Your turn now: a classmate in full swing, in a French school that puts integration
into practice.
Getting ready to jump in with everyone else.
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Europe
is all for giving its “different” children a place in regular schools, but the debate
over integration is far from sealed
Enrolling a child at
the local public school is a painless exercise for most European parents—unless of
course, their child happens to be “different.” In that case, where they live is still
likely to determine whether the child is welcomed into a regular classroom or guided
towards a special school.
“Having a child with Down’s syndrome, I realized that the school was not against
the principle but was apprehensive because it lacked the means to welcome her,” recalls
Sophie Cluzel, a mother of four living in a Paris suburb. What ensued was a battle,
via an association, with the Education Ministry to win the right to a special assistant,
80 percent financed by the state and reserved for the 18-to-26 age bracket as part
of a pro-youth employment policy. Having been granted her request, Cluzel went knocking
on company doors to come up with the remaining 20 percent. Now, as part of a collective
of parents representing both physically and mentally handicapped children, funds
for 20 more such assistants have been granted. “If it weren’t for the drive by families,
you wouldn’t get anywhere. Even if school is compulsory, too much rests on the goodwill
of teachers or inspectors.”
A
shift from a medical model to an inclusive approach
Since
a government-commissioned report lamented France’s slow progress on the integration
front, a set of widely applauded measures have been introduced to speed up the process,
notably by getting different groups—parents, education and social workers—talking
with each other. They are not alone in this quest: along with Finland, Greece and
the Netherlands, more than half of the country’s disabled students are in special
schools. At the other end of the spectrum, Italy, a country deeply influenced by
the anti-psychiatry movement of the late 1960s, presents the most extreme example
of an all-out integration policy, with less than two percent of handicapped children
in special schools, followed by Spain and Portugal, with roughly 18 percent. But
does this necessarily mean that integration is the only politically acceptable route?
First of all, it is not always an either-or scenario, since many countries have “multi-track
systems” offering a wider choice, notably special classes in regular schools with
certain shared hours. But considerable efforts over the past 10 to 15 years to make
schools more inclusive—open to all children—has changed the way of looking at handicaps.
“There has been a shift from a medical model towards a more pedagogical approach,
starting from the principle that children have different capacities and needs,” says
Victoriana Soriano from the European Agency for Development in Special Needs Education,
which has conducted in-depth studies on the issue.
In the current climate, countries would be hard put to take an anti-inclusion line.
What prevails is a system of “guided choice.” The UN community, notably via Unesco,
has been instrumental in advocating inclusion. The European Commission makes integration
a guiding principle of its education programmes. “From there on, it is up to member
states to apply these principles according to their systems,” says the Commission’s
Georgia Henningsen. “All our activities aim to stimulate action and raise awareness,”
she says, referring to projects, networks and research conducted on furthering integration.
“The advantage of an integrated approach,” she says, “is that when you make a special
effort for those with special needs on the teaching front, everyone profits, because
there are always students at the back of the class.”
But for everyone to profit, that extra little effort has to be made. “Inclusion can
work perfectly well under certain circumstances, but those are not commonly met,”
says the Oecd’s Peter Evans, a special education expert. For one, “teacher training
is not a very inclusive exercise.” In some countries, student teachers spend no more
than twelve hours of their whole training on disabled students, in others half a
year, while in yet others it is part of the weekly schedule. The result is a fear
of losing face before the unknown. “Teachers don’t have the tools and they’re aware
of it,” says Soriano. Not surprisingly, teacher unions tend to be in favour of maintaining
the status quo, and represent a “substantial force,” according to Evans, when it
comes to making decisions on integration. Even when they do fully endorse the integration
principle, many teachers and school principals complain about the disproportionate
work load involved through extra report writing, meetings with expert committees,
etc.
Transforming
special schools into resource centres
The
other camp that governments have to contend with are the special education structures
themselves. The task underway—as in Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands—is to transform
them into “resource centres” for mainstream schools, tapping the expertise of their
teachers and staff without cutting jobs. Then there is the question of how teachers
skilled at working with disabled children are treated. In France, for example, there
is a dearth of candidates applying to become specialized teachers. In a Parisian
primary school with two classes for children with Down’s syndrome, no specialized
teachers applied for the post when it was advertised. A regular teacher was hired,
who is learning on the job while waiting for an answer to an application for further
training. According to the school principal, “specialized teachers have had enough
of not being recognized.”
For Cor Meijer, a researcher with the European Agency, financial mechanisms largely
explain the continued discrepancy between policy and practice. Take the Netherlands:
an integration policy was set up in the 1960s and 70s but no incentive was given
to encourage the shift. “In fact, the structure rewards segregation, in spite of
what the government proclaims,” says Meijer, who is Dutch. This is set to change.
Parliament just approved a bill to allocate funds to regions based on their total
number of children, rather than distinguishing between those with special needs and
those without, a system that tends to favour vested interests.
Staging
cultural events to change our perceptions
Numbers,
however, tend to say little about quality, about which there is scant information.
Some parents strongly believe that it’s better in special schools, notably in countries
operating a fairly large system. A recent study in England found that bullying was
“the main factor” driving disabled children out of regular schools. “It’s not because
children are integrated that the problem is solved,” says Soriano. “I’m all for the
most comprehensive legislation possible, but we won’t be able to speak about equal
opportunity until we give top priority to more in-depth work on pedagogy.” The problem
is particularly acute at the secondary level. “Specialized schools are in a delicate
situation, they see teenagers arriving who cannot go any further in the mainstream,”
says Catherine Cousergue, a French doctor specialized in integration matters. “So
they think that at the end of the day regular schools are a failure and that kids
would have been better off there from the outset.”
Meijer foresees another paradox on the horizon: schools are increasingly held accountable
for quality—namely turning out good crops of students—while being asked to cater
for lower-achieving groups. Aren’t the most vulnerable children likely to be pushed
out?
Beyond this is the issue of mentality. For Francis Degryse, the parent of a handicapped
seven-year old daughter, the key is to “change our perception of the disabled.” He
notched up an improbable success by getting a blind director to stage a show featuring
only disabled actors to a full house in a prestigious Paris venue. Such cultural
events have now become a yearly affair, and aim to become European. Through his association
“Without Drums Nor Trumpets,” he organizes puppet shows in regular schools to “take
some of the drama” out of mental and physical handicaps, has produced a CD and is
looking for backers to set up a web tv on the disabled. “You have to know how to
impose yourself and be tenacious. For we can all live together.”
This is probably the most convincing argument for inclusion. “Parents in general
are very supportive, they believe it is a good lesson in tolerance for their children,”
says a French principal whose school includes two special classes for the handicapped.
“You can always give all the civic education courses you want,” says Cousergue “but
when you have a handicapped mate next to you in class everyday, it’s a different
story. It influences you for adult life: the day you have a handicapped colleague,
you’ll look at things in an altogether different way.”
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www.unesco.org/education/educprog/sne
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