Mainstream education must be more welcoming and offer more hospitality to all learners. However, regardless of the criticisms legitimately directed at the local and national organisation of some mainstream schools and colleges, their crucial advantage is that they have a place within a local community; such a presence can provide the scrutiny of ordinariness which can inhibit often bizarre and sometimes damage practices we have adopted in segregated settings. Such a location also allows for links to community with a potential social network, which can enable the learner to translate her/his, presence into meaningful relations within and beyond school gates- relationships which, arguably enable us to sustain and give life.
Oliver (1990) suggests that if disability is defined by social oppression, then disabled people are seen as collective victims of uncaring society or unknowing society rather as individual victims of circumstance. In this reflection, disability is seen as a tragedy. It is a tragedy firstly by seeing disability as a problem, and then by devising methodological strategies to measure the extent of these problems that individual disabled people have to face in real life situations. This is supported by
Jonhstone, (2001:95) ‘participation brings personal dignity, collective support, solidarity and refusal to be silenced, ignored or marginalized’.
Oliver (1999:87) states ‘that the imperative strength of the medical model is grounded in the principle of normalization, and a return to ‘wholeness’, which is impossible to achieve’. I suggest that confidence builds from self-esteem and acceptance from the society. This aids the notion of broad mindedness. The acceptance of an individual by the society stimulates the desire to take part in issues affecting that particular society.
Therefore: if disability is defined by public policy, the ‘process of social interaction’ whereby individuals are marked out or set out aside because of some attribute they possess, negates the whole notion of inclusion and regenerates the notion of ‘segregation and integration’. In the broader community there is a wider range of issues that ignore the differences that various disabled people ‘experience as a consequence of gender, sexuality, race, culture’ or other distinctive labeling features, Rights Now (1996).
Children’s developing self-image can be seriously influenced by the way, in which their families, professionals, and society view a particular disability. Such attitudes affect the way in which the children accept or reject body images and are also related to their ability to cope with themselves, their limitations, and their carers in a ‘normal society’. This reflection indicates that a positive self-image encourages a committed and resourceful approach to life.
Developing this further, it can be pointed out that in every aspect of life the consideration of a person with disability is characterised by need and this perpetuates the person to be having a special requirement as opposed to a ‘normal life’. The impact of such a phenomenon leaves a lot to be desired in the life of a person with disability. The implication converses the ‘idea of impairment as abnormality in function’ and the limitation in performing a ‘normal’ social life. Hence the need to reverse from the emphasis of medication and shift from individual and ‘personal towards shared collective responsibility’, Wolfendale (1996).
Using the ‘special’ format of isolation from mainstream programming, for example, the education system, the possibility exists that it in its self is a special barrier to ‘normal life’. Therefore: there are limitations and barriers to social life of that particular person. In this context it is the society that perpetuates the ‘oppression and exclusion’ of people with disability. Thus, the segregation of people with disability from the mainstream of social life and economic life influenced policies that have placed disabled people in segregated establishments such as special schools and day care centers, Oliver (1990).
From this point it can be argued that the mentality of having special schools and special education for people with disability serves as an indicatives dominance of the able-bodied over the disabled in policymaking and decision making. In such designed institutions, the education system is formulated towards what the society can do for their special needs. The issue of life skills in a ‘normal society’ cannot be addressed by being segregated from the society rather be in it to face real life situations and the influence of peer interaction.
In such an environment of ‘oneness’ there are opportunities for peer relationships and friendships, environment for generalisation and enrichment of academic skills, models of appropriate social and language skills, and typical routines and rituals common to growing up in a community or society. An inclusion in the ‘neighbourhood’ school/college prepares a student with or without disabilities to live, works and play together as citizens of their community.
The general norm and perception is that students with severe learning difficulties are of less value than students who gain any other university entry and their achievements are no less worthy of respect. To select a student out of main stream because of disability or learning difficulty is an evaluation of their worth as a person and discrimination on the basis of circumstance for which they are not responsible. Continued ‘…segregation of disabled and non-disabled students can only help to foster stereotypes, while inclusion has the potential to get rid of stereotypes by enabling young people to learn about each other’s common humanity as well their uniqueness’. Zarb, C. (1995)
The benefits of inclusion have been well demonstrated and inclusion is widely accepted by government and local education providers in this country and overseas as the way forward. The UK Government supports the ‘strong educational as well as social and moral grounds’ for students learning together in the mainstream and has declared inclusion as the ‘keystone’ of its education policy. The 2001 Statutory Guidance on Inclusive Schooling from the Department for Education and skills gives a strong message to local education authorities (LEAs), schools and other bodies that the development of inclusion in schools is one of the Government’s highest priorities.
