Secretary-General Foundation for Rehabilitation & Education of Slow Children (FRESH) Ms Ashba Kamran said on Friday promoting slow learners as the deserving children is unfair and the Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) involved in it should be discouraged by the public and private sectors.
She said a large number of NGOs working for the slow learners have started approaching the public and private sectors' departments and institutions through pamphlets, flyers and brochures, projecting the slow learners as deserving children. Ashba said the slow learners are not special children in any case, as they are equally normal like those studying at the mainstream education systems.
The only difference is that these children fall under the category of Special Educational Needs (SENs), she said, adding: They should be considered normal, not special. According to her, a good number of mainstream schools are already running remedial classes to accelerate learning skills of slow children, generally facing learning difficulties due to Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) and Dyslexia, etc. She criticised the NGOs projecting these children as special children and urged the government to take action against such NGOs.
Ashba said the FRESH has recently launched an awareness campaign about the slow learners under the banner of Pakistan Association for Difficulties in Learning (PADIL). The FRESH management is approaching the colleges and universities to remove taboos attached with the stigma of learning difficulties and prepare the society for accepting the slow learners as normal children. She said the PADIL has so far reached to the students of Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) and Cathom College and received very encouraging response from students to work as volunteers.