“Inclusive Education” Seems Like a No-Brainer

But what does it entail, in practice?

Image from Two Way Street

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By Igor Stravinsky (Teacher, commentator)

Facets of Inclusion, according to David Mitchell

Like “diversity” and “equity”, “inclusion” in the education system seems like a pretty hard thing to argue against. Why would we want to exclude anyone? In a general sense, we certainly wouldn’t. Every child is entitled to an education, that is a fundamental principle of a democratic society. We don’t want to turn anyone away.

But as people are starting to realize, DEI is not necessarily benign. Diversity can mean admission or hiring targets based on race, sex, or other immutable characteristics and equity can demand equal outcomes according to these same types of metrics. This flies in the face of our enlightenment concept of equality based on individual merit and can lead to lower standards.

The term “inclusion” has suffered a similar fate. While most people probably still conceive of it as meaning not excluding people based on superficial personal characteristics, in education at least, that is no longer the case.

According to David Mitchell, a prominent educational theorist with a large following, whose ideas have been embraced by Ontario School Boards and Teachers’ Unions, “Inclusive Education is a multi-faceted concept”. He identifies ten criteria, or “facets”, for inclusive education (see the table above). Will adhering to Mitchell’s concept of inclusivity be a positive move for the Ontario school system? You be the judge.

Vision

The first facet is an article of faith. Without explaining what his concept of inclusion is, he demands that educators vow to practice it, while political leaders legislate it and develop regulations enforcing it. Finally, education bureaucrats are to ensure policy documents are infused with it. So, Mitchell's vision is an authoritarian system based on his ideas which are not to be questioned.

Placement

Mitchell wants kids of the same age to be put in the same classrooms in the same schools. Let’s be charitable and assume he is talking about elementary schools (although I am quite sure he means K-12 and possibly even postsecondary education).

Children are not “blank slates” as so many education theorists suppose, but rather start out in life with abilities and limitations set by their genes. To be sure, their outcomes- how far they will get given the inherent abilities they possess- will vary according to the environment they experience. But notwithstanding environmental influences, the range of intelligence and talents among children is enormous. By 8th grade, some will be capable of reading and comprehending great literature or understanding complex mathematics. Others will be functionally illiterate and unable to do simple arithmetic. Of course, the vast majority will fall somewhere in between. The curriculum is generally set a little above what a “normal” or average kid can hope to accomplish.

But, to maximize learning, children must be placed into classes which are appropriate according to the level of learning at which they are functioning at that time. It is pointless to give out a reading assignment analyzing an author’s use of figures of speech to a kid who has not yet learned the alphabet, just as it is a waste of time to give out an algebra worksheet to a student who does not understand concepts such as division and multiplication.

Ability level grouping has been the norm in every learning situation I’m aware of since, well, forever. If you enroll your kid in a first swimming class, they place him or her into level one, not a class on how to do the elementary backstroke saying “well, that is what most kids his age are doing”.

It is true, however, that if a student is learning slowly (or not at all) every effort has to be made to explore the reason(s). In the end, it may simply be that the kid is just not very bright. But before concluding that, there are a long list of other possible explanations, starting with the obvious eyesight or hearing issues and going right down the list. In the past, teachers were too quick to declare the slow learner a “dunce” and give up on him. We certainly don’t want to go back to that. But the reality is that not every kid can become a rocket scientist or rock star. And that is okay. It is wrong to tell kids “you can do anything”. We should be telling kids “you can try to do anything, and you’ll never know what you can do until you try”.

Adapted Curriculum

Imagine what this facet would look like, in practice. You have a large 8th grade class, maybe 28 kids, of all different ability levels, from preliterate up to kids able to read Dickens or Orwell. Math skills would vary in a similar manner. The standard curriculum is of course set to mildly challenge the average student- “normal” grade 8 reading and math. The situation is far from ideal. If you teach the standard curriculum, likely 7 of those kids will be totally lost, another 7 will struggle but learn some concepts slowly, 7 more will learn the full lesson if they apply themselves, while another 7 will find the work easy, quickly complete it, and be bored. Let's call these groups one through four.

Obviously you are going to have to differentiate the learning, which would mean teaching at least four different lessons at once. Who will get the most attention? Group 1. Other teachers have been trying to teach these kids the same things you’re about to try to teach them for years without success, but you will soldier on. These students, frustrated and bored, will likely act out and become disruptive. You may have to send some of them down to the “contact room” where the teachers will give them a granola bar and talk about their personal problems. This has some value, but it won’t teach them any math or reading.

You will leave group four to work autonomously throwing in some extra challenges for them, but they won’t get much, if any, direct instruction from you and will not learn nearly as much as they could- and they could learn a lot, because these are the smartest kids. Group two, capable of some learning with difficulty will get a lot of your attention too but group three will be mostly left to their own devices, though you may check in with them from time to time.

This is an oversimplification but illustrates the situation teachers find themselves in because it is out of fashion to place kids in ability groupings. Adapting the curriculum has severe limitations. Everyone loses.

