Bearing with Strangers

Arendt, Education and the Politics of Inclusion

Morten T. Korsgaard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351233132
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Bearing with Strangers looks at inclusion in education in a new way, regarding education as a discipline with practical and theoretical concepts and criteria which emanate from education and schooling itself. By introducing the notion of the instrumental fallacy, it shows how this is not only an inherent feature of inclusive education policies, but also omnipresent in modern educational policy. It engages schooling through an Arendtian framework, constituted by and in a specific practice with the aim of mediating between generations. It outlines a didactic and pedagogical theory that presents inclusion not as an aim for education, but as a constitutive feature of the activity of schooling.

Drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt, the book offers a novel and critical perspective on inclusive education, as well as a contribution to a growing literature re-engaging didactic and pedagogical conceptions of teaching and the role of the teacher. Schooling is understood as a process of opening the world to the young and of opening the world to the renewal that the new generations offer. The activity of schooling offers the possibility of becoming attentive toward what is common while learning to bear with that which is strange and those who are strangers. The book points to valuable metaphors and ideas – referred to in the book as 'pearls' – that speak to the heart of what schooling and teaching concerns.

Bearing with Strangers will be of great interest to academics, researchers and post-graduate students in the fields of philosophy of education, inclusive education and educational policy.

Chapter 1

Preparing to not speak by speaking a little¹

In the following, I attempt to engage with inclusive education as a movement and as a concept. However, whether it can be termed a movement is as unclear as the question of whether it can be considered a singular concept is. The notion of inclusive education originates in English-speaking countries and has been promoted by theoretical developments as well as political and civil rights movements. It can in a sense be considered a child of the notion of inclusion, in the sense that it encompasses an attempt to formalise and operationalise the normative concept of inclusion. Inclusion, however, is just as ambiguous a concept as inclusive education. Not only are there conceptual, theoretical and political disputes over the meaning of the two terms (Allan, 2014a, pp. 182–184; Popkewitz & Lindblad, 2000, pp. 6–7); there are also great cultural and geographical differences in the use of the notions. In order to try to limit and narrow – and to make possible at all – the attempt to grasp the concept, I confine myself to the British and Danish contexts, although the intricate connections between the developments here and at the international level must, at least to a certain extent, be incorporated. The implications of international declarations such as the Salamanca Statement are of great importance to regional and national projects of inclusive education, and they give an insight into how theoretical movements influence and are influenced by political developments. However, there is also an obvious gap between the efforts for inclusive education and the policy credo of Education for All in the developed countries, such as Denmark and the developed English-speaking countries, and less developed countries.² A discussion of whether the efforts are of the same nature and have the same aims is beyond the scope of this work, but there is something to be said for the argument that in regard to education it should not matter where one is born. Education should be accessible to all, and in a sense, this is a central component of the educational theory that is presented. Education – as proposed here – necessarily functions as a disruptor of social order and necessarily is for all. However, this does not make it blind to the cultural differences that determine local curricula and educational processes. In other words, it does not mean that what is ‘put on the table’³ in the activity of schooling should be the same or that how, when and in what settings it takes place should be the same across the world. Quite the contrary; the activity of schooling as proposed here is in stark contrast to the standardisation agenda of international policies such as the Bologna Process and some of the documents that have followed in the wake of the Salamanca Statement. Nonetheless, I argue that some of the constitutive elements of the activity of schooling are the same across the world, and two of these are that it is a revolutionary process which potentially breaks with social order and that it is constituted by openness to difference and the task of establishing a shared space for attention towards the world.⁴ In other words, it is constituted by difference in its very nature, being a matter of bringing together and mediating between the individual human being in all its difference and the world we inhabit.

In order to try to adhere to my promise of not speaking about inclusive education in order to be able to speak about inclusive education, I limit myself also to trying to speak about the developments in inclusive education in ways that relate very closely to the aim of this book. I try to establish that there are three different divides opening in the inclusive education movement at the moment, which I present by engaging with exemplary texts and documents that highlight these divides. The first divide concerns the current status of the movement. Many recent articles and books concern themselves with the status of the project and whether it is worth continuing. Some believe that it is time to abandon the concept while others believe that it is more relevant than ever. This is the first gap, and it is closely related to the second, which is a gap between those who believe that it is possible to continue with inclusive educational projects in an educational climate structured by neoliberal policies of standardisation and competition and those who believe that inclusive education is inherently opposed to these developments. The third divide concerns the relation between the educational and the political level, or, rather, the question of why there has been a continuous rise in inclusive education in the wake of neoliberal policy developments. I claim that the reason for this is the instrumental approach to education, which is inherent in both the inclusive education movement and neoliberal education policies. The divide, then, is between educational approaches to education and inclusion and instrumental and political approaches to education and inclusion.

