I have suggested to you that you have to be very careful how you used words. If you are not careful they can be like a straight jacket. When you wear a straight jacket you can see and you can talk, but all movement is restrained. It is the same with some words. When you use them, you can see and you can speak, but your thought processes can be severely restricted. They first control what you think. They then influence what you do.
Move on from there. We have seen how some words, like the word “right” for instance, can change their meaning depending on how they are used.
Other words, like the word “Communist” and “Marxist”, can change not just their meaning but also their magic. It can happen overnight. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact in 1939 when Stalin got into bed with Hitler was such a moment for many. For the same generation Arthur Koestler’s “Darkness at Noon” turned a dream into the nightmare that it was. For another generation it was when in 1956 the Soviet tanks rolled into Hungary; and for another generation, when Mikhail Gorbachev threw in the towel.
I have suggested in Blogs 4 and 5 that the word “Equality” has controlled how we think and what we do for far too long, and sometimes not for the best.
I am now ready to look at the word “Inclusion” which is a very good illustration of the same phenomenon. Twenty years ago it was enough to say that it was all to do with equal rights – note the two words – never mind the cost, never mind the practicality. And some people still do. They have to. Their jobs are built around it. They have been teaching it. Laws passed under its influence have still to be obeyed.
Today, however, more and more people are saying that it is not so simple, and I am one of them. Today the word “Inclusion” is the same, but it has lost some of its shine.
Now consider the following extracts from my book:
Extracts from House of Commons Education and Skills Committee – Third Report March 2007
A confused message
65. It is widely presumed that the Government has a policy of inclusion or an inclusion agenda. Indeed, Baroness Warnock in her recent article-which many described as a u-turn in her position on inclusion -concluded that “possibly the most disastrous legacy of the 1978 report, was the concept of inclusion.” She argued in the article that inclusion could be taken “too far” and that this was resulting in the closure of special schools to the detriment of children with SEN.
66. The Government has, in written and oral evidence to this Committee, repeatedly stated that “it is not Government policy to close special schools” and that “Government plays no role in relation to local authority [...] decisions to close schools.” (Why my book is heresy)
77 The most radical u-turn was demonstrated by Lord Adonis in his evidence to the Committee. The Minister described the Government as being “content” if, as a result of Local Authority decisions, the current “roughly static position in respect of special schools” continues.
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8 Extracts from Costs and Outcomes for Pupils with Moderate Learning Difficulties in Special and
Mainstream Schools 1999
p 14 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.
P71 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. (My underlining, and note in particular the date).
P 107 Appendix 4 LEA Survey
Requests for information = 145 excluding 8 LEAs involved in the Research. 33 LEAs responded to this request:
o 76% do not have any information/studies
o 15% sent limited information but do not have any significant current studies.
o 9% sent information or undertaking studies.
From the Prologue
So, when you talk about the “right” to Inclusive Education you should recognise that some will want to assert it and may succeed and thrive. Some may assert it but be disappointed and wish they hadn’t. Some may want to assert it but be denied it. Finally, some may not want to assert it at all but be forced to accept it with no other realistic choice available, and some may want to assert a different right altogether – the right to go to a special school. Remember that children without special needs have their rights too. This actually summarises how things are.
Social reformers have not always grasped this. I suspect that many have looked at this simplistically, seeing it as essentially society’s difficulty not an individual’s and, with the very best of intentions, projecting what they felt in their gut they would want for themselves for everyone else, a not uncommon mistake. Even disability organisations that have done so much to help the disabled may have fallen into the same trap. That is why they may not always have seen the quite different and varying needs that some children and their parents actually have, and a not always pleasant reality they have to deal with every single day. Very simply, some do not want an open door. What they want is a helping hand and the comfort zone of their own company. For them change is a worry and a threat.
Inclusion is a concept that is absolutely wonderful in the libraries of the mind. It is not always quite so wonderful in the classrooms of the real world, especially if vulnerable children are excluded when they are supposed to be included, made to feel unwanted and, at its worst, shoehorned into a hostile environment.
Today classrooms are populated by far too many bully boys and girls. Teachers may have too little time and sometimes too little training as well. Supply teachers are here today and gone tomorrow. Teaching assistants don’t always know how to stretch children in the way that trained teachers do and, in many cases, do not improve attainment. Ironically they can create a sense of exclusion in an inclusive environment, stigmatising pupils in the process. Teachers are not always trained to relate to them. A hundred thousand more teaching assistants have come on stream since 1997, quite a number of them supporting children with special needs. Did anyone anticipate this – and calculate the cost? In addition, there are too few therapists and money is still short. But then the policy of Inclusion was never properly costed by anyone in the first place. Thus, cost benefi t analysis is a totally alien concept.
Act One, Scene 2
JAMES HARRINGTON…You just have to. You see the Treasury has made up its mind that there are savings to be made here if they invest in it. You know the figures. Three per cent of children have special needs but they gobble up eight per cent of the total spend on education. That really isn’t equitable.
DAVID HARDING Between these four walls I don’t think Inclusion is going to be a cheap option.
JAMES HARRINGTON Well leading accountants advised us that we could make some real savings simply by reducing the number of Statements LEAs have to write for children with special needs. Get that down by a third, reduce special school places by the same, and then hey presto you don’t need all those special schools. And writing Statements is a real headache. We’ll have to keep some schools for kids with profound difficulties or very complex behavioural problems, but most can go.
DAVID HARDING Hm. Accountants. Some are just calculating machines on legs. They play with figures and talk about outcomes. They leave us to deal with people and try to meet their needs. They’re just not street wise. They manage us when we should be managing them. The savings won’t be there if we do our job. Mark my words.
JAMES HARRINGTON You may well be right, especially to begin with. The Treasury has agreed to cough up millions to adapt mainstream schools, and we will obviously have to commit ourselves to training. We are currently trying to work out the actual cost now. It’s not easy though. There’s a major study just started.
DAVID HARDING Good luck to it. I look forward to seeing the results. I just hope you haven’t provided them.
JAMES HARRINGTON You’re a cynic. Anyway, just you keep your doubts to yourself. Money is where money needs to be is my motto. We can’t go back now.
Act Two, Scene 2
EILEEN WINTERTON … 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.
I hope that you can now see how the word “Inclusion” can be a straight jacket; how it can actually give you a serious learning difficulty. It doesn’t help if you haven’t got your head round the word “Equality” and seen that “Equity/Fair play” is a better word to use here. And it also doesn’t help if you do not see that the word “right” can have many different meanings and, quite often, that all that it means in practice is “Wouldn’t it be nice if….”
Of course it is right to try to ensure that as many children with special needs should be included in society as adults and that everyone should welcome them. But you certainly do not have to be included as a child in a mainstream school to enable you to get there. You are not “wronged” if you go to a special school. I have seen that for myself.
And don’t kid yourself, if you are in the Treasury, that Inclusion will save any money. When you cost in the little empire that has been constructed to run it, and the army of classroom assistants that have been recruited to help teachers apply it, there will be precious few, if any savings. But then the Treasury is not very good at house-keeping, is it?
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