My needs are special - Hello!

Special Needs - When we were growing up Special needs was never a part of the learning process.Inclusive learning /exclusions/ Sensory's breaks etc was not something that I had heard of. This could stem up from 2 reasons:a) The school that I went to was an ordinary schoolb) Indian society per se is not sensitized to specials needs children.Today as I close a book about a child in the autism spectrum and has Aspergers - again Autism was not something that I heard of until 6 years ago when I had taken up teaching as a profession.It refreshed memories of my own classmates and how learning at that time was seen as a need. I don't think teachers themselves were exposed to this is area of childhood development. So if a child was slow in school he was immediately discounted as "dumb" or more so beaten up.I don't think that has changed at all in the indian education system.When I think of children who couldn't get Math or couldn't spell - they were thrown out of class like it was a solution to all their issues. No one ever made an attempt to understand "WHY".Neither were fellow students sensitized to the this whole concept. Luckily at that time no used the word "Retard", obviously because of limited vocabulary, but instead "Mad/Mental" was the derogatory term.Teachers never bothered to investigate why a child had issues and why at that time as well there was a need for specialist intervention.Parents on the other hand in our classic society must have thought about "log kya sochenge syndrome" "mera bacha pagal nahi hai". They were basically embarrassed  or fear of acceptance because they probably NEVER saw the signs. The never read books /they never bothered to research.I still  have a 70% stat in my head (since the time I know it), which prompts me to say that if it is true that 30 years later 70% of our population  still lives in the villages and thrives on agriculture - One can imagine our plight when it comes to child development.It is estimated that close to 50% of our population will literate in 2020. I can foresee another 10 decades until things change for children in this country!