e-mail donwillsnz@hotmail.com
It is a great pleasure to be here today and I would like to thank Peter Mittler for inviting me to come to this conference. It is heartening to see that more than 1000 people have taken the time to be here and are therefore recognizing the fundamental importance of the issues around inclusive education. The possibilities of what can be accomplished when we work together across very diverse political, cultural, and economic backgrounds is enormous and it is surely in this international sharing that we will find the keys to the achievement of education for all.
The new millennium has brought us an old message. How many times did you hear in the months before and then during the millennium celebrations that children are our future and that our hope rests in them? We have heard it so often now that it has begun to ring hollow for some of us. And the way we treat many children might make us fear for our future rather than look optimistically ahead. For the world seems not yet able to recognize the simple fact that children are children.
Today alone tens of thousands of children will be born in the world. And what will those children look like:
Looking at those children, as they take their first breath, we should be able to feel secure that they will receive such basics as food, clothes, healthcare, affection and education. Surely it is not expecting too much that children will be respected as children and given those few fundamentals to prepare them for adulthood.
But we know it will not happen. I am the President of Inclusion International, which has 200 member associations in 120 countries, and for 40 years, as families, we have been advocating for education for our children with intellectual disabilities. I think I can safely, but sadly say, that there is no country in the world where children with intellectual disabilities are automatically entitled to a place in their neighbourhood classroom with their brothers and sisters. I would not be exaggerating if I were to tell you that in most countries children with intellectual disabilities neither receive nor are entitled to any education at all.
Reflecting, looking back on my own family experience, even in the context of a "have" society such as New Zealand, I know something of the way children become non-children. My wife, Maureen and I, have two children.
Our children were born in the early fifties and son Michael did all the normal things associated with growing up - school, sports - father involved in assisting with coaching and even being involved in club administration - then on to college and university - work - marriage - grandchildren and now business colleague.
Our daughter Patricia had a different life experience. She was transferred 2 days after her birth to a specialist hospital. Her weight improved, she was to come home, although we were concerned to hear from the final discharge medical that they had discovered a heart problem. We were told to keep her protected from colds etc. and, of course, we had a good pediatrician to keep an eye on her. No one ever said the word "disability" to us. When she started school, we noticed that her scholastic progress was very slow. Finally we were told by a nun at convent school we should have Patricia assessed. We were told that she had an intellectual disability and that was like a chain reaction. She had to move to special classes, away from her friends and out of the mainstream. In the world of disability, school was followed by sheltered workshops and by care at a specialized agency, the IHC.
So our family is an example of the very different the lives of children with disabilities have even in societies where all children go to school. The segregated school stands as the example of how we separate children from their lives in the community; from the normal everyday experiences that we know are critical to healthy development.
Mary Robinson, United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights, said in a recent interview , that she saw her task as giving leadership in embedding a human rights culture. That is important to what we are taking about when we talk about education for all because in framing the issue that way we are recognizing education as a human rights issue. Human rights concerns do not stop at borders - either geographic borders or group specific borders. If there are serious violations of human rights, they are of international concern and we need to recognize them as that.
As a human rights issue, disability is not about the medical condition of people, it is about social justice, about fairness, about opportunities to participate in everyday life. It is to be a part of society not apart from society. To understand disability in a human rights context means to recognize the inequalities that are inherent to our institutional structures. As my predecessor, the past President of Inclusion International, Dr. Walter Eigner, so eloquently said:
"A human rights approach is not rooted in a particular political position nor in the dogma of particular religious beliefs, nor in the level of a nation's economic development; rather, it finds its roots in justice. It is to understand that the international community has an obligation to all people, including those with intellectual disabilities, to address those conditions that result in social and legal exclusion and maltreatment".
In 1983, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the World Programme of Action Concerning Disabled Persons in which equalization of opportunity was seen as the means to inclusion in all sectors of society. Education was highlighted as being an area of particular significance. In the Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities, adopted by the U.N. in 1993, the importance of education was again stressed. Under Rule 6, it says:
"States shall recognize the principle of equal primary, secondary and tertiary educational opportunities for children, youth and adults with disabilities in integrated settings. They should ensure that education of persons with disabilities is an integral part of the educational system".
That was followed in 1994 by the UNESCO Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action which drew attention to the needs of children. That statement proclaims that every child is unique and has a fundamental right to education. "Inclusion and participation are essential to human dignity and to the exercise and enjoyment of human rights". Education systems must take into account diversity and those with special needs must have access to regular schools with an inclusive orientation. Governments are called upon to make improving education a priority and to adopt as a matter of law or policy the principle of inclusive education.
The Salamanca Framework for Action defines "special educational needs" as needs arising from disabilities or learning difficulties. It is spelled out that schools should accommodate all children through a child-centred pedagogy. The Framework emphasizes curriculum flexibility, school management flexibility cognizant of community needs, and the promotion of information and education. The importance of early childhood education to promoting development and school readiness was specifically noted.
It is pretty-much universally recognized now that the main objective of any education system in a democratic society is to provide quality education for all learners as a way to enable children to reach their full potential.
