Mara Sapon-Shevin, Beacon Press, 2007
There's no shortage of books about special education, mainstreaming, or inclusion. Most cover the nuts and bolts of managing a classroom that includes students with special needs. How many square feet do you need for a student in a wheelchair? How do you keep a child with learning disabilities occupied so that you can pay attention to your "regular" students? How do you deal with outbursts, safety issues, and disruptive behaviors on the part of a student with special needs, while not neglecting the needs of "the majority"? All are good, practical matters worthy of examination. But often the focus is on "working around" the special child.
In Widening the Circle: The Power of Inclusive Classrooms, author, teacher, and parent Mara Sapon-Shevin urges educators to reconsider how we think about students and their needs. She asks us to assume thatevery child has special needs, unique learning issues, talents, gifts, quirks, anger, and fears which need to be "included"; that every child has insecurities, anxieties, talents, interests, some visible, some hidden, each deserving of attention; and that children learn from all other children in the classroom community. So if we treatsome students as if there is nothing to be learned from them, we are teaching a huge negative lesson to the rest.
The basic morality of Sapon-Shevin's book is powerful. As burdened as teachers are by large classes, sparse resources, and weak supports, here is an argument for the authentic, robust inclusion of every child who arrives at the door. Sapon-Shevin's compassion extends not only to children, but also to their parents, who worry about whether their children are truly being educated or are simply being warehoused.
Her empathy also extends to the teacher who is asked to do more with less, especially when teaching students facing complex medical and psychological challenges. Widening the Circle does not demand the impossible. It suggests, rather, that the entire classroom, viewed as a learning community, will benefit from an energetic, welcoming approach to inclusion—one that encompasses an individual approach to each student and a series of norms and policies that encourage kindness, respect, and friendship among students.
A critical philosophical question stands at the center of this discussion: Is it the job of the individual student to fit into the existing classroom structure, or the job of the teacher to find a way to make room and fit the classroom to meet the needs of the student? Sapon-Shevin insists thatinclusion is a model that begins with the right of every child to be in the mainstream of education. Students do not have to "earn" their way into the classroom with their behavior or skills. They are assumed to be full members—perhaps with modifications, adaptations, and extensive support—but they are members nonetheless. (p. 6)
The book is loaded with stories of real classrooms in which big lessons are learned from small children struggling to interact respectfully, helping and caring for one another. Widening the Circle assures teachers that inclusion can be done, and done well. But preparation, planning, and support are essential. Sapon-Shevin recognizes the many complexities that affect policy and that often land on classroom teachers in the form of unfunded and often unattainable mandates. "Simply dumping students in regular classrooms," she notes, "without addressing issues of exclusion, teasing, curriculum modification, peer support, and pedagogical differentiation dooms inclusion to failure" (p. xv).
But Sapon-Shevin argues that the principle of inclusion must not be blamed when implementation goes poorly:It is critical to differentiate between a good idea badly implemented and a bad idea. It has been said that there is no good way to do the wrong thing. But it is also true that the right thing done poorly or thoughtlessly is unlikely to be successful. (p. xvi)
She's heard all the arguments against inclusion. Parents worry that their high-achieving children will be "held down" by the presence of "retarded" kids in the classroom. These children will demand too much of the teacher's attention. "Normal" children may pick up their "abnormal" speech and mannerisms.
It seems to me that, even when well intentioned, these worries have a whiff of prejudice; in fact, weren't the same arguments made by segregationists in opposing the enrollment of black students in formerly all-white schools? Indeed, in the United States today, particularly in urban school districts, special education may be an instrument ofresegregation by which disproportionate numbers of students of color are classified as "special" with an virtual alphabet soup of labels: ADD, ADHD, EMH, BD, and so on. One popular classification—"oppositional personality" or "defiant disorder"—appears with alarming frequency among juveniles in the criminal justice system.
Sapon-Shevin asserts that the education of all children, including those with special needs, is fundamentally a civil rights issue. One by one, she takes apart the objections to inclusion, which include practical challenges (large class sizes, lack of space and other resources) and what she terms the "yes, buts"—an agreement with the idea of inclusionbut a belief that it really can't be done.
Perhaps the biggest contemporary challenge to meaningful inclusion is occurring in new small schools, especially charter schools, in urban districts. In one particularly egregious case, the district leadership, with support from outside organizations and private foundations, has openly encouraged many new small schools to exclude students with special needs, as well as immigrant students, in order to ensure a smoother opening phase. Presumably, these public schools will admit special education students in the future, after the school culture has already been set in place. Thus have small public schools, originally conceived to expand the choices available to students and families, become instruments of exclusion, their original democratic purpose mangled. So much for No Child Left Behind.
Widening the Circle frames inclusion squarely as a social justice issue, which depends first upon public will, especially upon the will of teachers to emphasize inclusion as a cornerstone. Mara Sapon-Shevin advances her vision that inclusive schools are vital to the very survival of a democratic society. We can ill afford to ignore her vision in our quest to reshape public schools in this new century.