Reading & Other Learning Disabilities

Why Can’t We Be Friends?

Guest Post by Kathryn Burke

Executive Director

Learning Disabilities Association of Alberta

Alberta, Canada

Some memories are so vivid it almost seems like a DVD is being played in your brain when they are being recalled. The memory I want to share is like that for me – so vivid I am still able to recall everything from the smell of the room to the buzz of the fluorescent lights.

It happened a little over five years ago. It was a Saturday morning before a public lecture on the human rights of children with disabilities. I remember looking around the room and feeling somewhat smug. I figured an email notice I had sent out about the lecture was responsible for the attendance of a number of people. I had assembled an email list of people with an interest in special education and used it to send out notices that could appeal to the group, like the human rights lecture.

A parent from my son’s school, who had not heard about the lecture from me, came to greet me and ask if I could put her name on the “special education distribution list.” Another woman overheard our discussion and asked about the list, how it had started, and if she could join. I told her that I had assembled the email list from the names of individuals who had been present at events organized by the Parent Council at my son’s school, of which I was a member of the executive. I explained that the school was a specialized site within the public system for students with learning disabilities. Upon hearing this, the woman looked at me with a level of disgust as if I had grown horns, and loudly said, “I will have absolutely nothing to do with people who believe that children with disabilities should be segregated!”

I was momentarily stunned and silent. I was also overcome with a tsunami of feelings. A person had insinuated herself into a conversation I was having with another and then had done the verbal equivalent of giving me a full body slam. I was a parent simply doing the best for my son and along the way, trying to help other families and children. I felt then, as I still do now, that I did not deserve the treatment I received. My typical reaction would have been to simply walk away or ignore the woman’s comment. But that day, I acted out of character. I quietly but firmly replied: “I have two children with exceptional learning needs. One is in an inclusive setting and the other is in a specialized environment. I am married to a man who has a spinal cord injury. I know what it is like to live with people with disabilities. Just a few weeks ago, I sat in the Minister of Education’s office advocating for families like yours – for the need to increase funding for students with disabilities in all educational venues. You have the audacity to question me about the decisions I have made for my children. You know nothing about my morals or my ethics. You know absolutely nothing about me.”

The woman to whom I had directed my comments was stunned into silence. But she was then quick to back track and apologize, saying she did not mean to be insulting. I accepted her apology. I learned her daughter, impacted by both physical and learning challenges, was in an inclusive educational setting. There were problems – problems that ranged from other parents temporarily parking in the only wheel chair accessible spot by the school thereby impacting the woman’s ability to pick up and drop off her daughter through to complaints uttered at Parent Council meetings about the resources needed to accommodate her daughter’s special needs. The woman indicated she wanted her daughter to have as normal an education experience as possible, and that this was just not happening. I quickly realized that this woman was dealing with much anger but still silently wondered why she would direct that anger to me because of choices our family had made about our son’s education. I felt her anger to be misplaced.

In the intervening half decade, I have encountered other people who have disagreed, in principle, with the choices our family made for our oldest son to be educated in a specialized environment – specialized being a term I prefer to “segregated.” I have been witness to the war of words between the “inclusionists” and those preferring a specialized learning environment for their child. And, during the recent year long consultation on the direction of special education in our province, I have seen or heard heated discussions about the appropriate or preferred educational venues for students with exceptional learning needs – discussions that often devolved to become personal in nature. I have also witnessed people at conferences walking out of keynote sessions when the speaker mentioned successful educational outcomes for students with learning disabilities who were educated in specialized settings.

I am tired of all this precious energy being wasted.

We elected to place or son in a specialized school because we were convinced that without it, he would be dead.

Our son had been in an inclusive environment and had benefited from the extraordinary efforts of a teacher we still refer to as an angel. Her efforts to both learn about and accommodate our son’s needs were exemplary.  They could have served as illustrations for the preeminent text book on inclusion. But he was not thriving academically despite her extraordinary efforts; he was not making progress in an optimal inclusive environment. He needed more. He spoke about wanting to fly into the sun – because he was “stupid” and unable to learn like the other kids. This stopped when he entered the specialized school and an environment where all the kids were like him. For the first time in his educational career, he felt “included.” He felt like he belonged.

