My Comments on Inclusion as a Discussant in Today's Session on Creating Inclusive Schools

I had the opportunity to be a Discussant in an AERA session on creating inclusive schools this afternoon. I really enjoyed reading the 4 papers and then trying to tie them together; they were disparate and engaging. I thought that some of you might enjoy my thoughts on these issues too, so I'm providing them here:



“Inclusion, much more than integration or mainstreaming, is embedded in a range of contexts—political and social, as well as psychological and educational—in noting that inclusive education is more that simply “integration”, it is important to stress that inclusive education is really about extending the comprehensive ideal in education. …[we should be] less concerned with children’s supposed ‘special needs’ and more concerned with developing an educational system in which equity is striven for and diversity is welcomed.” (Thomas & O’Hanlon, 2004). Certainly all the papers in this session agree on this point. Thankfully we’re all talking about changes within the system, which would seem to indicate that the various student populations discussed in these papers have been “integrated”—meaning that there is some level of acceptance of “these students” within the current educational context—but I think we can all agree that we are still some ways away from genuine “inclusion”…and so the question becomes how do we take the narratives, data, and insights from the research presented today to guide us in reaching that next level?



One of the major challenges to inclusive schooling is that we have an educational system that is based upon an acultural, technocratic ideal that has evolved minimally since the industrial revolution…certainly the facades have changed but the underlying structure and ethos have remained largely the same…rooted within hegemonic Western ideals of progress, homogeneity, and technical rationality…ideas that do not mesh well with diverse cultures, learners, families, or communities.



Schooling as a neutral, “acultural” and “apolitical” phenomenon is a fallacy and destructive to inclusive teaching…students whose individual identitied are suspended in a liminal political or legal space cannot possibly contextualize their learning on their own…because is many cases there is no context…schools need to create the context for learning…not deny it…



Sometimes the only way to get the hegemonic technocracy to acknowledge diversity and personal needs is to “resist” as pointed out by Kathleen Kosobud…now this is not sabotage of the educational process…it is constructive resistance that pushes the system outside of its tendency to homogenize, if just momentarily. Resistance in the form of narrative is certainly one means of making change, but as we see in Kathleen’s work, and as I’ve seen in my own work, parents, students, and advocates occasionally have to throw themselves upon the gears of the machine to get it to stop and acknowledge their individuality…and it is in this inability of the system to see the individual that a lo



Within the realm of research we deal with an interesting phenomenon with regards to this type of research. We study and advocate for inclusion and yet through the process of our study and advocacy we frequently end up highlighting the differences that are cited as the basis for segregation and marginalization in the first place. In the case of SNO’s and paraprofessionals, they play a valuable and irreplaceable in the CURRENT system, and yet the need for this particular role in schools is indicative of a much broader systemic issue for which the paraprofessional is just a band-aid. They help marginalized students navigate the system that marginalized them in the first place, calling attention to the students who need their help in the first place and thereby creating an additional social perception that the student is different and outside of the “normal” classroom community. “Integration” cannot be accomplished while simultaneously calling attention to difference. This is an extremely difficult balance to strike in the U.S., and an even more daunting task in Asia. Having worked in Taiwan with people with disabilities for several years I understand the stigma and overwhelming social barriers that families and individuals with disabilities face when trying to achieve some semblance of a normal life. As paraprofessionals in Singapore I can completely understand the struggle to identify oneself between competing political and social demands…one to maintain, the other to disrupt.



We are clearly all seeing educational systems that have an tremendous amount of institutional inertia behind them; the educational systems have incestuously reproduced professionals and administrators who, either knowingly or unknowingly, are trained to help the system maintain status quo, and the status quo that our systems maintain, as pointed out earlier is based upon an outdated and hegemonic ideal that is inscribed within the classroom, the school, and the entire educational industry. The school is too often removed from the day-to-day cultural existence of the students…so the culture of the students’ homes, neighborhoods, and communities need to be brought more into the school. I certainly think that the historic review of the James Adams Community Schools certainly has a lot to commend for future educational thought. Just as we are seeing an explosion in the locovore and organic gardening movements as local action-based remedies for global warming, so too do I think we need to look at a “back-to-basics”, community-centered approach to address global learning in local contexts.



Inclusion doesn’t just happen in the school…inclusion is a holistic construct that must also encompass community. Several years ago while I was helping develop a self-advocacy skills curriculum for students with disabilities in Alaska, I had the opportunity to visit a remote school in Interior Alaska that served a community of Yupik Eskimos on the vast alluvial plains of the Yukon River. Having worked with students with disabilities for 7 years prior, I had very clear expectations for how the students with disabilities would be treated at this school. In most schools that I had been in, students with disabilities were segregated; formally by attending separate “special” classes, and informally in social situations by their peers were uncomfortable around a student who was “different”.

As I spent time in this particular rural school I noticed that the students with disabilities were not viewed as separate by their peers and were not taught in segregated classrooms. They were hanging out with friends, eating lunch together, and walking to and from school together. On the surface, it appeared that for all intents and purposes the students with disabilities in this school were not viewed as “different” or “disabled” by their peers.

After school let out for the day, I found an opportunity to briefly talk with a group of boys leaving the school. I said to the group: “I noticed that you guys have a few friends who are different, do you hang out with them when you are at home too?” The boys looked at me quizzically, and I queried them more directly: “Why do you hang out with the kids with disabilities?” The boys thought about that for a brief second and then the eldest one of the group looked me straight in the eyes, an uncommon and confrontational gesture in Yupik culture, and said: “Because they’re one of us.” In this one statement lies the “esprit de corps” discussed by Christine and Travis, but it is much more…it embodies an ethic of interdependence that doesn’t see diversity or difference as threatening but vital to the cultural richness of the local community…it sees the success of the classroom, school, and community as hinging upon the success of its individuals and vice versa...