The Formation and Development of a Government System of Special Education in Russia

The development of national systems of special education throughout all historical periods has been linked to the socio-economic situation in the country, the values reflected by the state and society, thepolicies of the state with respect to children with developmental differences, the legislation in place for education as a whole, the stage of development of defectology - the science of studying mentaldisabilities and physical handicaps -as an integrated field of knowledge as it interfaces with medicine, psychology and pedagogy, and to the world historical and

pedagogical process.

The historical formation and development of a domestic system of special educational institutions hasbeen extremely brief and unique. The formation of preconditions for such a system to arise can be linked back to the pre-revolutionary period, and the process of its coming into being correlates to the period oftremendous social upheaval during the Soviet period when the formation of such a system takes place.

Hence, the history of a state system of special education spans a period of about sixty years, and in some areas of special education, only 25-30 years. In addition, the process of developing a system has been considerably intensive and progressive in nature. Based on the cultural and historical theory of L.S. Vygotsky, theoretical foundations for special psychology and pedagogy in a variety of areas werecultivated and developed quite fruitfully, and a differentiated system of special education was also developed. From the three types of specialized schools for children with severe hearing, vision, andintellectual disabilities that were in operation in the 30’s, the system moved to eight types of specializedschools (for the deaf, the hard of hearing, for the blind, for those with poor eyesight, for children with intellectual, speech or gross motor disabilities, and psychological developmental delays), and 15 types ofspecial training (1991). A pre-school system was organized for early childhood education and training for children with disabilities. All of the specialized schools, with the exception of ancillary schools (for children with mental retardation), provided their graduates with a qualified education, comparable to aparticular level of general education, which has made it possible for these graduates to be admitted toboth special institutions for post-secondary training and to institutes of higher education. The growth rate of the number of special education institutions, the differentiated character of the national system of special education, the level of qualification of the special education, the high rate of development of theoretical

foundations for teaching certain categories of children with disabilities, has proven to demonstrate sufficiently convincing grounds for making a positive assessment of the result-producing nature of the system. However, the assessmentand prognoses was,

in fact, laughable, because no special research was conducted on the question of developinga system of special education overall,and such research could not in fact

be conducted in the absence of statistical information about the number of children with disabilities in the country, the percentage of children in need of special education actually receiving this education through the state special education system, due to the taboo nature of the problem and ideological approaches to the problem in terms of identification, census taking,rearing and teaching childrenwith expressed developmental disabilities, as well as the lack of access to objective data about the state of the system of special education abroad to conduct a comparative analysis.

Due to the impact of socio-political changes in the country in the 90’s, there was a sudden change in the value system of the state that led to a rethinking about human rights, rights of children, and rights for persons with disabilities. Society begins to inculcate a new philosophy: recognition of the indivisibility of society into “those who are worthy” and “those who are not”, and recognition of a unified community, consisting of all kinds of people with all walks of problems. It is within thiscontext that the sudden shift in how society and the government evaluate the state of special education and the prospects for its development became characterized as a crisis.

The crisis arose not as a crisis of individual areas of teaching this or that category of children with disabilities, but as a crisis in the development of the entire system as a whole, including its organizationaland methodological foundations. Doubts were raised about the considerably optimistic forecasts aboutthe development of the national system of special education that had existed up until the 90’s, and about the actual end results of how it was functioning. The crisis turned out to be so deep, that strategies to resolve it led to an alternative thought: continue to improve upon the existing system of special education for children with disabilities, or, completely reject the system that has resulted, and move toward a search for principally new foundations and organizational structure oriented toward western models.

GLOSSARY

disability is defined as a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long term adverse effect on a person’s ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities and the Disability Discrimination Act 1995  (DDA) applies to all childcare providers and schools

crisis (from the Greek κρίσις - krisis;[1] plural: "crises"; adjectival form: "critical") is any event that is, or is expected to lead to, an unstable and dangerous situation affecting an individual, group, community, or whole society. Crises are deemed to be negative changes in the security, economic, political, societal, or environmental affairs, especially when they occur abruptly, with little or no warning. More loosely, it is a term meaning "a testing time" or an "emergency event"

community is a social unit of any size that shares common values, or that is situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a village or town). It is a group of people who are connected by durable relations that extend beyond immediate genealogical ties, and who usually define that relationship as important to their social identity and practice. Although communities are usually small, "community" may also refer to large groups, such as national communities, international communities, and virtual communities.

The word "community" derives from the Old French comuneté which comes from the Latin communitas (from Latin communis, things held in common).

Human communities may share intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs, and risks in common, affecting the identity of the participants and their degree of cohesiveness

Answer the questions

1.Whom wasthe special psychology and pedagogy based by ?

2. When does the society begin to inculcate a new philosophy?

A Slice of History

When speaking about systems of special education coming into being, it is possible to distinguish three general stages for all countries (N. N. Malofeev):

• Prehistory and formation of preconditions (0);

• Deployment of institutions of special education and legislative framework of the system (I);

• Development and differentiation of the system (II);

• Curtailment of the system of specialized institutions and Creation of new organizational foundations for special education (III).

In Russia all of these stages are being reproduced, but with a significant lag time on the scale of historicaltime.