Around 200 delegates from 18 countries took part in the four-day conference “North South Dialogue IV– Implementing Tools of Change for Inclusion”. The fourth in this series, this event took place from 19 to 23 February in Goa, India. The first North South Dialogue was held in 2001 and subsequent events took place in 2003 and 2005.
The North South Dialogue IV enabled inclusion supporters from all over the world to share news and information local to them, learn from one another and discuss potential ways forward. The event had a strong emphasis on issues of disability equality, but also addressed other aspects of inclusion such as sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland. Organised by ADAPT (Able Disabled All People Together, formerly the Spastics Society of India), the conference also celebrated 40 years of the organisation and 10 years of Community Initiatives in Inclusion (CII), a training course funded by the Women’s Council UK and run annually by ADAPT.
Dr. Mithu Alur, Founder and Chairperson of ADAPT said of North South Dialogue IV: “This is special because it commemorates 40 years of our service to the nation. During this time we have managed to get the disabled out of their homes and given them the service that they required. Now it is time to get them out of special schools and include them in society. It is time to think of the way forward, and about how we can serve the rural and tribal population as well.”
The conference was attended by disabled activists, their allies, professionals, academics, parents, grass-roots workers, as well as corporate and government representatives. CSIE’s director Artemi Sakellariadis was among the presenters of this conference. Her presentation appears below:
Lessons from yesterday for a better tomorrow
Presentation at North South Dialogue IV, Goa, India
22 February 2012
Introduction by Mônica Pereira dos Santos, Professor of Education at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro:
Now I call Dr Artemi Sakellariadis from the UK. She is the director of the Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education, based in Bristol, England. She trained as a special educator and taught in special schools for many years before committing her energy – and she has a lot, I can tell you that – to the development of more inclusive education for all in ordinary local schools. Thank you.
Presentation by Artemi Sakellariadis, director of CSIE:
Thank you Mônica and thank you all. I work for CSIE, as Mônica has just said. The Centre works towards promoting equality and reducing all forms of discrimination in education. That said, I am here today to speak about disability discrimination, on the grounds of the Centre’s history and of my personal passion and commitment to disabled children being included in their local community. I want to point out that, because of what the Centre stands for and works towards, I have to register a bit of an unease at the way that many of us, including myself, over the past few days have been using the word “inclusion” as though it only means the inclusion of disabled children in mainstream schools. It is a much broader term, I wish we had time to talk about this more. We will, no doubt, outside of these sessions.
Today I have been asked to talk about the UK perspective with regard to “removing barriers to inclusion”, so I have chosen to talk to you about kaleidoscopic understanding. Now if you don’t know what I mean by that fear not, you are not alone. I will tell you about it in a minute. I will then focus first on institutional and then on attitudinal barriers, but I would like to point out that I do not see these as separate from one another. As many of us have heard over the past few days, all of these issues are interlinked. I am just choosing to focus on one aspect at a time, as a lens to look through a very complex picture.
So let me start by telling you about kaleidoscopic understanding. You may not have heard of the term before; it is because I have made it up footnote 1. I chose to speak about kaleidoscopic understanding when I was writing my doctoral thesis. I wanted to have some form of visual analogy, to represent how I want to encourage people to consider these complex issues. I like the analogy of the kaleidoscope, in that you look through it and see lots of little coloured particles; and they may form a pattern, you may see something in that pattern. But if you change your perspective, if you choose to turn the kaleidoscope around and look through a different angle, you will see exactly the same small coloured particles, but in a different formation; so you may make a different meaning out of them. So today I want to encourage us all to focus not so much on what we see, but on our internal meaning-making processes: on how we make sense of what we see and on how things might look from a different perspective.
We have time for a couple of examples, which is good. You know, I always think that as parents, or as teachers, we have a choice of how to understand what we see children doing. If we see somebody who is behaving in ways that we don’t like, what do we see? Do we see somebody who is being naughty, disobedient, or a nuisance, who is getting in the way, and whom we should reprimand or punish? Or do we choose to see somebody who might be frustrated, confused or bored, and whom we should support? I am not suggesting that there is someone out there who has the right answer, or that these are mutually exclusive. I am only highlighting the fact that there are more ways than one to make sense of what we are seeing.
