Inclusion Resource Analysis
I was asked by my fellow teammate, Jimmy to answer the following questions: What is a more detailed description of inclusion? What exactly does inclusion look like, specific examples? And as mentioned before, where is inclusion limited and what can we do to circumvent those limitations when they occur?
So I tried my best to find resources which would answer the questions. In terms of ableism and ageism inclusion has many different opinions. There are many who are for inclusion and many who are not, “Proponents of full inclusion assume that the general education classroom can and will be able to accommodate all students with disabilities, even those with severe and multiple disabilities. Those who oppose full inclusion argue that, although methods of collaborative learning and group instruction are the preferred methods, the traditional classroom size and resources are often inadequate for the management and accommodation of many students with disabilities without producing adverse effects on the classroom as a whole.”(From
Council of Exceptional Children website). Some educational experts suggest that students with needs should be included into the larger classroom, but also be in a space that is conducive for their learning style. In the early days of mainstreaming kids with special needs they would simply visit classroom and this would be structured as inclusion. This type of inclusion was not affective in some cases. Many of the parents wanted better results for their children. "Regular Education Initiative" (LRE) talked about five different issues addressing the frustration that parents saw with
mainstreaming students. These five issues are taken from the web page entitled Inclusive settings from the council exceptional children website: “the exclusion of many students who needed special educational support; the withholding of special programs until the student failed rather than making specially designed instruction available earlier to prevent failure; no support for promoting cooperative, supported partnerships between educators and parents; and using pull-out programs to serve students with disabilities rather than adapting the general education program to accommodate their needs.” From this initiative the public school system change their way of looking at special education. From then on the term inclusion was used in public education.
The Inclusion Network I found to be very insightful about what it means to include all people. Their article on,
What is inclusion?is an example how there are limitations even among the ADA and the weakness around the definition of inclusion. Inclusion has meant to invite those who are out, in. The author requests for more practical ways of seeing inclusion. The author comments and questions the nature of inclusion. He states
“Who has the authority or right to ‘invite’ others in? And how did the ‘inviters’ get in? Finally, who is doing the excluding? It is time we both recognize and accept that we are all born ‘in’! No one has the right to invite others in! It definitely becomes our responsibility as a society to remove all barriers which uphold exclusion since none of us have the authority to ‘invite’ others ‘in.’” The author is an advocate saying that we do not need a definition of inclusion because we are one, even though we are different. He also states that we were all born "in". Society will immediately improve at the point we honor this truth!!
The author is clearly questioning the nature of our social context in terms of inclusion. It is how people have been condition to think in our society about differences vs. normalcy. So the people who are so called “different” want to be normal by being included. What is “normal” anyway?
There are many misconceptions about inclusion. In
The Ethics of Inclusion article, the author discribes the three misconceptions of inclusion and states that we all have to be one big happy family; in that we are not prided on our differences they are buried. Inclusion cures all ills, is equated happiness. Denying the struggles that people have in their life makes them to feel like they only belong if the inclusion cures them of their struggle. We are all the same is the last misconception about inclusion. “
The delusion of sameness leads away from the values of Inclusion. It blurs differences and covers over discomfort and the sense of strangeness or even threat that goes with confronting actual human differences”, the author states.
We need learn to celebrated our differences, not everyone is the same. What I have learned from looking at the word inclusion this week, is that the word is just as loaded a word as ableism and ageism. There are many views on this word in a specific context. If we try to be something we are not, then we are just fooling ourselves. There is unity through diversity.
