'Special' is a label worthy of the toilet

The debate goes on .. and .. on .. and on. No matter what the nomenclature or euphamism for providing an 'inclusive' system of education provision the real issue relating to equitable education seems to be missed - unbiased acceptance of all - gifted, special, inclusive, integrated,whatever - at the end of the day it comes down to an attitude of the mind. The complexity of humaness provides for a diversity of opinion, mostly personal based on past experiences, peppered to taste with empirical research and blended with a range of conflicting opinion dependent on which educational cuisine your taste buds prefer when it comes to determining the 'right' educational approach. My approach after 28 years of recycled teaching methodologies ? Teaching in its purest form is connecting with the needs of any child as an equal individual. Simply put - Teaching is a matter of the heart.

Diversity training, aaaaand much smaller class sizes, and matching students' ability levels with the curriculum level they are being taught i.e. advancing those who can cope with it, and holding those back who can't rather than shunting them up a year when they haven't yet got the skills needed for success. Note: 'special needs' also refers to gifted and able students, and many of those are neither difficult nor resource-consuming.

I'm borrowing some of this (and the material in the links) for a paper I'm giving next week. Hope that's OK and will credit you properly.

I agree Philip. Children are being referred to as 'the special needs', 'the unit kids', 'ORRS students' (this is apparently a positive label cos you're funded!). How would it go down if we separated students based on single parent homes, bed wetters, or race?? Barbaric of course! Let's stop the segregation and call students, 'students' and provide the strategies and support they need to learn and enjoy school.

Hi Phillip, I'm sure I heard something like this in my living room just the other day... IMV, inclusion isn't that hard to understand, unless of course you don't know what it is. It seems that most people still think that just attending a mainstream school (and don't you just love that term) is inclusion in it's own right. Until inclusion in schools is accepted as being about being using a diverse set of means to enable a diverse set of kids to achieve a diverse range of learning and not about (un)equal access to funding then we are stuck in place. I wholeheartedly agree that challenging the language and the labels is an excellent place to begin to challenge the system. Unfortunately many of us have not yet begun to even challenge ourselves in this area let alone the challenge the 'system' and it's proponents.