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Pat
Pat Linkhorn, 2001
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The
word inclusion seems to conjure up all the worst images for many professionals.
It, like it's predecessors, mainstream and integration, has different
meanings to different people. The
first thing professionals tend to do when they hear that they are going to be
asked to change is to have a meeting. Then
they go about defining the extent to which they will have to change.
They then deliberate and try to outline the process they will have to
follow in order to comply with rules. Meetings
like this tend to be long, drawn-out affairs where it is impossible for everyone
to agree on the exact nature of what they're doing.
As a
parent with two children with special needs, who are in "inclusive"
settings, (which by the way vary because their disabilities are different), I
have to question the need to define the process for so many people who are
supposed to be educated. Is it a need to limit the extent to which they will have to
adapt? Is it a method by which to
prioritize all the reasons it won't work? Is it a stalling technique?
My
memory of teachers from my childhood was that they were people to be looked up
to and admired. After all, they
were our teachers, the people responsible for helping to shape our lives and
futures. Based on the amount of
resistance I have encountered during the process of getting my children in
inclusive settings, I have to question whether my memory is bad or whether
teachers are different now. Had I
been educated in a setting where the professionals worked twice as hard to avoid
doing what was right rather than simply just doing it, would have made me a very
badly educated person.
Perhaps
if our professionals thought of inclusion as a way to make the most of all
students abilities, there wouldn't be this need for all the meetings to define
the term. If all people would look
at people with disabilities and say to themselves, "There, but for the
grace of God, go I," and then go one step further and try to imagine how
they would like to treated if they were in that person's shoes, there would be
no problem. They would help to make
it possible for our children to be included in school, social affairs,
extracurricular activities and community. They
would, without the need for meetings, do what was right for all children.
So
perhaps inclusion should be viewed as just the right way to do things rather
than a new mandate that has to be met. The way they would like it to be if it
were their child.
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