To accomplish that we have to think even more broadly to a human-rights centered world plan of Education for All. What do I mean by education for all? Education for all means education irrespective of (dis)ability, gender, age, ethnicity, mother tongue, socio-economic background or other characteristics. It is accepted as non-negotiable that every child is entitled to education as a fundamental part of childhood.
Amartya Sen, the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economic Science, argues in his recent book, Development as Freedom, that there are shared communal or social benefits of basic education that are more than simply the gains of the person being educated. He maintains that a general expansion of education and literacy in a region can facilitate social change, including the reduction of fertility and mortality as well as helping to enhance economic progress from which everyone benefits.
Importantly he argues that "human development" (as the process of expanding education, health care and other conditions of human life is often called) is not a luxury that only richer countries can afford but is essential to development. He makes clear to us that education is not just about reading and writing, it is about population control, environment and social well-being.
So we are challenged to think about education as education, not as special education and not as benevolence. Within the framework of the disabled people's movement for human rights, equal opportunities and citizenship, the first priority is access to basic essentials including adequate income, housing, public transportation, and education. To enable this, we have to see children with disabilities as social actors as opposed to dependents on a "special" service, which is at the whim of local interpretation . School is a place for children to learn to reach their full potential. The responsibility of the school system is to develop and sustain a place of learning that enables children to exercise their fundamental human right of education; it is about the right of children to have an equal place within society.
In a recent article John Kenworthy and Joe Whittaker , leading British experts in inclusive education, indict the special schools in Britain, not for what they do (after all, in many cases, it is the only educational resource that children with disabilities have), but for the role they play. (And I quote..)
"If special schools have one clear function, it is this: they define the limit of adult society's tolerance for children. These "special" places have become the twentieth century gulags, where the collective fear of children who are seen as different is assuaged and their segregation from other children is reconstructed as "special" treatment in a 'safe' environment. These children are in a very real sense, the 'disappeared' young whose separation from ordinary childhood experience and the potential of ordinary adult life is compelled by law".
Their words could well apply to children excluded from schools throughout the world, either by law or by practice. The "disappeared" are in fact all children who cannot or do not attend schools. They are the children who are segregated not just by physical segregation by but the segregation that results because a school or a curriculum does not take into account the very diverse and unique learning patterns of every child. Their faces are:
Education for all is not for some children some of the time. Children should not to have to prove that they deserve to enter the schools in their neighbourhood. The labeling of children as less able to learn or as not needing an education is a statement about teaching not about children's capacity. It is about curriculums that are inflexible and thereby undermine effective learning and it is about a disrespect for that child.
Children are a heterogenous group, and so when we recognize education for all as a goal, we compel ourselves to treat each child in the unique manner that their individual strengths and weaknesses demand. Learning outcomes will differ for each child, but that is not a reason to deny learning, or to establish rigid testing mechanisms that will advantage some and disadvantage others. It is not a reason to keep some children out of the classrooms.
Barriers to learning are challenges for the education system, for the school, for the individual child. The barriers that exist for learning come from many sources - they are found in the curriculums, in the laws, in segregating policies, in technical jargon and expertise. They are also found in the re-definition of education as an economic activity, and in the development of schools for the elites, based on reverse discrimination and segregation.
But these challenges have to be addressed, not ignored or avoided. They provide us with ways to move forward. The challenges that children present, because of their differences, should not provide us an excuse for inaction and exclusion nor should they be resolved by establishing administrative mechanisms for limiting the right of children to education. The negative attitudes and barriers towards differences in our societies will not be broken down by dividing and excluding. The key to social tolerance is to educate and empower children through learning and development.
Individualized education is education and it is for all children. And good teaching is good teaching for all children. We know that all children can learn and that all children can add to the learning process.
How then do we move towards this goal of education for all? We will have to address the segregation and discrimination that has discouraged many children from being in school, including, street children, children with intellectual and other disabilities, and children with AIDS. We will have to address the ways we teach and become skilled at individualizing teaching. We will have to actively involve the community of parents, children, educators and politicians in recognizing the benefits of all our children being able to learn. And we will have to create learning environments that children feel comfortable in.
Education for all is not only a matter of learning. It has an impact of health , on well-being, and on meeting our international obligations to human rights. It is a challenge that Inclusion International has taken on and to which I am personally committed. It will ensure that not only will children with intellectual disabilities be in our schools and be able to learn but so too will the millions of other children who have been left out. Together with others, we will go down the road towards social justice.
Watching our daughter Patricia now as she moves beyond the segregated life that her label and a separate school led her, I realize that there was no reason for the different trajectories of my two children's life. At age 10, heart/lung surgery that Patricia underwent was successful. But even more important, after many years of segregated support, at the age of 40, she decided to take part in a university extension course called "New Horizons". She graduated joint top of the course and since then has been employed in the tourist industry at an exhibition of early New Zealand. When we stop segregating children and recognize our responsibility to provide education for all children, this will be a true beginning of embedding a human rights culture.
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