The implementation of inclusive programming calls for the Government to have a clearly stated policy that is understood by schools and colleges and wider community levels; they should allow for a flexible curriculum as well as ‘additions’ and ‘adaptations’; and provide quality materials, on going teacher-training and support teachers. Inclusive education and community based programmes should be seen as ‘complementary approaches’ to cost-effective education and training for disabled people. Communities should develop local ‘resources to provide this education’. Gooding, C (2000)
The inclusive approach avoids a view point which locates ‘difficulty or deficit’ within the student and focuses instead on the capacity of the educational institution to understood and respond to ‘individual learners’ requirements’. It moves away from labelling students towards creating ‘an appropriate educational environment’. Freedman, S (1999)
Inclusive learning places a new responsibility on teachers for close individual observation and skilled assessment as a basis for learning environments which match learners’ requirements. The challenges for schools and colleges will be to ‘…..pursue a corporate approach to learning and to develop their capacity to respond to different approaches to learning to identify individual learning goals’, Barnes, C (1996). It is important for the education system to strengthen necessary safeguards for students with disabilities or difficulties in learning without labelling at the same time as promoting inclusive learning.
Just as classical social science theories identify education as a major site for the reproduction of social inequality, so too disability commentators have argued that the exclusion of disabled students from mainstream programming and the under-representation of disabled students in higher education is a cause, not simply an effect, of disabled people’s social marginalisation (Barnes1991: Riddell and banks, 2001)
The vicious cycles associated with failure to acquire basic skills continue through school life and afterwards. The result will be poor labour market opportunities of people with poor basic skills as identified by Ekinsmyth and Bynner, (1994; 74)
‘……the lack of opportunity for mainstream education and training. Women will then opt for early marriages and many man face intermittent casual unskilled work and unemployment’. On the other hand the society can label someone as ‘unable’ because of lack of basic skills. Hence stigmatisation or societal classification will give birth to social outcasts who in turn will be a major problem to the society.
Broadly, multiple regression opens the way to the notion of a combination of characteristics early in life that predict a later outcome. Parents’ or family role in skills acquisition is critical especially in the early years before formal education begins. Bynner and Steedman (1998) further argue that:
‘…… parents can be effective enhancers of their children’s vocabularies and can improve their visual-motor skills through reading to them and playing with them. Or they can impoverish their children’s development, by failing to provide the critical inputs at the right time’
Stone (1985 cited by Oliver 1990:3) showed that in the process of identification and classification, disability has always been an important category, in that it offers a legitimate social status to those who can be defined as unable to work as opposed to those who may be classified as unwilling to do so.
Different individuals will face different problems and many limitations are socially created. It is argued that teachers beliefs plays a vital role in ensuring the success of inclusive practises since teachers’ acceptance of the policy of inclusion is likely to affect their commitment to implementing it and hence hinder it’s fruition.
Therefore disabled people in particular would be empowered to meet their own needs within a network of mutual understanding rather than a hierarchy of dependency relationships.
Conclusion
If inclusion were an act of engaging oneself or participation, then it would denote the element of active participation from all concerned parties. By programming specialist coverage it can be vividly argued that active participation is still negated. It is only through a properly structured consideration of the politics of disability that disabled people would not be seen as not simply constituted by the variety of these structural forces but as active participants in the process of constituting society in its totality
To exclude learners described as having Special needs, from main stream local schools and colleges, is an in justice to all learners. Such an injustice demands that we look more creatively at the way we operate within educational systems as they now exist, and begin to change our legislation and our practices. Ways of hearing each other have to be found.
Our perception should change. We have to find different ways of learning together and more importantly we have to find different ways of being together. Simultaneously we must start to articulate a vision for the future which will influence the wider political structures and encourage the growth of local mainstream schools and colleges in which those contributions can be valued equally to the benefit of the whole school and the community.
