Sport + adult education = health and social inclusion
When sport and adult education are combined, great results can be achieved. This combination has been tested with refugees, prisoners, mentally handicapped people and senior citizens. Sport also proved a useful tool to work with adults with special needs. Being involved in a sport can improve the health, well-being and quality of life of any person with a disability.
The road to good health does not stop when a person with a disability is discharged from hospital. Even though his or her life may have been saved, their medical condition have stabilised and they have been issued with a wheelchair or prosthesis, this does not mean this person’s rehabilitation is complete. It is a long of intensive rehabilitation that lies ahead as this person slowly adapts to a new life. Many people are born with a disability and do not have a sudden change in their function. One of the activities that can improve the health, well-being and quality of life of any person with a disability is sport.
Sport offers physical advantages – good blood circulation, stronger muscles, better balance and co-ordination. But, sport can offer so much more. People who participate in sports enjoy psychological benefits like good self-esteem and confidence and a belief in their skills and abilities.
They may also have lower anger and stress scores than people with disabilities who are inactive. Through training for a sport, learning a new skill and working with others is much easier. Many people have better self-discipline, better organisational skills, leadership and a sense of responsibility towards themselves and others.
Many sport programmes around the world are focused on including unemployed adults in crime-ridden areas. Sport can provide healthy competition, promote constructive time use, positive social interactions and promote valuable life skills. In the same way, sport is beneficial to people with disabilities.
Sports may need to be adapted by changing the rules or changing the way in which it is done, to enable a person with a disability to participate, but as a general rule, the adaptations are reduced to a minimum. Some of the sports more commonly available for people with disabilities are track and field, table tennis, wheelchair tennis, wheelchair dance, chess, judo, 5-a-side soccer (for the athlete with visual impairment), 7-a-side football for athletes with cerebral palsy, swimming, wheelchair basketball, wheelchair rugby and cycling.
In some sports the rules don’t need to be changed at all to accommodate a person with a disability – depending entirely on the disability and how it affects playing the sport. An example of such a sport is archery. An archer with a disability can compete on an equal footing with any other archer.
Classification ensures that athletes who succeed in competition do so because of sport ability, skill and training rather than because of having milder impairment than a fellow competitor.
Adults with disabilities should be encouraged to join regular mainstream sports clubs in their own communities to access coaching, sporting facilities, and the social interactions that club membership affords. The challenge out there is for all community-based sports clubs and school sport to promote inclusion of people with disabilities in all their sporting activities as far as is possible, by removing physical and emotional barriers to participation. An incorrect perception that people with disabilities do not want to or cannot participate in sporting activities is one of the biggest barriers to be overcome.
Working with people with intellectual disabilities is a tool which should be used to remove the language barrier. Sport is indeed a universal language, and a very powerful one, when it comes to helping disabled individuals. They can experience personality disorders and disharmony more often than normal people as they cannot establish healthy communication. Sports support disabled individuals to overcome their problems, by minimizing loneliness feelings and enable them maintain a meaningful living process. Sports enable individuals to get rid of their narrow worlds and be affected from other environments, individuals, beliefs and thoughts.
With this aspect, sports contribute to establishing and reinforcing new friendships, and social cohesion. Therefore, disabled individuals, who are encouraged to sports, can be integrated into society faster, and prevented from being weary of life. Sport is one of the best methods utilized to socialize, develop belonging feeling, integrate to society, and overcome loneliness feelings of visually handicapped, like all other individuals. All people are in need of establishing relationships and interacting with others in their lives. Lack of social relationships drives individuals to loneliness, and consequently they experience many other problems. Loneliness refers to the perception that social relationships don’t work as expected. It is universal and a result of the feeling of belonging. Loneliness is defined with different names according to its cause. Emotional loneliness, for example, is related to family, special friends and relationships, while social loneliness is about friends in social environment.
Even every individual has come to world with a physical structure working in a certain manner, the features of this physical structure are different. Since these differences include negativities, they are called as handicap. Therefore, while studying the concepts of self and self-respect, it should be taken into consideration that physical handicaps can affect the development of self. The level of visibility of a handicap is also the indicator of how much it will receive attention from the society. The more visible a handicap is, the more likely it will deteriorate the regular flow of interaction. These types of people are certainly aware of others’ negative attitudes towards themselves, and know that they will encounter prejudice and discrimination for all their lives.
Sports contribute to the process of solving problems of social adaptation and loneliness among disabled individual. Among the long-term objectives of activities for adults who need special education are, developing positive sense of self, social competence, motor skills, physical and motor fitness, free-time skills, game skills and creative expressions . Sport programmes should be developed considering the disabilities of individuals. “While programming activities for disabled individuals, physical education should be provided in the first step, therapeutical physical education programmes should be in the second step and developing physical education programmes should be in the last step.” (Gallahue,1987)
Even the effect of sports on loneliness and hopelessness levels has not been detected certainly yet, sport is known to develop inter-personal relationships. Sport education is an effective educational instrument that eases social adaptation and develops interpersonal relationships. Sport is becoming more common as a treatment complementary to conventional physical treatment methods. Work-out methods programmed in accordance with disability and age of disabled individuals can contribute to their social adaptation and psychological well-being. Additionally, independent movement skills can be developed among disabled people through sports, so disabled individuals should participate in sportive activities more frequently. Special sportive activities should be organized for disabled individuals at schools and national holidays in order to increase their adaptation to society and motivation.
No matter what the disability, impairment and handicap of individuals who need special education are, every age and gender should be provided with the educational service as their fundamental right. Within this education, sports education is the most necessary and important educational method for disabled.
