Included or Excluded?

The Challenge of the Mainstream for Some SEN Children

Ruth Cigman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• Print ISBN: 9780415401180
• eBook ISBN: 9781134145140
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Bildung Allgemein

In a pamphlet published in 2005 Mary Warnock expressed concerns about some of the concepts that she had helped to introduce in the field of special education almost three decades earlier. She argued that the role of special schools was unclear and the pursuit of inclusion had become too ideological.

This highly topical book suggests that distinctions should be made between kinds of special needs and the possibility addressed that some SEN children might be happier and more effective as learners within non-mainstream settings. Her call for a government review to investigate these problems raised its media profile, fuelling the debate. This book pulls together contributions from all sides of the argument.

An essential read for anyone involved in special education as well as the philosophy and ethics of education this book truly breaks new ground.

Part 1
Moderate inclusion and the case for special schools

1 A defence of moderate inclusion and the end of ideology

Colin Low

Introduction

Throughout most of its history, the field of special education has been bedevilled by dogma. For a long time this asserted that disabled children could thrive only in special schools. For the last twenty-five years, however, in the wake of the Warnock report, the field has been blessedly free from such dogma. A settlement was arrived at based on a mixed economy of provision that acknowledged a decisive shift towards inclusion, with progressive re-engineering of the system to support inclusion as the goal, but with a place reserved for specialist provision for those whose needs cannot be met in the mainstream, either now or in the future. However, this consensus is now being challenged by those who believe in what ‘full inclusion’ or, as the Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education (CSIE) has put it, ‘the right to education in a single, inclusive system of education which is adaptable to the best interests of each and every child’ and from which ‘the possibility of choosing segregation should be entirely removed’ (CSIE, 2004). This is the position that is currently being strenuously advocated at the United Nations, in the negotiations intended to lead to the development of a UN convention on the rights of disabled people by organisations such as CSIE and Disability Equality in Education.

Some time ago, I distinguished between what I called ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ inclusivists. These terms broadly correspond to the positions of those who believe in educational inclusion for all children without exception and the post-Warnock settlement based on a mixed economy of provision, respectively (Low, 1997). But neither of these labels seems particularly complimentary, and in this chapter I shall distinguish between ‘full’ inclusion (this is the universalist or radical position discussed in the introduction) and ‘moderate’ inclusion. In this chapter, I present the case for the moderate inclusion perspective, with particular emphasis on issues relating to visual impairment. I suggest that it is time to confirm the post- Warnock settlement, and banish ideology and dogma from the field of special education once and for all.

The case for inclusion

The Centre for the Study of Inclusive Education (CSIE, undated) has set out ten reasons for inclusion. It is not possible to go into each of these in detail here. In any case I shall wish to disagree with some of them later on. But essentially they boil down to a threefold proposition: ‘Inclusive education is a human right, it’s good education and it makes good social sense.’

A human right?

The human rights and social arguments are closely aligned. ‘There are no legitimate reasons to separate children for their education’, it is said. ‘All children have the right to learn together.’

But why? It is not self-evident that it is wrong to provide a separate regime for children with particular difficulties so that attention can be focused appropriately and as required. Two reasons are given for denying them such a regime:

1. Children should not be devalued or discriminated against by being excluded or sent away because of their disability; and
2. Children belong together – with advantages and benefits for everyone. All children need an education that will help them develop relationships and prepare them for life in the mainstream. Segregation teaches children to be fearful, ignorant and breeds prejudice. Only inclusion has the potential to reduce fear and to build friendship, respect and understanding.

In other words, separate special education is seen as devaluing and discriminatory, and inclusion promotes the mutually accepting social relationships which are so important for full participation in society.

If we get rid of emotionally loaded expressions like ‘excluded’ and ‘sent away’, is it necessarily discriminatory to make special arrangements for some, except in a purely neutral or technical sense? Some might hold that it is more like positive discrimination. So it begins to seem as if the social component of the argument is the more important.

