Special Schools to get a name change

The BMC-run school will soon be changing the nomenclature for their ‘Special School’. Under the current scheme of things, schools that impart education to kids with special needs (who have physical or mental disabilities) have nameboards that read as ‘Matimandh Mulanchi Municipal Shala’. The same translated to English stands for ‘School for Mentally Challenged Children’.

Not only the schools' sport this name but even the documentation of these have this terminology. However, this is all set to change as BMC will be bracing a more sensitive terminology.

Talking to Mumbai Live, Neha Mishra of Xavier Resource Centre for Visually Impaired said, "The term Matimandh Mulanchi is more of labelling, which would give parents also a feeling that I don't want to put my child here as everyone will get to know that something is not right with my child. Also, I have a feeling that with these kinds of names teachers also loose a little bit of sensitivity in handling these children. Specially-abled is the right way to go. It will bring more respect and sensitivity in dealing with these children. So I think it is a good move".  

On Thursday, members of the civic education committee had approached MLA Aaditya Thackeray with a written request to rename these schools as “School for Children with Special Needs”.  BMC education committee’s Sainath Durge, raising the issue said that the current terminology used on the boards outside the schools is very insensitive and it must be changed immediately.

The other members of the committee immediately agreed to it and the chairperson Anjali Naik instructed officials to complete the change in a week’s time.

There are 17 of these civic schools that are following this nomenclature in Mumbai and as per officials, it will take them about a month to get the name changed across all the documentation. It was also noted that while even in the 1980s these schools were called Special schools or schools for kids with special abilities since they gave admission to kids that had IQ of 70 or less, the other terminology got attached.