Mentally Retarded Child and Special Education in Manipur, India

The Present Paper was an attempt to study the needs and importance of Special Education for Mentally Retarded children. It attempts to sort out the problems which hindered in the educative process and make appropriate suggestions for their development. It examined the district wise distribution of the number of Disabled children and number of special schools for mentally retarded children. It also studies the problems faced by the existing schools of mentally retarded children and suggestions for their improvement. The study included all the special schools i.e. 11 (eleven) special schools of Manipur. The Self designed Questionnaire Schedule was used for the collection of data. It highlighted that all the special schools were run by private NGOs. Out of these 9 districts, the Imphal-East district of Manipur has the highest number of special schools for mentally challenged persons. There were number of problems such as the problems of classroom furniture, teaching aid, inadequate number of teachers etc. So, urgent needs was there to draw special attention by the government, co-operation of the parents and the teachers regarding the present needs and demands of special education for these mentally retarded children.