Radical Approach Integrates Disabled Students
By J. Quinn Martin
Special to The Moscow Times

In many ways, Kovcheg School No. 1321 in eastern Moscow is an average Russian school. It has a small playground, the teachers give lessons in math and reading, and like every school across the nation, it opened its doors after summer holidays last Monday. But Kovcheg No. 1321 is Russia's first and only "integrated school," a radical educational project that places disabled children in the same classrooms as regular kids. At Kovcheg, some 200 students with autism, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy and myriad other handicaps study alongside 300 children without disabilities. "We think disabled children should have the same opportunities that healthy children have," said Alexandra Lenartovich, the director of Kovcheg. In Russia, where the mentally disabled are largely denied access to education and isolated from society, that simple philosophy is nothing short of revolutionary. Then again, Kovcheg grew out of a revolutionary time. During perestroika a group of parents of children with developmental disorders teamed up with psychology professors from Moscow State University to initiate the Center for Curative Pedagogics, a nonprofit organization that helps children with developmental disorders adapt to the real world.
Kovcheg was one of the group's first projects. The school received a license to begin operating in August 1991, the same month that hard-liners staged a failed coup against Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin banned the Communist Party. The intervening 12 years have seen the school flourish: Its numbers have grown from a few dozen mentally disabled children to 500 integrated students. Generous state funding, thanks largely to the support of the head of Moscow's education department, Lyubov Kezina, has allowed Lenartovich to hire the extra specialist teachers necessary to meet all the students' unique needs. The school has also opened art, craft and music workshops and even bought a pony. Today the school is such a success that parents of disabled and nondisabled students alike have a hard time getting their children admitted. For the nondisabled kids, the draw is excellent teachers and programs not found at every school -- such as orchestra or courses in German, Spanish and Hebrew. For disabled children, Kovcheg offers special studios throughout the school where students can paint, help weave a rug or take acting lessons. A child might have a hard time learning math, Lenartovich said, but be quite capable at music or handcrafts. The studios aim to help every child succeed. While Lenartovich is proud of her school's success, she admits it is a small step toward solving a big problem. Based on government statistics, the Down Syndrome Association has calculated that four out of five school-age children with mental illness or serious learning disabilities -- roughly 94,200 kids -- simply do not receive an education. These numbers reflect an established custom of giving up disabled children at birth. These newborns enter what Human Rights Watch has called an archipelago of cruel institutions that spans the country and violates the basic rights of tens of thousands of children. A child given to the state lives in a detsky dom, or children's home, until the age of 4. The government then sends the child to an orphanage to live with other disabled children from age 4 to 18. After 18 and on through adulthood, a disabled ward of the state is forever isolated in a residential home with other disabled adults. Roman Dimenshtein, who co-directs the Center for Curative Pedagogics, traces the problem back to socialism. "In Soviet times, the government told us we were on a path toward a bright future and society was just getting better and better," Dimenshtein said. "Then along comes an 'incorrect' child. It just didn't fit." The state's solution was to warehouse these people from birth and keep them out of public view -- and that approach largely continues today.
Downside Up, a Moscow center for children with Down syndrome, reports that 90 percent of children born with the extra chromosome that causes Down are placed in state institutions. The organization has an on-call team that visits maternity hospitals to explain to mothers that they in fact can keep the child. Natalia Rigina, project coordinator at Downside Up, says solutions from the state are slow in coming and that the public is woefully undereducated about mental handicaps. For instance, it is still widely believed that Down syndrome is caused by a mother's substance abuse. The Kovcheg school is one of the few public schools that Downside Up recommends to parents. Dimenshtein counsels Moscow families that come to his center to take their children to Kovcheg as well. But he laments that the state has not committed funds to open schools like Kovcheg for the mentally disabled throughout the nation. "The government is happy to hand out big grants for sports and ballet -- things that look good," he said. "But for sick children? It's just not fashionable in Russia yet."