(CZ) Vzdělávání dětí se speciálními vzdělávacími potřebami na prahu třetího tisíciletí
(EN) Educating children with special educational needs at the beginning of the third millenium

In the article, the author claims that despite the fact that education of children with special eduational needs has seen significant positive qualitative shifts in the past ten years, many problems still persist. They are still perceived in the integration of disabled pupils but above all in the work with pupils with specific learning and behaviour disorders at mainstream schools. Implementing methods and procedures common in special education still faces obstacles of common acceptance by educational public at mainstream schools and of an absolutely inadequate pre-graduate instruction to educationalists. This often becomes limiting in the integration of individual children and pupils with special needs. In the article, the author emphasizes that despite the problems described, it is necessary to insist on integration as a fundamental philosophical approach to educating all children and especially children with special educational needs. However, it would be mistaken to imagine the abolishment of special schools behind this statement. It is necessary to use the term of integration responsibly and realize that it must represent not only an end but also a means in the educational process and that it does not imply an authomatic transfer of all children with special educational needs to mainstream schools. Inclusion must be preceded by very responsible professional diagnostics in institutions of educational counselling in co-operation with the school. Fundamental starting points in special schooling therefore primarily concern the removal of segregated education of the disabled and ensuring that equal education is provided to truly all children. According to the author, this state and its consequences transcend the area of schooling and involve the area of education, social services, health-care including the ethics of social co-existence. Inter-disciplinary co-ordination is therefore necessary. The principle of integration and the creation of an inclusive environment is possible to be realised in co-operation with a substantial reform of the school system on the whole. Sufficient legislative foundation represents the basis of the reform. Besides the education of children with disabilities, the author also puts an emphasis on the education of children suffering from an insufficiently stimulating environment in which their personality could not develop in an adequate way or from a failure of relationships in an environment which thus became disarranged. Those children often fail to manage the obstacles of their situation and succumb to it. Many do then face conflict with society’s values, with its laws and customs. The education of children with special learning needs is therefore to be seen as a process of developping and cultivating their personality, as a process of educational influence on their behaviour and on the ethos of society on the whole so that the mutual co-existence of majorities and minorities be at its most harmonious.