a developing country to get an education is zero. The paper discusses the effects of poverty on individual education students.

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Despite education being an effective method of breaking the chains of poverty, special education children still have fewer chances of starting school, and the few who have to manage are unlikely to reach the secondary level. The reason for the low enrollment and transition is attributed to the stigma, the less conducive school environment, the little understanding of their needs, the lack of learning resources, and little classroom support.

There are severe lifelong consequences in denying children with disabilities the fundamental right to education; it interferes with the learning process, limiting achievements and employment opportunities, impacting negatively on their economic development, social interactions, and human growth. According to the World Health Organization 2016, it is estimated that 90 % of special needs children in developing countries do not attend school, translating to 9 children out of 10, statistics from UNICEF. Out of the estimated one billion people in the world living with disabilities, 10% are children.

The past events show children living with disabilities in schools being marginalized and even overlooked by humanitarian assistance. This negligence is attributed to the failure by government agencies to collect data on children with special needs. The reason being fewer resources and a lot of urgent crises to attend to, poverty is the major thriving force to the negligence and reluctance observed.

Individual education students are an umbrella term of all students with different disabilities that encompasses students with delayed physical, mental, and social progress, delayed, meaning lagging behind their peers in the developmental process.

Special education students present unique requirements to aid their state for them to learn and achieve their best. This demand is viewed as a burden on poverty-stricken societies. The majority of schools in third world countries avail only of the standard basic requirements to teach, leaving the few and vulnerable disabled students to suffer. For instance, a blind student needs books in Braille. A boy in a wheelchair needs a classroom with a ramp fitted. Without these unique requirements, the majority of disabled students end up remaining in home than enduring the scaled sufferings under these deficient conditions.

Poverty has far-reaching implications on the economic status of a place, a school in a poverty-stricken environment means it will only have the basic facilitations to education. The individual needs students, most of the time, to work hard to avail themselves in the schools only to be excluded from learning (Kuyper, 2014). The curriculums in the schools are not cognizant of

Their unique requirements. A case scenario of a child with poor vision ends up not learning in a class because the teacher could not provide the assistive devices or the necessary adjustments. They could read or write what is in the textbook.

Among the 10% of disabled children, 2-3% of this group represents children with severe disabilities, and it is distributed across the country. A child with a substantial mental impairment or one with multiple disabilities requires a select sort of learning that cannot be accorded by poor parents (Vos, 2015).

Before civilization societies were organized in groups that had a particular code of conduct and beliefs, they would often choose to assume as a guiding principle. These beliefs, some were crude and unfair. And to date, these perceptions and attitudes still are evident in some societies, especially the poverty-stricken regions. They believe that disabled persons are cursed, and association with them brings bad luck. They are then ridiculed and made fun of by their fellow students and society at large.

In a society where is, excellence seems to be the only valued achievement people are frantically chasing, it is not unusual to see unprepared teachers wary of including disabled students in the class. They fear low academic standards and often will grow cold feet to the unique needs of education students. Some of them believe that special needs students don't belong to the regular classes, and they should be taught in individual design schools. The economically deprived students on these occasions often fall back, and it is hard when the number one custodian you look up on to for hope begins to despise you.

Much of teachers' concerns on negative beliefs towards disabled students and their priority to competency delivery is also the lack of resources in schools. The inclusion of disabled students in all the schools is not an issue if all the unique provisions which are demanded to gather for these particular groups would have been readily availed. Individual education students are considered the unlucky lot because on top of the difficulties they have to bear with from their disability is the problem of being raised in an environment where there are inadequate resources to gather for brails, ramps assistive teaching aids, and a collaborative environment. Poverty limits the provision of these precise requirements making the students end their studies prematurely. Those who persist often go through a lot of pressure in trying to cope with the general provisions. Education is thus doomed and considered not possible in areas where there are insufficient resources

Minority communities and low-income societies have their schools with poorly trained and credentialed teachers. Their classrooms are overcrowded and have low teacher students expectations. There is also a registered constant and same problem of unfilled teachers across the schools in low-income communities. These problems, in the end, affect the performance of the special needs students (Simon, 2015).

Handling challenged students requires a particular skill from a professional tutor, as their mode of learning is not as fast as the of ordinary students. Providing this kind of attention means an extra input than the average, a rare thing in low-income and minority societies. The individual needs students are then forced to do with what is available, the morale of the students over time drops, making some of the special needs students drop out of school.

There is a thin line in terms of performance between special needs students and those from poverty-stricken areas. Common problems like low birth weight and malnutrition are associated with disability. The prevalence of disability is higher in both special education and low-income societies. It is even worse when a particular need student comes from a low-income family that cannot handle the basics. The success expectations decrease due to the nature of the stigma that grows in place of special education.

It has been on the limelight that, in case of an unfortunate event a child is born with disabilities across all the societies in the world, it is bound to go through a lot of challenges to survive a healthy life. It is made worse when parents are poor. The nature of biases and stigma in society forced the development and adoption of statutes, which will lessen the burden. For instance, in 1983, across the world under article 120 of the World Program Action Concerning Disabled Persons, the member states unanimously agreed to conduct special needs education in the regular school system to prevent special needs students from being wooed to a special needs school (Thapaliya, 2016).

In conclusion, Special education students have a rough time going about their routine schedule getting what ought to be an essential simple requirement, education, ranging from the false beliefs in society about their conditions to the keen attention of teachers and the raging impacts of poverty to their struggles. The community and government should, by all means, chip in with good policies that will favor special needs students. Like making policies to guarantee ramps, brails, and any special needs facilitation in every public space and especially schools.

References

Kuyper, N. (2014). The influence of schooling on the resilient behavior and academic performance of poverty-stricken adolescents in Gauteng schools (Doctoral dissertation).

Simon, N. S., & Johnson, S. M. (2015). Teacher turnover in high-poverty schools: What we know and can do. Teachers College Record, 117(3), 1-36.

Tacoli, C., McGranahan, G., & Satterthwaite, D. (2015). Urbanization, rural-urban migration, and urban poverty. Human Settlements Group, International Institute for Environment and Development.

Thapaliya, M. P. (2016). A report on disability in Nepal.

Vos, T., Barber, R. M., Bell, B., Bertozzi-Villa, A., Biryukov, S., Bolliger, I., ... & Duan, L. (2015). Global, regional, and national incidence, prevalence, and years lived with disability for 301 acute and chronic diseases and injuries in 188 countries, 1990-2013: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013. The Lancet, 386(9995), 743-800.

World Health Organization. (2016). World health statistics 2016: monitoring health for SDGs sustainable development goals. World Health Organization.