And I will also mention Judith Snow. She is a disabled activist from Canada, whose talks and writings I have found inspirational. I attended one of her very inspiring presentations not so long ago, where she was talking about independent living. I am thankful to my colleagues who spoke about independent living earlier today and prompted this memory. So Judith was saying that sometimes people see that she is in a wheelchair and ask if she calls upon others to help her with things she cannot do herself. And she said of course, you know, of course she does! When a kitchen appliance breaks down she calls an electrician, when a tap or a water pipe leaks she calls a plumber. So, I just wanted to share this with you as an example of kaleidoscopic understanding. To challenge any assumptions about what constitutes dependence on others and how this gets evaluated in different contexts. Are some instances of dependence on others more acceptable than others? Like anyone else, I am good at some things and need help with others; but I would find it very frustrating if others defined me by what I need help with. So I invite us all to think: what do we see when we look at somebody else, and how do we make sense of our sameness and our differences at the same time?
I would like us now to turn our attention to institutional barriers, first of all. The education system that we have in the UK today, has its roots in the end of the 19th century. At that time disabled people were thought to have no place in ordinary mainstream life and institutions. Specifically for their “care” (quote-unquote), whole institutions were built, maintained and run, so people were rooted out of their families and local communities, and were made to live in those institutions. It is very encouraging to see that, not only the UK, but the whole of the world has moved forward from there and nowadays we no longer do such inhumane acts in the name of people’s own good. The uncompromised right of disabled adults to inclusion in ordinary life and mainstream institutions has been made absolutely explicit in national and international legislation. That said, we have somehow become accustomed to maintaining some separate institutions when it comes to education. We call them “special” schools. But these grew out of, they evolved, from a system that was based on a very different mindset and on very different moral values. And, even though society’s stance to disability has moved on in most areas, in education we have somehow allowed the past to continue to shape our future. At a time when schools are increasingly expected to provide personalized learning, I can see no reason why tailor-made provision has to take place in separate institutions. If we focus too much on differences, we may miss what children share in common. If we focus on the perception that some children need concentrated support by adult specialists, we may end up trumping their need for daily contact with their non-disabled peers (not to mention the sense of belonging to one’s local community, which most of us take for granted). I recently wrote about this, and suggested that sending a child to a separate “special” school might feel similar to placing a child in hospital without allowing family or friends to visit, on the grounds that the child needs the medical intervention.
So this is why I suggest we use our kaleidoscopic understanding, to look again at where we assume children should go to school and why. I used to work in special schools and was proud of the tailor-made provision we were offering. At that stage, I was taking the merit of what we were doing as self-evident. I have since turned my kaleidoscope. Please don’t get me wrong; this is not a criticism of the people who work in separate “special” schools. It is merely a reflection on a status quo that many people take for granted. It is an invitation to consider, from the perspective of disabled children and their families, what it might be like to hear that your local school is not geared up for people like you. In the 21st century, can we really justify closing the local schools’ doors on some young people, in the name of their own good? The UK government has made a strong commitment to parental choice. But where is the choice of mainstream for those who want it? Disabled adults have repeatedly told us that education in segregated settings leads to adult lives in the margins of society. I really wish I had a bit longer to tell you more about what some special school survivors say, but I do not. So I want us to leave this section by considering: What is it that we think is important about education? What is it that we want children to learn in schools? Do they all need to learn to read and write and do maths? Do children also need to learn about being with others, about making and keeping friends? What purposes other than learning do schools serve? And I want us to use our kaleidoscopic understanding to look at schools and just explore and challenge our assumptions. And to keep asking constructive questions. If we need to ask a question, I would avoid asking: “can we?” – you know, can this child come to our school? – but would ask instead: “how can we?” Here is a member of our local community. This is their local school. How can we reorganise what we are doing? How can we make sure that this young person benefits as much as possible by coming to our school? Unless ordinary local schools routinely see the education of all children in their local community as their responsibility, and unless they are supported to develop their capacity to do this, the government’s promise of choice will not apply to some families. And I think we have seen enough evidence over the past few days that practical difficulties can be overcome, when people focus on disabled people’s right to belong in their local community. That is enough about institutional barriers- Well, it isn’t, but it has to be for now.