The National Federation of the Blind and the Association of Blind and Partially Sighted Teachers and Students prefigured essentially the same arguments in the 1980s and the early 1990s:

It is generally agreed that handicapped people should take their place as fully integrated members of the unhandicapped community if at all possible. Quite apart from its inherent value, the education of handicapped children in intimate association with their unhandicapped peers is fundamental to the achievement of this end.

(JEC report, 1981)

Separate socialisation restricts the full development of disabled and nondisabled people alike, and the education system . . . can do much to remove the barriers of ignorance, prejudice, intolerance and misunderstanding that ultimately lead to discrimination and a refusal to accept disabled people as full members of the community.

(Low, 1992)

Two specific advantages of integration, as inclusion was then called, are cited:

1. It teaches disabled children to grow up as members of a non-disabled world, and not a self-enclosed disabled world in the most practical way – by living in it. This is the world in which they will have to operate for the rest of their lives, so they might as well get used to it right from the start.
2. It fosters in the non-disabled an appreciation of disability as a wholly normal incident of natural and totally human variation instead of something alien to be at best uneasy about and at worst to reject.

It should be acknowledged straight away that differentiation, or treating people differently, can have a distinct downside and that inclusion can do much to help ‘normalise’ disability. The claims of inclusion should therefore be preferred unless they are outweighed by a need for targeted help from a specialised regime in a particular case. This is the basis of the right to inclusion I wholly accept. It is compatible, however, with the right to choose not to avail oneself of this right in favour of more specialised provision.

What kind of a right is the right to be included? There are three reasons for thinking that it is a qualified rather than an absolute one:

1. The JEC asserts that inclusion has an ‘inherent value’, but what is this? The closest the advocates of full inclusion come to substantiating it is when they speak of separate special education as being discriminatory. But as we have seen, the worst thing about this appears to be its undesirable social consequences – the fact that it leads to separate socialisation, which restricts disabled people’s full development as human beings, and has other undesirable consequences in terms of people’s attitudes, which in turn reinforce the spiral of discrimination. Thus it can be seen that the value of inclusion in combating discrimination is largely instrumental. This must mean that it is not absolute. If the right exists in virtue of its instrumental purpose and the purpose cannot be realised, there cannot be a right. There is some recognition of this when people speak of disabled people taking their place as fully integrated members of the community ‘if at all possible’.
2. The right to inclusion is not the same as other human rights like the right to life or the right to be free from torture. These are about ends, or at least more about ends than the right to inclusion, which is more about means to valued ends. There can be a right to education, but a right as to where it takes place is much more doubtful.
3. The right to inclusion cannot be absolute when, as is the case, some people want it and some do not.

It is important to remember that it is a right we are talking of, which people are free to avail themselves of or not as they see fit, and not a duty, which is what the advocates of full inclusion might be thought to be creating when they argue for a system from which ‘the possibility of choosing segregation should be entirely removed’. I shall say something about the relationship between choice and provision in a later section of this chapter. For now it is simply necessary to observe that, while those in favour of moderate inclusion tend to see a role for parental choice in decisions about the placement of children with special educational needs, those in favour of full inclusion do not. Even so, it is probably true to say that the latter envisage a situation in which the mainstream education system is made so attractive that parents of children with special needs will spontaneously wish to choose it. Only the most hard line are likely to favour compulsion. But the possibility of choice could be designed out. That is the direction in which CSIE would seem to be pointing. However, to the extent that it is not, there must remain scope for people to waive their right to inclusion and for the right thus to be a qualified one.

If the right to inclusion is a qualified right, how then should we characterise it? Since 1975 I have consistently argued for

a presumption in favour of integration based on handicapped people’s common humanity with unhandicapped people and their membership of the same communities. On this basis integration should be defended as a value to be pursued unless there are very good reasons to the contrary, and not just if all other things are equal or it can demonstrate a clear balance of advantage.

