Inside 4 Walls

The setting is a city called Gale in southern Sri Lanka. The story is about 24 students ranging from 5 to 17 years of age, each with different physical and mental deficiencies. The only visible connecting bridge between them? The four walls of the classroom.

Inside those walls, autistic spectrum, down syndrome, schizophrenia, deafness and various other ailments live side by side. The classroom comprises teachers, student’s mothers and other volunteers from different countries. I am one of them and I bring both my love and my criticism.

I watch with resignation as teachers give learning materials only to the students who can finish assignments while others roam the classroom restlessly. Likewise, I feel twisted when children are punished for behaviour that is not as desired. The stifling heat chokes and saps and, as I look around the room and see children with so many different nuances, yet so few variations in how their needs are catered for, it makes me feel desperate. I boil inside when I see a child without the ability to speak having food shoved down her throat.

Lack of conformity to the way things are come from those who do not belong to that place. Those who compare the worlds, and do not accept. Those who have the arrogance to think they can do better, who were not there before and do not know the path travelled until today.

When I had finally deconstructed the scenes unfolding inside those four walls, I began to see the reality of the classroom anew. Rather than fear the clash between the two worlds, the two ways, I thanked them for their co-existence. I understood that the hardness of one provides the structure for the weakness in another. That order, punishment and rigid conditions, when done with heart, can bring out the highest quality in individuals. Beautifully, these 24 special children show how capable they are in all the circumstances the school environment presents.