Neuroticism and Self-Confidence of Physically Challenged Viz. Hearing Impaired and Speech Impaired Secondary School Students of Kashmir Division

Abstract

As per the directive principles of constitution, education should be fair without the any regional or communal bias and should make justice with every individual more than ever for all marginalized groups including visually, hearing, orthopedically and speech impaired. This would permit community participation in education at the basic level and would introduce deep-seated change, leading to the empowerment of learners with Special Educational Needs such as visually, hearing, orthopedically and speech impaired. Until the 1970s, the policy encouraged isolation because the majority of educators thought that children with physical, sensory, or intellectual disabilities were so dissimilar and unusual that they could not take part in the activities of a common school (Advani, 2002). The majority of disabled population is deprived and experience difficulties in accessing essential health as well as rehabilitation services. This costs immobility, isolation, dependency, inequality, often premature death and enlarged poverty. According to the national census (2001) there are 21.9 million disabled people in India– that constitutes about 2.13 per cent of the total population - 1.03 per cent are visually impaired, 0.59 per cent ’orthopedically impaired 0.16 per cent speech impaired, 0.12 per cent ‘hearing’ impaired, and 0.22 per cent ‘mentally’ retard of the total national population. Hearing impairment refers to a defect in or injure to the sensory mechanism. The injury or defect might occur in various parts of the ear. It leads to hearing impairment or loss of hearing. A person may become deaf or hard of hearing depending upon the nature of impairment and the degree of hearing loss. Hearing impaired are those in whom the sense of hearing is non-functional for ordinary function of living. These people do not have capacity to distinguish sound at all even with improved vocalizations. The various sensory defective subjects included in this class will be those having hearing loss of more than 70 decibels (Graham Bell’s Scale) in the better ear (profound) loss of hearing in both ears (ministry of social welfare 1987). A hearing impairment is a hearing loss that prevents a person from totally receiving sounds from side to side the ear. As such sensory hearing defect leads to various other social and psychological problems. These hearing defective persons are prescribed to use hearing aids in order to overcome the various problems. In persistent hearing loss, the someone can not to discriminate any sounds. There are four types of sensory hearing defects such as Conductive hearing defect, neural defect, varied hearing defect and innermost hearing defect.