“It is the habit of exclusion that grows strong; the identity of those being excluded is not a major obstacle.”
Gussin Paley, You
Can’t Say You Can’t Play
WHY ARE WE ADDICTED TO EXCLUSION?
“Exclusion gives us
the illusion of power - it’s how we feel power in the face of our impotence.
We change our anxiety over things we can’t do anything about and turn
it into fear, then we use scapegoats to create the illusion of power even though
we can’t do anything about our underlying anxiety.
We have created the Kleenex kids: the teacher says, “Just get this kid
out of my class!” But when you
take that kid out, another scapegoat pops right up!”
Norman Kunc
WHAT
ARE WE TEACHING OUR CHILDREN?
“We take seven
happy kids and six chairs, turn the music off, and watch Social Darwinism at
work. I take seven happy kids and
one chair, and have them use cooperative learning to get all seven kids on that
chair - and everyone is happy!”
Norman Kunc
History of Education
Schools were originally set up to divide people:
“We need a new
system of education, professionally managed and centrally controlled, and that
will identify and select those young men of proper family background and high
intelligence to prepare them for higher education so that they can take their
proper place as the leaders of American society, and to sort out all the rest so
they can assume their rightful roles in the fields, the factories, the mills and
the shops of America.”
Report of the Committee of Ten, 1893
WHY SEGREGATE AND SORT KIDS?
“Special education
is the dark side of public education - the institutional practice that emerged
in 20th century industrial democracies to conceal its failure to educate all
citizens for full political, economic, and cultural participation in
democracy.”
Thomas Skrtic, Disability & Democracy, 1995
HOW DO WE EXCLUDE/ SORT/SEGREGATE?
By
Race
By
Language & Country of origin
By
Economic status
By
Disability
By
Sex
By
“Intelligence”
By
Religion
By
Sexual orientation
By
Position/employment