A question for Academia – in relation to Inclusion does the dog wag the tail or the tail wag the dog?
How much academic freedom exists today?
Act One, Scene 3
MARGARET WILLIAMSON … You know in Education there is actually unreason.
JOAN ERRINGTON I read an article recently by one of our clever, clever wise guys – far too many of them in education, and too clever by half for our own good, if you ask me. He said – children with special needs come in tens, scores, even hundreds, not one by one. He said you’ve got to give up the individualised approach. Would you believe it?
MARGARET WILLIAMSON Yes, I know. And I am afraid that some academics just don’t understand, and of course they go on to teach their students the error of their ways No doubt they then get their students to repeat those errors to pass their exams. Ugh.
JOAN ERRINGTON Yes, well I wrote a letter to the paper saying that he should teach kids in special schools like ours not teach about them. You know what he also said? He said the government needed a robust policy to deal with them. A “robust” policy for kids like ours, that was his word. People use the word “robust” today when they should say “ruthless.”
MARGARET WILLIAMSON And heartless.
JOAN ERRINGTON It’s Wizard of Oz stuff. You know, the man without a heart and the man without a brain.
Act Two, Scene 2
EILEEN WINTERTON Well, I’m afraid our old friend Karl Marx is still around in education. People are looking for that elusive level playing field, and with the proviso that no-one actually competes on it.
JOAN ERRINGTON They are looking for solutions to the problems of the world in the libraries of the mind, not in the classrooms of the real world,
EILEEN WINTERTON Of course it’s not just Karl Marx you know. The achilles’ heel of the Liberal is naiveté. And when you don’t know your naïve, its highly dangerous
JOAN ERRINGTON Insanity, King Lear.
EILEEN WINTERTON No, I’d put it another way. You can actually care too much. You can you know, if it blinds you to uncomfortable reality. But going back to our old friend Karl Marx, to coin a phrase, Marxism is the opium of the brainy classes, despite everything. And they hate globalisation too. But you can’t turn the clock back. Those people shouldn’t be looking for an old clock. They should be looking for a new compass.
From Notes & Quotes
8 Extracts from Costs and Outcomes for Pupils with Moderate Learning Difficulties in Special and Mainstream Schools 1999
We have some generalized findings on outcomes from our literature survey and these are highly suggestive – but they do not make it possible to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of the schools in our study,…..For many, inclusion is a fundamental human right – not simply one form of SEN provision amongst many, to be evaluated on the balance of advantage it confers on children. It is important to be clear, therefore, that an analysis of costs and outcomes cannot properly be used to determine questions of rights. ….
The state of our knowledge about outcomes for pupils with MLD is not good, and our understanding of the relationship between costs and outcomes is even worse.
Whichever way you answer the question I posed at the outset, for academia freedom of intellectual enquiry must be paramount. I am not at all sure that it is, and that ought to worry everyone.
Is it a happy dog?