Thank you for this opportunity to speak today. It is a real honour. As an aside, having grown up in 1960s Newfoundland with Joey Smallwood, when I tell you it's a real honour, I mean it's a real honour. The fact that we as a country can speak to each other and make decisions that are this important is the essential cornerstone of who we are as Canadians, so I very much appreciate the time you are taking to listen.
I come here as a lifelong educator, administrator, faculty member, and researcher. My choice to share the information with you today has been shaped by my experience and my learning. My career has as its focus the inclusion of students with special needs in the regular classroom.
The purpose of my testimony is to highlight the importance of diversity and inclusive practice as essential components of our national and international identity. I have been fortunate to work and develop relationships with researchers, educators, and organizations across Canada. Through these experiences, I have had the privilege of engaging in ongoing research and discussion about diversity and inclusion. My pan-Canadian experience has provided me with multiple opportunities to engage in this field at the international level. It is clear from my work that across Canada and across the globe discussions of equity and diversity framed within an inclusive perspective are at the forefront of critical thought and active change.
I am proud to be a Canadian. Born in Newfoundland and Labrador to pre-Confederation parents, I learned the lessons of what it meant to be Canadian. I began my education in a two-room school, where segregation was not an option. Everyone belonged. This allowed inclusion to be woven into the pattern of my experience. When I graduated as a teacher in 1982, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms freshly minted, I looked forward to seeing the leadership standard set by our federal government enacted through the lives and the futures of all the students I would meet.
I feel as though I am preaching to people who know this, but just in case, section 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms states:
Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.
In reviewing this committee's October 24 meeting, I was reassured to see that the charter mandate as it relates to the deliberations of this committee was discussed. As noted during the October meeting, thus far the charter challenges with regard to immigration policies have been unsuccessful. Despite these unsuccessful attempts, it is clear that a relationship exists between our rights as delineated by the charter and the recommendations that will be made by this committee.
Canada is a diverse country. Prime Minister Trudeau, in his 2016 presentation to the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, said, “We need societies that recognize diversity as a source of strength, not a source of weakness.”
From my perspective, diversity, as it relates to individuals with disability, needs to be brought to the forefront. One of many research projects focusing on students with intellectual disabilities, and I've been engaged in a number of them, highlights for me the gap between what inclusion means when we speak about larger populations and what inclusion means when we speak about people with disabilities. The tag line for this project has become: if inclusion means everyone, then what about me? Pictured below it is a school-aged child with Down syndrome sitting alone in a classroom.
The chronic undervaluing of persons with disabilities in our society speaks to a much larger and more insidious pattern of discrimination. Low expectations and unexamined predisposition, veiled under the auspices of charity and benevolence, have kept many individuals in positions of power in stasis, unwilling or unable to make decisions and take action. If we are to live up to the expectations that Canada is a country in which diversity is valued, we must not set limits on what it means to be diverse. School systems pride themselves on inclusivity, but the inclusion of students with special needs continues to be debated.
A 2009 publication that I wrote and which was used by Immigration Canada discusses this debate:
Some researchers still argue vehemently that the segregation of students into specialized learning environments is essential in order to provide them with the type of individualized instruction that their learning profile suggests would be beneficial. Other researchers argue that to separate students on the basis of ability or other characteristics represents a form of “colonization” that blocks access to a larger learning environment. Many see the segregation of students with exceptionalities as a human rights issue....
Hand in hand with this debate, of course, is the question of cost. Having spent 18 months as co-chair on a government working table of special education funding, I know only too well that there exists a desire to quantify disability. For the purposes of this committee's deliberations, it's important to differentiate service delivery in the context of cost.
For a shrinking number of school boards across the country, the delivery of services to students with special education needs is a separate service. The budgeting for these services and service delivery models is differentiated from what you might refer to as the “regular” class. Interestingly, school boards are transitioning to a system of service delivery for learners that includes universal design for learning and differentiation of planning and curriculum delivery. For those school systems, all students belong. The emphasis is on creating supported communities of learners where all students can access learning, as well as social opportunities is their age-appropriate peer group.
Inclusive settings have been shown to decrease bullying, enhance learning and social engagement for students with special needs, and improve the attitudes and interactions of the larger class group. In essence, all students benefit. They learn to be more tolerant of difference and are able to access learning in multiple ways. For systems that use inclusive models, the question of cost is still a real one. To provide those types of professional learning, educator support, paraprofessional engagement, and auxiliary services, it requires funding. The difference in that funding is that funding dollars are spent on the entire school community to raise the expectation for all.
School systems are a reflection of societal values and norms. School systems are also a projection of societal possibility. Inclusive schools have been shown to have a positive effect not just on academic and social learning of the students with special needs. They also, more importantly, have a positive effect in terms of tolerance and acceptance of difference among all members of a school community. Schools are a microcosm of society. They tell us that cognitive and physical diversity add value.