In addition to what I have already said about attitudinal barriers, I just want to add a plea for us all to keep considering the question of: “what do you see when you look at me?” Perhaps we can reflect back over a number of things that have been said here over the past few days. I remember Mithu yesterday said, at the end of her presentation, that she has learnt to look at people differently and to respect them whatever language they speak. And to me, that is an excellent example of kaleidoscopic understanding. You know, if you shift your viewpoint, you see something that you may not have initially seen. We heard, I don’t know where Marty is, but we heard from Eva Sweeney this morning, that sometimes others see first and only her impairment, and that her aides actually help others to see things differently. So I invite us all to keep using our kaleidoscopic understanding, and encourage others to use theirs too. And to focus not so much on the differences we observe between people, but to shift our viewpoint; look again, and pay more attention to what we all share in common.
Let me also take a moment to reflect on some points already made about terminology. Yesterday morning Mônica invited us to consider the implications of using terms such as “high functioning autism”. And later in the day Richard Rieser described how the words “impairment” and “disability” are used in the UK, and encouraged us to mark the clear distinction between the two. I believe that our thinking is often reflected in the language we use, but it also works the other way round: the words that we choose to use can help shape our thinking. So I invite us all to remain alert to our choice of words and to any assumptions implicit in them.
At this point I would like to introduce you to the work of Ursus Wehrli. For those of you who may not know him, Ursus Wehrli is a Swiss comedian and artist. He has taken works of art, intervened in one way or another, and re-presented them in alternative and often amusing ways. He has called this “Tidying up Art”, which is the title of his first book. And I want to share some of this with you. I think what he has done captures in a visual image what I have been trying to say about kaleidoscopic understanding. Now, is there anybody in this room that cannot see the screen? [Response from the floor] OK, I will describe to you what it is that we are seeing.
This is the first slide and it shows a series of vertical lines in groups of five, followed by two columns of semi-quavers, then a column of quavers, then more columns, each of a particular type of musical notation: bar lines, phrase marks, clefs, rests, accidentals etc. So many aspects of musical notation neatly organised by type and each presented in a separate column. And here is the next slide, in which all those fragments of musical notation appear together. And those of you who are familiar with Western musical notation, may recognise this as the beginning of Beethoven’s Für Elise; a piece of music that many people know and it kind of fits together, it holds together – it’s got the melody, it’s got the harmony and the rhythm all in one coherent whole. So I wanted to share this with you as a visual analogy of what we might be doing if we pay too close attention to particular aspects of people. We run the risk of only seeing the first picture, the fragmented elements. Whereas when we look at people as a whole, we are more likely to see the second picture: we get melody, harmony and rhythm all rolled into one and only then can we feel the beauty of the music.
And I will show you one more of those. So the first of this pair of slides shows blocks of colours. And I particularly like this… So there is a white square, next to it a column of yellow squares, then a column of red squares, orange squares, green, blue and dark blue squares, each column a different height. I used to work for Portage, a home-visiting programme for pre-school children, and the materials were colour-coded according to which aspect of the child’s development you were focusing on; so this might be their self-help skills, motor skills, language or social skills. And the Portage materials had colours very similar to these. And actually, the real work of art is this, here in the final slide: a work of art by Paul Klee. This is a fusion of all the coloured squares together, arranged in a sort of patchwork pattern that, once again, has cohesion and enables one to see the beauty of the whole.
So I leave you with the thought that I have given you today – I haven’t given you kaleidoscopic understanding, you’ve all got it – but I have given you the notion of it. And I would like to invite you all to keep using your kaleidoscopic understanding, challenging any assumptions about what is best for other people, and encouraging others to do so too. Thank you very much.
Footnote 1
Following this presentation I was approached by Professor Gary Bunch, Chair of the Marsha Forrest Centre in Toronto, Canada, who said that Marsha Forrest had also used a kaleidoscope metaphor. I have since found a reference to this. It seems to refer to the beauty of the whole, as it speaks of the kaleidoscope as a metaphor for “a medley of people working together to make something unique and better happen”. My analogy is based more on the fluctuation of the image.