A depiction of the inclusive education movement such as this opens itself not only to methodological critique in line with some of the issues touched on earlier in the section on the methodology of ‘pearl diving’ but also to claims of being superficial in its limitations and approach, not confronting the rich and diverse history and scope of inclusive education research. An easy response would be to claim that no book could ever aim to cover everything that takes place within any given field, given the extent of research and publication in present global academia, and as such, choices are always made as to what to include and exclude in the analysis. However, there is a more pertinent answer which is born out of the method of ‘pearl diving’ that forms the basis of my reflections and the fact that this work first and foremost attempts to take up an educational perspective. What I aim to do here is not to try to present or hand down the development of the inclusive education movement as if it could be grasped as a fixed and continuous whole. I wish instead to try to excavate different quotes and features from the literature and policy documents, which I believe strike at the heart of the present state of the movement, and to point to some distinct features of the movement, which I hope, in turn, will point to an opening for the present work in the context of inclusive education. The first feature I try to bring to light is, as mentioned previously, that there is a process of re-examination taking place within the movement, and the second is that there is a problematic and contested relation between the rise of inclusive education – as a concept and in the form of policy – and the neoliberal standardisation and competition agenda. Neither of these claims are controversial, and both are easily supported by the literature. The third feature is perhaps more controversial and needs further elaboration. I begin, however, with the first divide, trying to substantiate why there is a crisis at the moment in inclusive education research and how this might represent an opportunity for a project such as this to make itself relevant.

Crisis and opportunity?

Since its beginning, inclusive education has been a contested field. It arose as a counter concept to the notion of integration, opposing the rising tendency to move children with difficulties and disabilities into special education facilities. Since the early work of diverse scholars, such as Mary Warnock, Sally Tomlinson, Len Barton, Mike Oliver and, of course, many others, the awareness about the stigmatising and exclusive features of special education facilities has been an integral part of educational theory and policy in Britain. In Denmark, the movement began to gather pace in the 1980s and led to the inception of a line of different concepts: first, integration; then ‘rummelighed’;⁵ and, finally, inclusion and inclusive education in the late 1990s (Tetler, 1997, 2015). The problem with the notion of integration was that it covered the fact that even if the language changed, the efforts dedicated to children with difficulties or disability remained much the same (Oliver, 1996, p. 84; Tetler, 2015, p. 18). One of the issues that continues to haunt the matter is that even if the concepts of inclusion and inclusive education have become omnipresent in policy documents, there has been a continuous increase in the placement of children in special education facilities, both in Denmark and in Britain (Allan, 2014a, pp. 185–186; Qvortrup & Qvortrup, 2015, pp. 33–34). Recently, however, there has been a turn in the numbers towards more and more children being moved back into ‘regular’ schools as a result of aggressive policy measures against the rise in special education facilities. In Denmark, the 2012 Inclusion Law is beginning to make its mark through economic incentives for municipalities and cutbacks in the funding for special education facilities (Qvortrup & Qvortrup, 2015, pp. 36–37). However, this has given rise to a familiar debate on whether the geographical placement of children into ‘regular’ classrooms equates to inclusion. As Graham and Slee pointedly put it, “[t]o shift students around on the educational chessboard is not in or of itself inclusive” (Graham & Slee, 2008, p. 278).

Even more perplexing than these developments is the fact that while inclusive education has become an integral part of global and local educational policy, we continue to see what Sally Tomlinson has coined the “Irresistible Rise of the SEN industry” (2012, p. 267). It is not so surprising, then, that the inclusive education movement is currently taking stock (Allan, 2014a; Barton, 2005; Slee, 2011; Thomas, 2013; Undervisningsministeriet, s.d.; United Nations, 1993). Not only are there significant differences in the definitions of inclusive education; it is also unclear whether the concept, even when it has begun to permeate educational policies and vocabularies, has had the desired effect or become just another educational catchphrase that does not live up to its emancipatory intentions:

Whilst inclusive education is a relatively recent advance in our thinking about schooling and pedagogy, it is a rapidly establishing movement within both local and global contexts. Familiarity with the terminology of inclusive education has grown considerably, however, there are various, competing discourses through which meaning and understandings differ. On the surface these differences are concealed by the continued use of these generalised terms within schooling vernacular; terms which assume a benign commonality. This is a dangerous assumption. Elsewhere, Slee (2005) has drawn on Edward Said’s depiction of travelling theories to capture the ‘domestication’ and ‘taming’ of what were in their time and setting subversive theories that have been appropriated and popularized by others. So it is for inclusive education philosophy. Originally, inclusive education was offered as a protest, a call for radical change to the fabric of schooling. Increasingly it is being used as a means for explaining and protecting the status quo.

