Kontakt 2008, 10(2):417-426 | DOI: 10.32725/kont.2008.062

Integration of people with health handicaps at secondary schools as considered by healthy studentsHealth and Social Sciences

František Radi

Trnavská univerzita v Trnave, Fakulta zdravotníctva a sociálnej práce, katedra sociálnej práce

The target of the work is the evaluation of the importance of the integration of handicapped people for the students without health handicaps.
The integration is a process also concerning the sphere of human rights and freedoms in addition to issues associated with economy, industry, transportation and culture. Our main feature is that we are thinking human beings, which presents a difference from plants and animals. We are different in our sex, colour of the skin, ethnic characteristics, religion, sexual orientation, cultural and political principles, but we are conscious subjects and thus, we can rightfully enjoy our right - right of worthy and meaningful life. In this connection, there is a question. Can people with health handicaps enjoy the meaningful life? We should accept them among us and provide them with conditions making them possible to feel themselves equivalent, to have equal possibilities and to be able to fulfil their ambitions and dreams. This is just what we can do in order that their life might be comparable with our life - to make possible their integration among us. In the contribution, the author mentions taking care of handicapped people in historical context with indicating problems of their integration and tries to consider them from the standpoint of healthy people.
For the qualitative research, the author employed a method of questionnaire inquiry and technique of exhaustive examination, which means, that he addressed all the secondary and special secondary schools in the region of Bratislava, where the individual integration of students is being implemented with special educational-upbringing tools. By means of questionnaires, he determined whether the students at secondary schools in the Region of Bratislava considered as beneficial the possibility of the integration of students with health handicaps among them, if they acquired a new dimension in their lives and what was the enrichment of their knowledge thanks to the presence of handicapped students. Particular data accumulated were evaluated by the percent method and summarized in the form of graphs.

Keywords: acceptation; barriers; secondary school; handicap; integration; majority society; care; special secondary school; student without handicaps; upbringing; education; health handicaps

Received: September 17, 2008; Accepted: November 18, 2008; Prepublished online: December 17, 2008; Published: December 17, 2009  Show citation