For Mark, inclusion in a big-city high school would be an exercise in terror.
Advocates of full inclusion have a simple answer to the complicated problem of educating children with disabilities. They believe that all of these children should be put into regular classrooms, regardless of the nature and severity of their disability. And they dismiss people who disagree with them as enemies of children with disabilities.
What full inclusionists don't see (or acknowledge) is that children with disabilities are individuals with differing needs; some benefit from inclusion and others do not. Full inclusionists don't see that medically fragile children and children with severe behavioral disorders are more likely to be harmed than helped when they are placed in regular classrooms where teachers do not have the highly specialized training to deal with their needs. They don't see that when a disabled student misbehaves or demands extraordinary attention from the classroom teacher, the learning of all the other children in the class is being sacrificed. And they don't admit that there is absolutely no evidence supporting the idea that all children with disabilities do better in regular classrooms.
With advocates of full inclusion insisting on their one-size-fits-all ideology, it sometimes takes the parents of a disabled child to bring the conversation back into the real world. Arch and Margaret Puddington are parents whose younger son, Mark, is affiicted with a relatively rare condition called Cornelia de Lange syndrome. This means Mark cannot run, jump, or pronounce more than a handful of intelligible syllables. His IQ was once evaluated at 36. Arch Puddington recently wrote an article for Commentary(May 1996) reflecting on life with Mark and America's treatment of the mentally retarded. He discusses, among other topics, the debate over full inclusion -- which, to a parent of a severely disabled child, "involves much more than an abstract argument over educational policy."
Puddington knows that full inclusion can work; he's seen cases where it did: "Some children may indeed be able to participate in the competitive environment of a normal classroom; this is particularly the case with children who suffer from certain physical disabilities, and young children who are only mildly retarded." But Puddington is also a practical guy. He realizes that it is one thing to have lofty ideals and quite another to make inclusion work for all children with disabilities. He cites a report by the National Association of State Boards of Education as a prime example of putting ideology ahead of common sense. The report endorses inclusion of the sweeping grounds of educational reform, civil rights, and equity, but as Puddington points out, it is silent on an important practical matter that will determine whether anybody in a class -- children with disabilities or those without them -- will receive an education:
[It] ignores the critical question of how the fully inclusive school is to cope with autistic children, or children who exhibit strange and inappropriate behavior, who become violent when frustrated, who are chronically disruptive, or who require exceptional medical attention. No wonder middle-class parents are beginning to cite the ever growing emphasis on "special needs" as among the reasons for transferring their own children from public to private schools.
Puddington is not blinded by ideology, and he realizes that a one-size-fits-all approach to inclusion would hurt everyone, especially disabled kids. Take the case of his own son, Mark:
Were New York to take [the path of full inclusion], Mark would be transferred from his present school, which is devoted solely to special education classes, and placed in a regular classroom in our neighborhood high school, a forbidding building with a rough and intimidating student body. Because of his precarious sense of balance and lack of coordination, Mark is physically quite fearful; he goes into panic if accosted by overly playful small dogs. For him, inclusion in a big-city high school would be an exercise in terror.
And if forced into a regular classroom, Mark would not be the only person who would suffer:
Mark would present his new teachers and classmates with a set of unique problems .... The advocates of full inclusion speak glibly of giving teachers the training necessary to cope with the immense variety of challenges which handicapped kids bring to the classroom. Yet no amount of training could prepare a regular teacher for Mark. In our experience, the requisite expertise and commitment are found only among teachers who have chosen to specialize in the handicapped.
Puddington concludes his article with a stark warning on the danger of "sabotaging our genuine achievements in the pursuit of worthy-sounding but deeply wrongheaded ideas." Extending civil rights to children like Mark sounds like a fine idea, but how will these children benefit if special programs and special teachers disappear and they are thrust into regular classrooms? And what about the children in the regular classrooms? As the parent of a child with a severe disability, he sees this as a situation in which everyone would lose, and I think he is right.