And the idea that learning must “suit student interests” is a joke. They should learn what they need to know, as determined by responsible adults, and must be taught that it is an expectation that they will make a strong effort whether they are interested in the subject or not. In general, the claim that class is “boring” is rarely made by group 3 and 4 kids. They know that the adult in the room thinks they need to know the stuff, trust that, and just do it.

All of the above of course assumes you are dealing with “regular kids”- kids who are basically normal other than their natural variation in ability to learn, but, of course, you're never going to get that. It is certain that you will have a variety of different kinds of learning disabilities present as well. Some kids are also coming to you from challenging home environments. These additional factors really complicate things because a smart kid with a learning disability, or who is suffering psychological damage from abuse or neglect at home is a whole different kettle of fish than a low-functioning kid, and has unique learning needs.

Adapted Assessment

Students must be evaluated according to objective standards. It may be comforting for a parent to receive a report card with all “Bs” and glowing comments about the student’s personal qualities, but I have faced the wrath first hand when a parent realizes they’ve been lied to for years. Some stay in denial all the way through high school. That said, placed at an appropriate level with an appropriate curriculum, most kids can learn.

Individual Education Plans sound good in theory, but in practice they often demand accommodations which mask a lack of skill development, for example allowing students to have work read and/or “scripted” (written out) for them by teachers or teaching assistants, which hides the fact that they are functionally illiterate. Environmental accommodations are often totally impractical, such as “needs a quiet work environment free from distractions”. Good luck to the teacher with that! Ironically, it is usually kids with those kinds of environmental accommodations written in their IEPs who are making all the noise and causing all the disruptions.

Adapted Teaching

See adapted curriculum, above.

Acceptance

Of course, every kid deserves to be accepted. But does acceptance mean throwing struggling kids into a large general classroom knowing they will not be able to learn the curriculum, feel “stupid”, act out, and be looked down upon by the other kids? Obviously not! Acceptance should mean acknowledging that every kid is an individual learner with needs that do not necessarily align with what we usually expect from kids their age, and providing them the opportunity to learn the best they can, building their self-esteem and providing a realistic idea of the kinds of things they can do in life.

Access

I agree with Mitchell on this stuff.

Support and resources

Inclusion, as defined and described by Mitchell, creates the need for multiple layers of support and unlimited resources for teachers, who are expected to teach a large class made up of kids with a wide range of abilities and challenges. In addition, kids with learning disabilities, even severe ones, are to be included in the same large classes. Even if all these supports are put in place (unlikely considering cost and practical limitations) the teacher would still not be able to provide an ideal, even a good learning environment, for everyone. But it looks great on paper! This is a luxury belief for people like Mitchell, who will never actually have to teach such a class.

Leadership

Mitchell wants leaders who buy into his ungainly and impractical learning scheme as described above, which is really his vision, bringing us back to facet #1.

If not “Inclusion” a la Mitchell, then what?

Some kids are smart and some aren't. That is a cold hard fact that theorists like Mitchell don’t want to talk about. People like him fantasize about a perfect world in which they can tell everyone what to do resulting in perfectly equal outcome for everyone, and we all live happily ever after in utopia. But that is never going to happen. People are not equal, kids are not blank slates, and resources are limited.

In the old days, all kids were put in the same large classes and taught the same curriculum. Those who learned most of it passed onto the next grade, those who did not were held back. By grade 8, the age differences were substantial as some kids had failed multiple times. Those kids did not move on to high school but rather were sent to a vocational school where they learned practical life skills.

That approach was far from perfect for a bunch of reasons. Kids with treatable learning problems were lumped in with those who were simply unable to learn beyond a basic level, and this had serious long-term effects on these normal (or higher) functioning kids- academically, socially, and psychologically. Vocational schools at that time entrenched sex stereotypes, etc., and, increasingly, the kinds of skills we used to teach these kids are becoming obsolete due to automation, and lately, AI.

But the situation today is arguably far worse. Our brightest kids often end up underchallenged as teachers have to focus on the struggling ones in these large “inclusive” classes. The smart kids never learn to work hard and organize for success in school since they can get great marks just by showing up most of the time, and when they hit university, many can’t cope- a loss for everyone. Struggling kids, who often just give up trying, are pushed through all the way to grade 12, not allowed to fail, but not learning much of anything either. They reach the age of 18 functionally illiterate and with no job skills. It does not have to be this way.

The first step to improving the system is to throw out the ideas Mitchell and other educational theorists are pushing about “inclusion” and start creating a range of educational environments that will meet the needs of the full range of learners. With every kid in the room on the same page, we can place high expectations for learning on the students, teachers and schools. But there will be tremendous inertia against such change.

Government, school boards, and teachers’ unions have all bought into that “inclusive” vision, which tells us anyone can do anything as long as you do what the wise and all-knowing educational theorists tell you to do. This vision is as seductive as it is illusory.

No amount of additional funding or resources will change the reality of human nature. All we can do is help everyone achieve the best they can given the abilities they have. People have to accept who they are, but that has become very unfashionable lately.

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Thanks for reading. For more on this author, read The Peel District School Board Student Survey

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