Inclusive Education means the merging of regular and special education under one umbrella.

Inclusive
Education embraces large variety of students under a single educational system(Pijl, Meijer, Meijer, &
Hegarty, 1997). In Pakistan, Special Education started in 1972 and with the passage of time
governmental and nongovernmental organizations started providing special education to the disabled
community. As per statistics, the total population of persons with disabilities in Pakistan is 3,293,155 out
of which 265,398 are visually impaired persons (Reynolds & Fletcher-Janzen, 2007). According to
Ministry of Statistics, Statistic Division, Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, Govt. of Pakistan issued a press
release on provisional summary of results of the 6th Census of Population and Housing-2017 according
to which the total Population of Pakistan is 207.774 million with an average growth rate of 2.4% over a
period of 1998-2017 (Statistics, 2017). Since the results are provisional, the final results will show the
exact figures of disabled community in the country.

Implementing Inclusive Education for Visually Impaired Persons at grass root level is difficult but at
tertiary level (Colleges and Universities) it is easy as the students by this age are mature enough and are
better equipped with braille and other assistive technology (Altaf, Kawish, & Anwar, 2017, March 2). In
mainstream education, the Visually impaired students are provided with a lot of assistive devices by the
paraeducators. Optical and non-optical devices, the devices for enhancing visual functioning like large
print books, tactile graphs; devices and equipment for enhancing auditory functioning, teacher made
materials and assistive technology devices: play a pivotal role in the learning of a Visual Impaired
student in the inclusive education class room (Russotti, Shaw, & Spungin, 2004).

Research in the field of inclusive education in Pakistan began in the recent past. To include the exclude
witnessed a long journey. The roots of Special Education are deep in the Sub-continent. Historically, a
school was established in Lahore in 1906 to cater for educational and vocational needs of children and
adults with visual impairment. In those times, the persons with disabilities were not encouraged in the
regular school system. Since administrators and teachers did not know the pedagogy of Special Persons,
they gradually and deliberately isolated the disabled community. The National Commission on Education
in 1959 was the first governmental gesture to focus on the education of Special Children. Before the
dawn of UN’s Decade of the Disabled (1983–92), special education was catered by NGOs and religious
institutions. In 1994, the World Conference on Special Needs Education in Salamanca highlighted the
need for inclusion where the ordinary schools should accommodate all children, irrespective of their
physical, intellectual, social, emotional, linguistic or other conditions. Followed by the World Conference
on Special Needs Education in Salamanca, International School of Studies, Karachi was established in
1995, The Parvarish School, Gulberg, Lahore in 2000, The Hassan Academy, Rawalpindi/Islamabad in
1993, the Department of Special Education, University of the Punjab established in 1990, in public sector
offered Master’s Degree in Special Education. Similarly other Public and Private Sector institutions
contributed towards inclusive education (UNICEF, 2003).

The Gap

There has been always a debate on the role of language used in the class room by the teacher.
Popularly, it is a strong belief that mother tongue has great impact in the Second Language Acquisition.
The clearest support for this belief comes from ‘foreign’ accents in the second language (L2) speech of
learners. Moreover, the journey of speech starts from home. The linguistic journey into the foreign
language also start from home (L1). The teachers can’t stop their students to think and process the
knowledge in their brain in L1. Different language teaching methods like GTM and Communicative
Language Teaching also permit, to some extent, to use L1 in ESL class rooms. Similarly, the teachers
should also be aware of these facts that how, when and where to use L1 in the ESL class rooms. Many
studies shows that limited use of mother tongue is beneficial and over use of it may be counter-
productive as it encourages the low exposure in target language (Khati, 2011).

In an SLA class, the teacher can make learners more attentive, interactive and homely while using L1 by
just saying, “Hello, how are you?” i.e. in the students’ language which can cause a fit of giggles and often
draws students to the teacher to find out what else (s)he can say in their language(s) (ONTESOL).

REFERENCES

Altaf, A., Kawish, A. B., & Anwar, I. (2017, March 2). Inclusive Education in Visually Impaired Children:
Stakeholders Perspective. 17.
Khati, A. R. (2011). When and Why of Mother Tongue Use in English Classrooms 16, 43.
https://www.nepjol.info/index.php/NELTA/article/download/6128/5025
ONTESOL. Using The Mother Tongue In The English-Language Classroom. from https://how-to-teach-
english.ontesol.com/using-the-mother-tongue-in-the-english-language-classroom/
Pijl, S. J., Meijer, C. A., Meijer, C. J. W., & Hegarty, S. (1997). Inclusive Education: A Global Agenda:
Routledge.
Reynolds, C. R., & Fletcher-Janzen, E. (2007). Encyclopedia of Special Education: A Reference for the
Education of Children, Adolescents, and Adults with Disabilities and Other Exceptional
Individuals: Wiley.
Russotti, J., Shaw, R., & Spungin, S. J. (2004). When You Have a Visually Impaired Student in Your
Classroom: A Guide for Paraeducators: AFB Press.
Statistics, P. B. o. (2017). Provisional Results of 6th Population and Housing Census-2017. from
http://www.pbs.gov.pk/content/provisional-summary-results-6th-population-and-housing-
census-2017-0
UNICEF. (2003). Examples of Inlusive Education in Pakistan.