Learning Barriers Essay

5306 Words22 Pages
BARRIERS TO LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT 1. INTRODUCTION It is universally recognised that the main objective of any education system in a democratic society is to provide quality education for all learners so that they will be able to reach their full potential and will be able to meaningfully contribute to and participate in that society throughout their lives. The responsibility of the education system to develop and sustain such learning is premised on the recognition that education is a fundamental right which extends equally to all learners. Exercising this responsibility involves ensuring that the education system creates equal opportunities for effective learning by all learners. There is a critical need to confront an historical assumption in our country that there are two distinct categories of learners in our country. That is, those learners who form the majority with ‘ordinary needs’ and a smaller minority of learners with ‘special needs’ who require support or specialised programmes in order to engage in some form of learning process. This assumption, which is also evident in other parts of the world, defined the nature and organisation of educational provision in South Africa prior to 1994. Within this assumption it is recognised that it is primarily the latter category of learners whose educational needs have not been met: they may have been provided with a separate, sometimes inadequate, system of education, they may have been excluded from the system or they may have experienced learning breakdown. Thus the notion of ‘learners with special education needs’ has become a catch-all phrase to categorise all those learners who somehow do not ‘fit into’ the mainstream education system and to describe the complex array of needs which they may have. This assumption not only serves to divide the learner population, but it also fails to describe the
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