Inclusion is the worst thing to have happened to education
Get ready for a rant. Will it be controversial to some of you? Yeah. Maybe not on this sub, but my god is it taboo to discuss in real life. Does it encapsulate the absolute reality of education today? Yeah. But I don’t care anymore. I am so broken.
Differentiation. Inclusion. Call it what you will - it is a complete and utter failure.
It has made it impossible for me to do my job.
It is the reason we are failing kids. It is the reasons we are burning out.
Nobody is benefitting under this model. Not our low kids, not our average kids, not our high kids. And definitely not our teachers.
We are running teachers into the ground and expecting good results.
I am secondary trained. I was hired to teach junior high. I am currently teaching grade eight English class.
In theory.
Somehow planning for one class has turned into planning multiple different lessons to be delivered simultaneously.
Because you see, I teach grade 8 on paper, because are all thirteen years old, and therefore in grade eight. But the reality is that I am teaching kids who are working at grade level. I am teaching kids who are reading and writing at a high school level. I am teaching kids who are working below grade level because they may have a learning disability or developmental delays. I’m teaching kids who are brand new to the country and who cannot speak English, and who may not even have literacy skills in their native language.
WHY ARE THEY IN THE SAME ROOM?
You will hear all sorts of crap from admin, the intelligentsia, and consultants.
“It’s for the kids.”
“It’s good for their self esteem.”
“It’s about learning to cater to their strengths and abilities.”
Is it really? Is it good to have Johnny and Timmy in the same grade 8 class when Johnny is writing essays and Timmy does not yet know what letters are? Are they actually getting what they need to be successful? Will Timmy actually feel empowered being in a class where he feasibly cannot keep up?
Is Johnny actually learning the grade 8 curriculum when half of his class is performing at a third grade level or lower?
You cannot state this reality without being gaslit into oblivion.
“If you don’t support this you shouldn’t even be a teacher!”
Maybe I shouldn’t be a teacher then if this is what is expected of us. It is madness. It is cruel.
“You’re being discriminatory and ablest.”
It’s discriminatory to have such everyone in the same room together because they are the same age and expect them to thrive without proper supports. Even with adequate funding, I still don’t see how this model can be successful.
Because - It is not actually possible to catch a student who is working 7, yes 7, grade levels behind. I cannot teach a grade eight student to read when I am teaching the rest of my class literary analysis. A child who cannot count or add single digit numbers cannot access the grade eight math curriculum where they are supposed to be learning algebra and integers. It is IMPOSSIBLE!
It’s discriminatory to pass kids along who have not yet developed the skills needed to succeed. We are setting these kids up for failure in the real world. But at least when David (who comes from a low socioeconomic background, has a learning disability, cannot do basic math, and therefore will find it difficult to obtain employment and get out of poverty) moves onto the next grade, we will pat ourselves on the back for being inclusive!
“Every student deserves access to a quality education! Are you saying they don’t?”
Is everyone accessing a quality education when they are dumped in the same classroom together where nobody’s needs are being met?
“It’s your job to make sure all of our students are successful and feel capable and are being met where they are at! It’s your job to capitalize on their strengths!”
We are expecting teachers to do everything with nothing. When did any of this become the expectation or acceptable? We love to exploit teachers’ guilt and unpaid labour into making them do things “for the kids.”
Is it my job to plan 4 different lessons for a single class period when I am only being paid to do the job of one teacher? Where am I getting this extra time to plan? Is it my job to tailor and individualize a lesson to the “strengths and abilities” of thirty kids? Is it my job to make up for inadequate funding? Is it my job to teach phonics when I am not qualified, have no training, nor the adequate resources to do so? Is it my job to lie to struggling child to make them feel like there is nothing wrong when we both know that they are DROWNING? Is it my job to tolerate an emotionally dysregulated, disruptive, and violent student in my class at the expense of everyone else because it’s the “least restrictive environment?”
