Special Schools, Inclusion, and Justice

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ACRONYMS

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost I must acknowledge Harry and Jack and their parents to whom I owe a heartfelt debt of gratitude. When Harry came into my class many years ago, I little realised the influence and impact meeting him and his family would have on me, and how the experience would shape the rest of my professional life. It is their story that is the very heart of this book and I want to express my sincere thanks and gratitude to Harry’s parents for allowing me to share it. As I wrote the book, Harry and his family were always there in my mind’s eye, guiding my thoughts and perceptions and encouraging me; I dedicate the book to them.

Warm thanks are due to my colleagues and friends, Peter Roberts and John Freeman-Moir for their interest in and unstinting support for my work. This book would not have come to fruition without their thoughtful, insightful, kind, wise, and rigorous guidance. My sincere thanks to them for sharing the wealth of their knowledge, understanding and experience with me, and giving me the confidence to pursue the ideas I set out here. I owe particular thanks to Peter for helping me to bring the book to publication and guiding me on the steps along the way. ← ix | x →

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CREDITS

Some of the material in this book has been published in other sources. The author and publisher gratefully acknowledge permission to reproduce material from the following articles:

McMenamin, T. (2009). New Zealand Day-Special Schools: Changes and challenges under Special Education 2000. New Zealand Annual Review of Education, 18, 183–200. This article is available online at https://ojs.victoria.ac.nz/nzaroe/article/view/1553. doi:10.26686/nzaroe.v0i18.1553

McMenamin, T. (2011). The tenacity of special schools in an inclusive policy environment. Support for Learning, 26(3), 97–102. Published on behalf of NASEN, copyright John Wiley and Sons. This article is available online at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9604.2011.01486.x

McMenamin, T. (2013). Justice for all? Special Education 2000 and the politics of difference. Policy Futures in Education, 11(6), 769–778. Copyright 2013. This article is available online at https://journals.sagepub. doi:10.2304/pfie.2013.11.6.769

McMenamin, T. (2014). Neither confirmed nor denied: Special school provision in New Zealand’s Special Education 2000 Policy. British Journal of Special Education, 41(1), 25–41. Published on behalf of NASEN, copyright John Wiley and Sons. This article is available online at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com. doi:10.1111/1467-8578.12053

McMenamin, T. (2017). A just state of affairs: philosophical reflections on justice, inclusion and the education of disabled children. Cambridge Journal of Education, 14 p. Copyright ← xi | xii → the Society. This article is available online at https//www.tandfonline. doi:10.1080/0305764X.2017.1394981

McMenamin, T. (2017). An idea whose time had come: The turn to inclusion in New Zealand’s Education Policy. New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies, 52(1), 109–121. Reprinted by permission from SpringerNature. Copyright 2014. Available online at https://link.springer.com. doi:10.1007/s40841-017-0077-0

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SPECIAL SCHOOLS AND INCLUSION

A Complicated Conversation

Introduction

This book examines matters to do with special schools, inclusion, and the education of disabled children and young people from a philosophical perspective that centres on the broader question of what, with respect to where they go to school, might constitute a just state of affairs in education provision for these children. As described these are matters that could be seen as abstract and academic in nature but the concerns that prompt them are anything but abstract or academic, they relate to the material impact of policy on the real lives of people. Nussbaum (2011) speaking of approaches to the measurement of social development argues that to give a true picture of any achievements, an approach is needed that begins “…close to the ground, looking at life stories and the human meaning of policy changes for real people” (p. 14). Similarly, it seems to me that in order to get a true picture of the justness or otherwise of particular educational arrangements and the policies that sustain them we need to consider how these arrangements and policies impact on the real lives of real people and communities. My aim in this book is to examine “the human meaning of policy changes for real people”, the real people in this case being special school communities in New Zealand, and through ← 1 | 2 → this examination to explore and illuminate deeper philosophical and ethical matters with respect to just educational provision that have a much wider significance than to the New Zealand context alone. But firstly, following Nussbaum, I want to begin “close to the ground” with a story that not only explains my interest in this topic but also, and more importantly, brings to life the real children and families who are at the heart of the concerns of this book.

A Little Story