inclusion: devil's advocate

Assignment: Develop a position that is critical of inclusive education

In reality I do favor inclusive education. The strongest criticism that I think could be made against it is that it does seem to depend on having highly capable, strongly committed teachers, as well as (preferably) sufficient funding for multiple special ed teachers and paraprofessional support staff. One could argue that both the old and new models work when (1) teachers are flexible and committed, and (2) teachers have a low student-teacher ration so that they can provide significant individual attention. If these are the key ingredients to both models, then perhaps one could argue that the desired change will not come about through changing the model, but rather through reducing class sizes and recruiting better teachers. If this is the case, then changing the model is a waste of time, money and students’ lives.

One could further argue that organizing the curriculum around critical thinking skills and problem-solving is ineffective. One could argue that these exercises require so much additional time—especially when students with disabilities are included and time must be spent explaining the exercises to them—that they minimize the content learned to an unacceptable degree. One could argue that there is no money for the amount of training that is needed for teachers to be comfortable and capable in these new teaching styles AND to be comfortable and capable with diverse learners. This would mean that we are not only moving students with disabilities into classes where the teacher is not ready for them—we are also asking all the other students in the class to accommodate to new “critical thinking” approaches which fall flat when implemented by a teacher who lacks creativity or insight. All students are seeing the level of their education go down, and implementing inclusion at this time, when so much else is wrong, could be seen as further muddling a complex and difficult situation.