Some Problems in Advancing Academic Inclusion: A Call for Critical Thinking

Introduction: Real-World Stories Of Academic Exclusion And Why They Matter

Academic inclusion seeks to increase participation and learning in a secure and collaborative environment where all individuals are full, accepted, and valued members of their school community. But academic inclusion is indeed, for all but the most engaging instructors and enlightened school administrators, a lesser concern in outcome-based models of instruction (For a survey of OBE problems, see Malan, 2000; Edwards, 2016; and Erikson & Erikson, 2019), and barely to be idealized in a vocationally or professionally focused approach to teaching that highlights what the administration wants the instructor to do.

To be sure, a particularly important element in efforts to discuss some problems in advancing academic inclusion are real-world stories. This is because although they are provided as counterexamples, even if there is still much work to do, they may help raise awareness around the problem of diversity and inclusion (McKinnon, 2018), and fill the gap of what it means to belong as a full, accepted, and valued member of a school community. Accordingly, consider a first-hand perspective of how academic exclusion affects the individual to help guide and inform this discussion. As a Hispanic/Latino born in New York City who spoke only Spanish at home, for example, the author in his early middle-school years was ushered to the school’s basement and placed in a maximum-security room with the mentally retarded and learning disabled—after scoring very low on a city-wide “IQ” placement exam (The author did not understand the exam written in the English language. Americans may come from parts of the country where English is not the dominant language (such as the author’s family born in Puerto Rico (a U.S. territory) who travelled back-and-forth to the mainland for economic reasons)).

The process was not only problematic because there really was no effort made to get my parents’ informed consent, but distressing because they locked the author up against his will without any access to teachers and/or learning resources. So, the author experienced first-hand knowledge of what it meant to be separated, not accepted, and not valued as member of a school community. This meant that some students, ironically, could not access, and benefit from, the excellent academic and technical resources of a premier public-school system—with what seemed to be the assets of strong leadership/administration, high standards and expectations for all students engaged in outcome-based instruction, and curriculum, instruction and assessments aligned with convergent standards.

Fortunately, as the characteristic instinct for human survival kicked in, the author finally extricated himself from this environment of people who conflated instruction (i.e., doing things right) with education (i.e., doing the right thing); and people who were, as Plato’s allegory of the cave teaches, unable or unwilling to seek truth and wisdom (Book VII of The Republic). Moreover, the author learned how to learn, after much trial and error (of asking HOW?), and reflection (of asking WHY?)—applying Grant Allen’s lesson that one should never let one’s schooling interfere with one’s education (Clodd, 1900, p 53, p. 108).

Accordingly, this stark contrast between exclusion and inclusion in the author’s early academic life, produced a hunger for knowledge that had to be filled—expressed as a life-long struggle to catch-up academically. This helped the author learn the importance of venturing outside the box and going beyond the limits of institutional upbringing, hardened beliefs, dogmatic values, and privileged instructional practices that separated, rejected, and devalued students of a school community.

Not surprisingly, from this unfortunate circumstance the author learned that a multicultural perspective is more conducive than is a mono-cultural perspective to preparing students for a global society. This is because intercultural interaction is a fact of life in today’s complex and rapidly changing world, and need not nurture alienation among racial and ethnic groups. Moreover, a multicultural perspective allows for diversity, which in turn provides the differences needed to foment reasoning and critical thinking skills. For, as Walter Lippmann (1915) once noted, “[w]here all think alike, no one thinks very much” (p. 51).