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<title> VISUALLY IMPAIRED PEOPLE'S RIGHT TO GO TO MAIN STREAM SCHOOLS </title>
It's society's responsibility to resource blind and partuall sighted pupils (I will from now on call both these groups visually impaired.) in such a way that they can go through main stream education. There is nothing wrong with a person's brain just because he or she lacks sight partually or completely. I'm going to bring up three reasons why I think it is of vital importance that a visually impaired child should never be put into non-integrated schools without any accessment or reason other than its handicap. Should it not work for any reason, for example if the child is multi-handicapped, then that child obviously should have the right to go to a special school that better can support its specific needs.

I'm firstly going to show some of the main differences between main stream education and non-integrated education.

Firstly, in main stream schools, the aim is to help the best pupils to move forewards, so the courses set high targets instead of focusing on teaching the classes only the easiest and most basic things in the different subjects. This means that the pupils sometimes can find school challenging, but challenges can be fun, and with the right support they can manage and get stimulated. This is of course the same for a blind or partually sighted pupil. There's no reason to assume that they can't cope. In integration, visually impaired children also get the chance to meet with the sighted world, which I will come back to later. That means that they get ambitious and interested in trying to do something stimulating in the future, something which will help them to develop themselves and their strengths and to expand their knowledge.

Secondly, if a visually impaired child goes to a main stream school, it mostly means that he or she can live at home instead of in an accomodation provided by the school. In non-integrated schools, the pupils often live together in a corridor. The staff substitutes their parents and the other children substitute brothers and sisters, as the school can be situated far from the pupil's home. The child perhaps only meets its parents a few times a year, so they don't get a chance to learn what real family life is about, which can cause several problems further on in their lives.

If the child is integrated, however, it gets to know its family and also other children who are not visually impaired. This of course widens their view of society and social life, and as they are raised in the integratedworld, they learn not to be scared of it.

Having explained the background, I will now talk about what this leads to in the future for a blind or partually sighted person.

A grade from an integrated school mostly means greater opportunities for studying at university or other sorts of higher education. Due to the fact that the child has grown up knowing how to stretch his or her intelligence instead of underestimating it, he or she will learn how far it's possible to go and that one actually can make a career in the sighted world. Having studied at for example a university, the visually impaired person can then get a well paid and stimulating job. The visually impaired person that has gone through main stream education knows that he or she is no different to others when it comes to living an independent life.

To sum up, I want to say that I believe that main stream education provides a better understanding of the outside world than non-integration. Visually impaired people who have gone to schools for sighted people all the way from the beginning get used to solving everyday problems that may occur in a society where everything isn't always specially arranged for a person who lacks sight partually or completely. Also, the more visually impaired people that go to main stream education, the more the sighted people will learn about what a visual impairment means, which will inevitably lead to fewer prejudice from the sighted people's side and viseversa.
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