(Low, 1975)

In the 1990s I wrote that ‘the principle of integration rests essentially on the belief, succinctly distilled by the Warnock Committee, in the sentiment that, so far as is humanly possible, handicapped people should enjoy the opportunities for self-fulfilment enjoyed by other people’. The qualification ‘so far as is humanly possible’ is important. Some people have been won over to the principle of integration, but still hold it in a rather watered-down form: integration is all right if all other things are equal. We should try to do better than that and hold on to ‘so far as is humanly possible’ (Low, 1992, 1995), meaning that every effort should be made to meet the needs of all children in the mainstream without removing other options in case we should fail. This is a strong and precisely delineated statement of the moderate inclusion position, and it is the position I still hold today.

Good education

Three points can be distinguished here:

(1) Many commentators have referred to the low expectations fostered by special schools and to their consequent unstimulating character, and CSIE maintains that ‘research shows children do better academically and socially in inclusive settings’ (CSIE, undated). Furthermore, Disability Equality in Education (2005),citing Department for Education and Skills (2004), claims that research has shown that effective inclusion improves achievement for all pupils/students.

If we acquit Disability Equality in Education of the charge of tautologous thinking, evident elsewhere, and accept that effective inclusion and improving achievement for all pupils/students are not the same thing, there are still good reasons for treating bald assertions such as these with caution. For a start the 2004 DfES research report found no correlation between pupil achievement and inclusion, though there was some evidence in relation to socialisation. It is true that this could have more to do with the validity of national tests than with inclusive practice, but it still does not justify the claim which is made. More generally, the considerable body of research which now exists on inclusion hardly justifies such sweeping conclusions. Not only do the findings differ from one study to another, but particular studies, like the DfES report indeed, can point to different conclusions, depending on which aspect of inclusion they are looking at.

(2) CSIE maintains that, ‘Given commitment and support, inclusive education is a more efficient use of educational resources’ (CSIE, undated). This is questionable. They are probably referring to the inefficiency involved in the duplication of mainstream and specialist systems, particularly in the duplication of subject teaching.

Economically, it is far more efficient to target resources towards a single inclusive education system from the outset than to develop a dual system of separate education for disabled and non-disabled persons and then have to work towards bringing about inclusive education.

(CSIE, 2004)

But against this can be urged the greater efficiency inherent in the better targeting of specialist resources towards pupils with special needs, made possible by the existence of at least some special schools. Such resources are inevitably much more dispersed and thinly spread throughout a wholly mainstream system. The case for inclusion probably rests much more securely on its social value than considerations of economic efficiency.

(3) CSIE also asserts: ‘There is no teaching or care in a segregated school which cannot take place in an ordinary school’ (CSIE, undated). That may be so, but the existence of individual examples of inclusion is not the same thing as the generality of schools being geared up to cater for the full range of disabilities. This raises the question of the kind of inclusion being sought. As against the mixed economy advocated by the proponents of moderate inclusion, those in favour of full inclusion aspire to the ideal of a ‘restructured and appropriately resourced and supported mainstream education system that aims to meet the needs of the full diversity of children in their local areas’ (CSIE, 2004). In other words, their ideal is ‘a single, inclusive system of education which is adaptable to the best interests of each and every child’ and from which ‘the possibility of choosing segregation should be entirely removed’. The system of education being referred to here is probably the education system of the country as a whole. The philosophy of full inclusion is more defensible in relation to the education system as a whole (the macro education system) than it is in relation to the individual school (the micro education system) but, as we shall see, that does not prevent its being advocated in relation to the individual school as well.

These two positions will presently be examined in turn. For now I simply wish to observe that the full inclusion perspective also has a strongly generic thrust. This is the reason why CSIE and others have opposed the efforts of organisations representing blind, deaf and deaf/blind children at the United Nations to retain the option of specialist provision for children with those disabilities. ‘Giving persons with certain disabilities a right to receive education in their own “groups” . . . would undermine the right to inclusive education’ (CSIE, 2004). In order to do this, they have had to subordinate value of self-determination to the value of inclusion.

