Special Education - The Inclusion Debate

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Special Education: The Inclusion Debate - Youth in Adult Education Programs

Research indicates that there is an increasing trend of youth below 18 years of age entering education programs that have been designed for adults. (Smith 2002, p. 1). This trend has given rise to the question on whether it is healthy phenomena to include youth in these adult programs and if this will lead to positive inclusive learning. However, this trend is visible in federally funded programs for basic and literacy adult education and therefore it is putting tremendous pressures on these programs as they had been initially designed primarily to serve an adult population (Hayes 2000). In this essay, we will review some of these trends and analyse the factors that are responsible for this increase in the youth enrolment, and thus review how such programs are responding to this new challenge.

The recent trends

Most of the evidence showing youth under 18 years of age enrolling in education programs funded by federal government is subjective in nature. It is difficult to document this trend because of the haphazard way in which statistics relating to the age of participants have been collected under