None of this was in my contract. And yet, I am implicitly expected to do all of these things in order to be seen as “good,” “ethical,” “empathetic.” It is actually less moral to keep propping up this system.
Drawing on Jenny’s musical abilities is not going to allow her to understand the inner workings of the Japanese feudal system under the shogun if she can’t yet read or comprehend complex topics. There is no way to differentiate this content for her. This goes beyond providing “sentence stems” or “visuals.” Maybe I could water it down to a point that it’s not even the same outcome from the program of studies that I am expected to teach… but what is even the point then? Why am I even teaching “grade eight” at this point?
Everyone here is quick to blame the conservative government where I live for the state of education today. I would say that they are largely responsible for this disaster and there is a special place in hell for these people. They have caused irreparable damage that will be seen for decades as these kids graduate and move into the world, completely unprepared for life because of funding cuts and privatization of education.
But the rot goes so much deeper than the conservative government. This is a left and a right wing issue. Nobody has our best interests or those of our kids at heart. They may think they do, but I vehemently disagree.
It’s a left wing issue because it has become the educational philosophy du joir to promote buzzwords “equity” and “inclusivity.” Of course those ideas SOUNDS great, because who doesn’t want to be inclusive? This framework is being pushed hard in progressive spaces like schools of education. My entire university education was predicated on ideas like “destreaming,” any difference in achievement being attributed to discrimination, equitable grading/no failures, positive reinforcement only/strengths based reporting, student-centred discovery learning, and restorative justice/lack of meaningful consequences (another issue entirely).
Again, all of these sound nice and kind and moral, but they have done so much damage when they have been put into practice full force with no room for questioning. Questioning means you’re a bigot who has no place working with children!
I don’t think these policies started off nefarious. Quite the opposite. They were well-intentioned and came from a place of wanting to better the world. But they are feel-good bandaid solutions that signal how forward thinking and totally not ableist/classist/prejudiced we are. Unfortunately, they don’t translate well in the real world and there are very real consequences (read: they don’t work at all). Honestly, I feel like they further entrench the disparities they are trying to address, which allows people in positions of power at the university and school board levels (who lean left) to justify their positions. The people who work as consultants and speakers make an insane amount of money peddling this stuff. My school is paying six figures to have an inclusion expert come into the building once a week for the entire year to tell us how we are “failing to honor the diversity and respect the unique challenges/complexities of our students” and provide “strategies” for us to implement that don’t actually help at all because these people have never actually been in a classroom. It’s a total racket.
This is a right wing issue because the provincial government here is co-opting these ideas and using them as an excuse to defund education. If everyone is in the same class, you don’t have to pay for additional teachers or EAs or specialized schools or new buildings or resources or personnel like OTs and SLPs (because making it obvious that a kid is “different” isn’t inclusive now is it?) They can keep shoving kids of wildly varying ability levels into the same class under the guise of inclusion, which has turned out to be the greatest austerity measure of all.
Putting everyone in the same room means that class sizes can increase because we don’t “need” ELL teachers or special education teachers or resource teachers or intervention teachers. When performance metrics inevitably show that this way of doing things is not working, they can use it as an excuse to dismantle public education and divert funds elsewhere because why would you give money to a failing system? They can get away with taking advantage of teachers, who will do all of this extra work because we are caring people who went into this job to help kids. When we complain about working conditions and the impossibility of this all, they call us greedy and selfish because “Why wouldn’t you want to do the right thing for your kids? Why are you asking for more money to help students? Why are you not being supportive of your kids?” They get away with not spending money on education or listening to our demands for better working conditions because the public who votes for them does not care or actively holds disdain for us because the government has convinced them that we are indoctrinating students. They advocate for “parent’s rights” (a misnomer because who doesn’t want parents to have rights?), which empowers parents to get mad at you when their kid is failing or is working below grade level even though their kid is in an environment that is severely underfunded and doesn’t suit their needs at all because INCLUSION.
I can’t do this anymore. It is not going to change any time soon. There is no future in education.
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