Total inclusion at the level of the school – the micro education system – and models of disability

The advocates of full inclusion adopt a radical critique of traditional ‘individualised’ or ‘deficit’ models of special education, which see the individual child as the proper focus of remedial efforts. They see the problem rather as one of classroom organisation and teaching being sufficiently specialised and differentiated to meet the needs of all children with disabilities, no matter how profound, multiple or complex. Even more radically, they may see the problem as residing in the school as a whole – in its culture, structure and organisation – or in the content of the curriculum and how it is taught, which they see as dysfunctional for all children, not just those with special needs. They focus attention on improving the learning experience for all children in such a way that those traditionally conceived of as having special needs will be benefited. The benefits will be indirect rather than direct, and involve whole-school approaches, or what the criminologist Nigel Walker (1969) called ‘unfocused’ measures when talking of crime reduction. In the field of criminology, an ‘unfocused’ measure might be the more human design of housing estates, as opposed to the ‘focused’ measure of punishing offenders (Ainscow, 1993). This ‘unfocused’ approach is evident in the following statement by Disability Equality in Education: ‘At present, statements remain as a safeguard for parents and pupils until all schools have the expertise, with the backing of the LEA, to restructure teaching and learning to meet the needs of all pupils/students’ (Disability Equality in Education, 2005).

This imports into the educational arena the perspectives of those who espouse the ‘social’ as distinct from the ‘medical’ model of disability. In this regard, Disability Equality in Education (2005) says:

We believe that the problem is not in the child and their impairment, but in the social and attitudinal barriers in the education system. This ‘social model’ draws on the thinking of disabled people and underpins all inclusive education. Now, thinking based on an outdated ‘medical model’ is being used to argue for the establishment of many new special schools.

But, if anything, full-blown social models are even less plausible in the educational arena than elsewhere. If education is about anything, it is about influencing and indeed changing the individual child. One may do this by modifying the social environments in which the child is placed, but one cannot eliminate the individual dimension altogether. We shall certainly see this when we come to talk of visual impairment. One might argue for the salience of the social dimension when considering the response to be made to children with, say, physical, emotional and behavioural difficulties, but the child with sensory or learning difficulties has specific impairments that need to be addressed individually.

Doubt has been cast on the viability of the social model perspective in relation to special education on the ground that it is both utopian and elitist (Low, 1997):

Can one seriously imagine society undertaking all the transformations that would be required to accommodate all the special needs of all those groups which have them? Might these not come into conflict from time to time? . . . Is this not an unattainable ideal? Does the notion of ‘special needs’ have any meaning left at this point? . . . It is hardly to be expected that anyone’s special needs will be adequately addressed by non-specialists charged with the task of meeting everyone’s special needs simultaneously. . . . Disabled people do have certain needs which it is right to think of as special. A system which attempts to meet everyone’s needs together meets nobody’s. Indeed the notion of special needs and fully inclusive provision is a contradiction in terms.

In other words, the prospect of the general education system being geared up in terms of staff, expertise and facilities to cater for every kind of disability as an integral part of its provision is something of a utopian ideal. However, when faced with examples of children failing in the mainstream and having to be rescued by special schools, the proponents of full inclusion are apt to turn this to their advantage and insist that the experience of mainstream was not an example of genuine inclusion at all. As Disability Equality in Education (2005) says: ‘Baroness Warnock is talking about the problems of poor integration. This is not inclusion, which means changing the school so all children can flourish.’ Of course it may not be good inclusion. Inclusion may fail because it is inadequately resourced or badly implemented, and the instinct of inclusionists to call for the mainstream system to be improved, rather than for more special schools to be opened, may be a legitimate one up to a point. But we should not be fooled into thinking that examples of poor inclusion are not examples of inclusion at all. The argument that any case of failed inclusion is not a case of true inclusion fatally fails Popper’s falsifiability test and puts inclusion beyond empirical evaluation, because it assumes its own conclusion and thus becomes true by definition. If the only kind of inclusion is successful inclusion, it becomes impossible to point to any instances where inclusion ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Included or Excluded?
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contributors
• Foreword
• Editorial introduction
• Acknowledgements
• Part 1: Moderate inclusion and the case for special schools
• Part 2: Philosophical and practical perspectives on inclusive education