Building Common Cause for Inclusive Education
Michael Bach, CACL Executive Vice President

As Associations for Community Living across Canada mark National Inclusion Education Week - December 4 -10, it is a time to reflect on how we move our agenda forward. While the process sometimes seems frustratingly slow, I think there are some important opportunities for change on the horizon. I think one of the most important is that there is new space to talk - with teachers and teacher federations at the provincial/territorial and national level.

A few weeks back the Canadian Teachers Federation (CTF) took major leadership in expanding this space by hosting a national conference to look at inclusive education (as a follow up to the CACL National Summit on Inclusive Education held in November 2004). The community living movement was well-represented at the conference by those that presented and by participants representing both CACL and most provincial/territorial Associations for Community Living.

The CTF conference looked at inclusion not only from the perspective of students with disabilities but from other perspectives as well - anti-racist education, anti-homophobic education, feminist perspectives of gendered education, and exclusion and cultural marginalization of First Nations and aboriginal students.

In my opening remarks to the Conference I outlined some key questions, some hopes, and some cautions about what is possible and desirable as we convene these spaces to broaden our conversations about quality inclusive public education.

1. Can we forge a common political vision and project for quality inclusive public education for all children and youth in Canada - with other groups who have experienced exclusion?

I think that without a common political vision, we won't be able to mobilize the broader public support and political will for change. However, it is not a simple and straightforward task to build a common political vision for change. We know that from experience with the learning disabilities movement. And more broadly, what does it mean for a quality public education system if faith-based and particular ethno-racial-cultural groups get separate publicly-funded schools because of the failure of our current system to respond. We know an inclusive system has no place for the systemic separation of students with intellectual disabilities. Does it have room for separation across other lines of difference, as some now argue it should, as long as such schools don't segregate on the basis of disability? My gut tells me no, though I am compelled by the stories and analysis of those who experience such exclusion on the basis of race, of faith, and of other differences.

So I think we need to critically examine what we mean by quality inclusive public education for all - to get perspectives and positions on the table and begin to look for common ground.

2. A second question for me as we began the CTF Conference was 'Are we hearing each other's stories of exclusion and of inclusion?'

We won't build a common political project for change unless we hear the experiences of others. I often feel there are so many of us talking, so many of us trying to make our claims heard. At the same time we can't underestimate the challenges we face in starting up a conversation - in listening across the differences that have come to divide us. And maybe that is where we have to start - to share with each other our own understanding of some of the difficulties we face in even beginning to share our stories.

It's not that children with disabilities are not known - no, certain 'knowledge' about them fills files, and the more it does so, the more we close the space for other kinds of stories to be told. And in so doing we make it easier and easier for an ethical justification to exclude. We need an ethics of listening respectfully and openly to others, before the rush to 'know' them, even when they speak in ways we don't understand. Otherwise, we have little hope of fostering more valued recognition across the differences that have come to mean separation and exclusion.

3. A third question for me is 'If we assume we could have a conversation where we heard one another, does it make sense to forge a common political alliance with other groups to move our agenda forward?'

Many have said we can't advance inclusive education for one group of children, without advancing it for all other children at the same time. Others have cautioned that we have to proceed down that path very carefully if at all, because the challenges facing us in ensuring children with intellectual and other disabilities are fully included are unique. While we need to remain focused, and have distinct strategies depending on the group we're advocating for, I think we will ultimately fail in our particular goals unless we have a broader alliance. This doesn't mean to me that we don't mount focused efforts to advance the inclusion of children with intellectual disabilities, but that we need spaces to have a broader conversation and seed a political project that can bind us in common cause.

It is critical that we strengthen our alliances across diverse groups and at the same time join common cause with the teacher movement in this country if we are to take a leap forward in our agenda for full inclusion. The CTF conference was an important opportunity to do so - and I think we took full advantage of that chance. Let's together deepen the conversation, and the will, for change.

Click here to download a complete copy of Michael Bach's remarks at the CTF conference.