Recognizing of rights of mentally disabled individuals and school integration.

The attitude of society towards persons with mental disabilities and recognizing their rights and dignity are important evaluation aspects of the society. The Czech Republic follows modern European trends that provide the mentally disabled with the same extent of activities as people without disabilities. As a topic of my thesis I have chosen the mentally disabled children´s right to education. The thesis addresses attitudes of primary school headmasters as well as attitudes of the staff of special education centers for children and youths with mental disabilities to integration of pupils with mental disabilities into a regular primary school. The theoretical part of the thesis deals with important documents discussing the rights of individuals with mental disabilities. It describes not only mental disability and its degrees, but in particular education of children with mental disabilities in schools set up for pupils with special educational needs and the possibility of integrating these pupils into mainstream education. The theoretical part is followed by the practical part. The objective of the thesis was to identify the attitude of primary school headmasters as well as that of the staff of a special education center for the mentally disabled staff to the integration process of children with mental disabilities into mainstream primary schools and implementation of the right to education of children with mental disabilities. The research was conducted by the interrogation method using anonymous questionnaires. The results show that a majority of primary schools headmasters in the South Bohemian region support the right to education of pupils with mental disabilities in the form of their integration into regular classrooms. All the respondents, both primary school headmasters and the special education center staff, give the priority at education to individual learning abilities of each child with a mental disability. At the integration of a pupil with a mental disability into a regular primary school the crucial criterion is health and social motivation, not economic motivation. This thesis can be used as a survey of current attitudes and opinions of primary school headmasters and special education centers´ staff on the possibility of pupils with mental disabilities integration into mainstream education