EDICT

Generally speaking, educational integration aims at the rehabilitation and training of people with special needs who are in psycho-motor difficulty or with sensory, intellectual, language, psycho-behavioral disabilities, through a series of legal, political, social and pedagogical measures. The basic principle of this trend is to adapt school and education to the diversity of types and learning possibilities, to the interests and abilities they own. This new perception in the educational reality requires the adoption of certain reforms both socially and at the level of the education system. In other words, educational integration implies changing mentalities regarding the social role of school, then changing mentalities on the individual level, of teachers`, parents` etc.

The most focused upon reforms are the ones at the level of the way the teaching activity is carried out.” The status of people with learning difficulties or that of disabled ones derives from the society’s attitude towards deficiency and the deficient ones as it is the one that builds up a certain social image of the individual and is completely invested in society.”(C.Enăchescu, p.188).

Moreover,the problem of the integration of children with special needs into the mass education brings about the concept of equal chances. Equality of chances represents the process by which various systems of society and environment become available to everyone, in particular to people with disabilities. The existence of children with special needs has put up the educational system against the most diverse issues, from the ways of organizing the activity, the didactic methodology, the evaluation strategies, the teaching/learning strategies, the ways of differentiating the activity and/or learning contents, etc. up to the complex problem of segregation and/or integration of these children into the mass education.

Until recently, in some countries including Romania, there separated people who did not meet the pre-established standards, the learning difficulty being considered the consequence of a disease that can only be treated in a specialized place. Children with mild deficiencies who attended regular schools did not benefit from adequate psycho-pedagogical assistance. This way, special schools and institutions were created. Nowadays, the need is increasingly felt for especially in ordinary schools to get involved by extending their objectives, so that they can include a greater diversity of students and allow the inclusion, in the overall system, of as many children with specific educational requirements as possible.

From this perspective, special education itself must be as follows:

• recognized as the responsibility of all those active in normal education and available to all those who need it;
• integrative, allowing all children with deficiencies to be educated in the least restrictive environment;
• professional, practised by specialist and devoted teachers;
• comprehensive and realistic, depending on current, economic, social, cultural and political realities.

The national strategy regarding the equalization of opportunities for children and young people with disabilities is based on the idea of education for all and for everyone.

• Schools must include all children in the education process, regardless of  the physical, intellectual, linguistic or other conditions;
• Education must be adapted to the child’s requirements and not the child to adapt to prefabricated requirements;
• Participation in the educational process within the regular schools, open to all members of society;
• The inclusive school must recognize and react to the various requirements of the student through: appropriate educational programs, efficient organization, concrete didactic strategies, optimal use of resources, partnerships with other community institutions;
• The disabled child must receive all the additional support he/she needs to achieve his/her own performances according to his possibilities;

Furthermore, the success of integration can only be achieved through the functioning of authentic partnerships at the level of governmental institutions, non-governmental associations of students, teachers, parents and the local community.

Overall, designing and implementing such a strategy will bring the Romanian education closer to the generous ideal of „education for all children – education for everyone”.If F.E. Verza (2002, p.285) defines institutionalization as representing the placement of children with various types of deficiencies in specialized institutions where they benefit from food, care, rest, specialized education and even jobs, under the supervision of specialized staff „, E.Bonchiş (2000, p.127) believes that „institutionalizing a child means placing him in an environment that lacks personal things, personal events, lacks appropriate/individualized activities for each person, lacks contact with the outside world and perspective of the future”.Then the author continues:” the staff controls all decisions and the resident loses his/her autonomy and stops seeing himself/herself as having other roles or relationships in a world outside the institution, he/she becomes practically dependent on the institution and incapable of organizing his/her own life”.

Thus, it can be seen that there are pros and cons regarding the institutionalization of children with special needs as well as the role of society in this process.

Analyzing these problems, David Thomas establishes the following advantages and disadvantages regarding the segregation/institutionalization of children with disabilities/ handicaps:

The advantages of segregation/separate institutionalization are as follows:

• A larger number of people who can take care of the disabled child with increased attention;
• The efficiency of instructional-educational methods in special education;
• Access to medical and therapeutic services;
• Reducing the psychological pressure exerted on the child by giving the possibility and the necessary time to solve the problems related to self-care and by offering the opportunity to develop positive levels of the self-image;
• The inclusion in an officially approved community, which recognizes and takes care of their needs.

Among the main disadvantages there can be listed:

• The placement of the child in a social system largely composed of individuals with the same handicap, which leads to the consideration of the others as a reference group;
• In particular, when the placement is residential, it implies the lack of contact with normal age groups, with all the resulting consequences for psycho-social development;
• The children segregated because of their disabilities do not have the chance to make friends in the neighborhood where they live;
• The social stigma is inferred;
• An excessively protective environment becomes dangerous due to the vulnerability it produces when young people with disabilities are forced to leave it;
• There are negative consequences on the school environment generated by the conflicts regarding the assumption of competences by the social services, the medical services or the special education institution.

On the whole, school is an important environment for socialization. School integration expresses: the favorable attitude of the student towards the school they attend; the mental condition in which instructive-educational actions become accessible to the child; strengthening a strong motivation that supports the child’s effort in learning; situation in which the child or young person can be considered a collaborator in the actions carried out for his education; total correspondence between the requests formulated by the school and the child’s possibilities to solve them; the existence of learning and behavioral returns considered normal by reference to the child’s possibilities or school requirements. The social worker once again plays an important role by choosing the educational institution, thus being able to shape the subsequent evolution of the child.

Futhermore, the levels which the integration is carried out at are as follows:

1. physical integration-allows the satisfaction of basic needs;
2. functional integration-presupposes the creation of conditions for effective use of all services and facilities made available to the community;
3. social integration – aims to establish those types of relationships in the community that do not exclude the disabled person from ordinary social life;
4. personal integration – refers to the possibility of initiating, maintaining and developing relationships with significant people;
5. societal integration – has in mind the ensurance of normal citizen rights and decision-making autonomy regarding their own existence;
6. organizational integration – concerns full participation at all levels of organizational structures in accordance with the capacities and interests of the disabled person.

To sum up, the problems related to school integration are essentially oriented towards the integration into mainstream education structures of children with special educational needs in order to provide a favorable climate for the harmonious and balanced development of their personality.” (A.Gherguţ, p12, 2001). In other words, the inclusive school represents a further step in the process of permeabilization and gradual elimination of educational barriers between ordinary children and those with various disabilities.

Bibliography
Rev. „Primary education”, no. 1/2000, Ed.Discipol, Bucharest, 2000;
Verza, E., Special Psychopedagogy, coursebook for the 13th grade, Normal Schools, E.D.P., Bucharest, 1994;
Blândul, V., Introduction to the Problems of Special Psychopedagogy, Univ. Ed. from Oradea, 2005;
Gheruţ, A., Psychopedagogy of People with Special Needs. Integrated Education Strategies, Ed. Polirom. Iasi, 2001.