Inclusion anchors on the philosophy of making all persons belong to a community. It drives a feeling of being a part, of belongingness and of incorporation to a community in its real and true essence. It is where students and teachers and parents help each other find a nitch for everyone. Basically, inclusion means a functional and functioning membership in the community.
1"Inclusion is based on the belief that people/adults work in inclusive communities, work with people of different races, religions, aspirations, disabilities. In the same vein, children of all ages should learn and grow in environments that resemble the environments that they will eventually work in." according to Dr. Susan Etscheidt, Professor of Special Education, University of Iowa.
2The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) sees Inclusive Education as “a developmental approach to the learning needs of all children, youth and adults, especially those who are vulnerable to marginalization and exclusion”.
The principle of inclusive education was adopted at the World Conference on Special Needs Education: Access and Quality (Salamanca, Spain, 1994), restated at the World Education Forum (Dakar, Senegal, 2000) and supported by the UN Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities. Currently, according to UNESCO, “An increasing number of publications, workshops, policy papers, etc., are in clear support of these ideas. Some organizations and people, however, express reservations as to whether the ordinary classroom can provide optimal quality education for handicapped children.
This debate is historical and has been on-going ever since people began to question the old, segregated institutions, and to struggle for the equality of handicapped children and for their integration into society and into education.”
With this in mind came the real issue especially here in Cagayan de Oro.
I have been teaching for good eight years. I wanted to believe that I was given the best venue to exhaust all my teaching might and enthusiasm. My school is very supportive of its teachers. It gives wonderful support to the emerging and challenging needs of the faculty and its academic milieu. However, my school is yet to be introduced to Inclusive Education. I only realized, in a very recent past, that I, as a teacher of eight long years, lack the necessary tool and knowledge about TOTAL accommodation for ALL children.
I was a “segregist”; if I may have to coin a word.
I was a strict believer of a segregated “giftedness” and “disabilities” of a child. Placing a CWA in my class would be a disaster. Putting a child with VI in my class would be the end of the rewarding years of my young teaching life. For years, it was the only way of which I can digest true and real education in action.
My belief is similarly stated by Dr. Melissa Heston, Associate Professor, UNI 3"Inclusive education operates from the assumption that almost all students should start in a general classroom, and then, depending on their needs, move into more restrictive environments. Research shows that inclusive education helps the development of all children in different ways. Students with specific challenges make gains in cognitive and social development and physical motor skills. They do well when the general environment is adjusted to meet their needs. Children with more typical development gain higher levels of tolerance for people with differences. They learn to make the most of whoever they're playing with. When we exclude people, it ultimately costs more than the original effort to include them."
Here in Cagayan de Oro, inclusion is still in its twilight zone with not much clear set up and ultimately unready teachers. In fact, many still are still locked in the belief of the traditional classroom setting wherein the mainstream students are the ONLY students emerging from all corners of the city. All those who do not fall into the limits of the “norms” go to day schools and SPED Centers where interaction with the seemingly normal children would almost be on zero percentage.
There is an issue here. We teachers should look into this issue with esteemed seriousness and an intention to alleviate the circumstance for children with special needs where education is concerned.
Counterclaims on this issue would put that, 4“individual differences will slow the progress of normal students. Therefore, this will create problems for general education teachers. Some argue that inclusive classrooms are not a cost-effective response when compared to cheaper or more effective interventions, such as special education. They argue that special education helps "fix" the special needs students by providing individualized and personalized instruction to meet their unique needs. This is to help students with special needs adjust as quickly as possible to the mainstream of the school and community.”
