The following attitudes were referred to by Daniel

1.     Attitude of learner capacities – teachers treating children with disabilities as having lower abilities, and teaching them at lower level rather than building on their existing capacities.

2.       Very weird beliefs that disabilities are as a result of demons, curses and bad omens.

3.       African belief that some disabilities are contagious and therefore putting children with disabilities in the regular school will put the children without disabilities at risk. This is a major barrier to IE.

 Where do attitudes referred to by Daniel come from?

They are cultural and environmental attitudes.

 How can they be challenged?

They can be challenged through adequate sensitization in the community.

 Examples of unhelpful attitudes that have been successfully challenged

A certain family in my neighbourhood stopped a young relation (male) with living with them from translating from primary school to junior secondary because he limps. One day during school hours, SBMC members came across this boy selling some wares. He was arrested and taken to the community leader who invited his guardian for interrogation and the reason she gave was that the nearest secondary school is some distance that will require the boy to go by public transport. Meanwhile, the son of this guardian also attends a secondary school which requires him to go by public transport. The SBMC followed up the case by registering the boy with limping disability in the same school where the guardian’s son attends and ensure that this limping boy is assisted to secure a seat in a bus to and fro school daily. The SBMC members monitor the attendance of the challenged boy for a while until they were satisfied that the boy’s schooling was no longer an issue.

A certain gain was usually made jest of by her school mates because she is too fat for sporting activities. When this became known to the parents, a report was made to the head mistress and the class teacher. With the maturity of a mother, the head mistress discussed the case during assembly telling the children how and why to identify individual differences and accept every student as s/he is and respect one another. The sports teacher paired the fat girl with different student for different sport until everyone adapts and overlooks the fatness and become sport partners with the fat girl.