(Graham & Slee, 2008, p. 277)

Since the publication of Mary Warnock’s controversial pamphlet “Special Educational Needs: A New Look” in 2005, a ferocious debate has been raging in the inclusive education environment as to the merits of her call for new thinking in the area. Even if most seem to agree with her that it is time to reconsider the concept and the feasibility of the movement, her conclusion – that we should abandon the notion of full inclusion – has been the cause of heated debates. Nevertheless, the pamphlet seems to be too narrowly focused on the issue of the effects of moving children around on the chessboard. There is little doubt that many children have suffered from the effects of being placed in ‘regular’ classrooms without the appropriate pedagogical measures being taken, but Barton is right to point out that Warnock fails to consider the voices of the disabled in the inclusive education movement (2005, p. 2). This points to the central divide in the literature between different positions on whether to continue with the concept of inclusive education or abandon it or, perhaps less controversially, how to continue the struggle for inclusive education in light of the previously mentioned theoretical and practical problems that have come to light in research on the effects (or a lack of effect) of the inclusive education movement.

I argue in the following that instead of considering inclusion to be the aim of education, it is a constitutive feature of the activity of schooling that it is inclusive, in the sense of being open to all. Masschelein and Simons (2013, pp. 89–91) have referred to modern schools as modern forms of ‘taming of the school’ in order to make it do and adhere to things that are determined by other institutions, be it religious, political or other. This way of trying to ‘tame’ the school in order for it to provide some aim or ideal, is omnipresent in policy documents on inclusion and inclusive education as we shall see. I argue in the following chapters that the activity of schooling can be considered something in itself and that it cannot simply be reduced to an instrument that can be adjusted to the aims and ideas of social or political institutions – at least not if is to remain a school in the sense I propose.

Graham and Slee hit the nail on the head when they remind us that

[i]t is not enough to evaluate what was planned or what we intended to do. We must also acknowledge and ameliorate the gaps arising from our efforts to include. Fundamentally, we must ask what assumptions might inform our personal and collective philosophies in relation to inclusive education? What do we mean when we talk of including? What happens? Whose interests are being served? And most of all, into what do we seek to include?

(Graham & Slee, 2008, pp. 289–290)

Although that was probably not their aim, they highlight something significant with the final question, “Into what do we seek to include?” Perhaps the institution or the human activity of schooling that concerns the inclusive education movement so much might have something to say on the matter. Perhaps it would, in and by itself, be inclusive if we understood and practised it in a different way than it is presently being understood and practised? This is the question that the following sections explore, but first it is important to try to understand why this has not been explored before in the context of inclusive education and why the present divide – between those who wish to abandon it and those who wish to continue – in inclusive education might represent an opportunity to think again and think anew about how to begin when we want to speak about inclusive education.

Inclusive education and the standardisation agenda

Over the last decades, we have seen a wave of calls for excellence and raised achievement in educational policy documents. This trend has to a certain extent been accompanied by a call for a renewed focus on education for all. From the Education, Education, Education slogan of the Blair administration to the No Child Left Behind programme of the Bush administration on to the Flemish government’s Competence Agenda and the Danish reform of the public school, the calls for excellence and inclusion continue to ring out, and school reforms are being created and implemented at rapid speed in the image of a globalised economy (Biesta, 2010a, 2013b; Masschelein & Simons, 2005, 2013; Peters & Bulut, 2011), leading some to the claim that we are witnessing a global reform movement (Sahlberg, 2011). As described earlier in the Introduction, the neoliberal educational agenda has been gaining ground for some time now and has brought with it increased standardisation and a culture of accountability and evidence-based practices (Biesta, 2010a, 2013b; Nepper Larsen, 2015). There is – as the plethora of references earlier highlights – no shortage of critique of this movement, but the aim of the following is not to add to this critique. What is of significance here is the previously mentioned simultaneous rise of the inclusive education agenda.

The success of the Salamanca Statement and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which 166 states along with the member states of the European Union have now signed, is, in a sense, undisputed and unprecedented. During the decades since the early 1990s, inclusive education vocabulary has become an integral part of almost all educational reforms (Kiuppis & Hausstätter, 2014). However, most of these reforms are formulated in accordance with the excellence and accountability agenda (Simons & Masschelein, 2006; Slee, 2011). This has meant that the call for inclusion, to a large extent, has been subsumed under the aims of excellence and accountability. This is exemplified by a tendency to equate inclusion with academic achievement. In the Danish so-called inclusion law, it is stated that the central aim is to: “reduce the effect of social inheritance in relation to academic results” (UVM, sd., my italics),⁶ and the No Child Left Behind programme specifically states that one of its aims is “closing the achievement gap between high- and low-performing children, especially the achievement gaps between minority and nonminority students, and between disad...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Preparing to not speak by speaking a little
• 2 Arendt’s educational writings
• 3 What is schooling?
• 4 What is teaching?
• 5 What is a teacher?
• 6 What is a student?
• 7 Final remarks (speaking once more about inclusion)
• Literature
• Index