My husband and I fully expected him to be at the “new school” for about two years and then return to a regular classroom. He is now in his sixth year. He needs the specialized instruction – instruction that is unavailable in regular classrooms at the quality and with the consistency he requires to be successful. His needs are complex – he is very smart, severely dyslexic and dysgraphic. He continues to be challenged by social skills, time management and executive functions that often coexist with learning disabilities. For us, the decision about where our son would attend school has been predicated solely upon what we judged to be in his best interests in the short, medium and long term. We want him to be successful. We don’t want to mortgage his future.

Our decisions were also based and continue to be informed by what he cannot get in a regular classroom. Sadly, I do not believe that where we live, regular classrooms in their current state, i.e., an inclusive environment, are capable of accommodating our son’s needs and giving him the education he requires. I wish this was not the case.

Why is this so? First, please recognize my frame of reference is our city – our community.  Yet, I am convinced the same holds true in many cities and communities across our country and in other nations. I also want to say that I know teachers who are gifted, exceptional, and amazing individuals able to rise to the challenge of teaching students with a range of exceptional learning needs. I also believe teachers go into the profession wanting to be the best.

But, I believe we are failing teachers. As a result, we are failing students with exceptional learning needs. In the majority of Faculties of Education in our nation, pre-service teacher training in special education is not mandatory. It is entirely possible for a teacher to graduate from university or college without having had instruction on how to identify and program for students with learning disabilities or other exceptional learning needs. Yet, we expect these same teachers to be able to accommodate and successfully meet the needs of diverse student populations. We want our schools to be welcoming and inviting for all students, but we more often than not fail to provide classroom teachers with the tools, supports, professional development and mentorship they need to teach children with exceptional needs.

This reality is made more complex by other factors. The perception of equity can also be a concern. Some parents of so called “normal kids” – whatever normal is, may be resentful of resources used to accommodate the needs of children with special education requirements. This sentiment was expressed at our youngest son’s school – a school in which his learning needs were met in an inclusive manner.

Our schools are being increasingly evaluated on the basis of how well students fare on standardized tests.  Some parents are fearful that students with exceptional needs may “mess up the test results.” The emergence of competition between schools can have the unintended consequence of putting a negative spotlight on children with special needs because they may “screw up” the test scores.

The final nail in the coffin, so to speak, is the prevalent view that has been shared with me by people in senior roles in school districts and in elected trustee positions – specifically that education in specialized venues is expensive and that inclusion is not. I have not yet seen a well designed cost accounting evaluation of a high quality inclusive education program compared to education in a specialized environment. I suspect that if inclusion is done right, the cost per student would be relatively comparable in both environments though driven by different elements. This assumes, however, that the student in an inclusive environment has available to them a full range of programs and supports. There remains, however, a persistent and I believe unwarranted belief that inclusion is less expensive than specialized education. I will say with some confidence that “including” a child in an environment without supports and with a teacher who does not have the resources to address the unique needs of that child is certainly less expensive. But, I would not describe that as inclusion. I call it dumping. And in the long run, the societal costs of failing to address the needs of that child in any educational environment will eclipse the cost of doing it the right way in the first place. Cash strapped schools and districts may sometimes make operational decisions fuelled by budget considerations rather than educational outcomes. Ultimately, the needs of the student are not driving the system. The system is driving what the student gets.

If we deliberately tried to design a system of inclusion that was doomed for failure, it would be to do what we do now. A system doomed to failure would have no pre-service or continuing professional development designed to prepare teachers to program and support students with exceptional needs. A system doomed to failure would simply place a child with exceptional needs in a classroom without supports. A system doomed to failure would abandon the teacher, and would not provide him or her with the resources, mentorship and support needed to address the unique needs of that student. A system doomed to failure would not monitor or be accountable for the academic progress of students in included settings (or in any setting). Such a system would say it was acceptable if those students did not grow academically, or at a rate that was considerably slower than the pace in specialized environments. Sadly, many if not all of these things are what we do now.

There are pockets where exceptional things happening around inclusive education. Or, experiences can be great one year and horrible the next. My question is, and I think it to be a fair one: “Why are the pockets of excellence the exception and not the norm?” Why must so many parents struggle from year to year with uneven performance and support for their child with exceptional learning needs?

In my world right now, inclusion is not an option for my oldest son – not if we want him to emerge sane or whole and educated. But, I would continue to say to our current Minister of Education, and to anyone who cares to ask me:

“Our system MUST be changed to better support children with exceptional learning needs so that specialized venues or private schools are not the only options. We must do a better job in every corner of our system.”

So, let’s return to that incident on that Saturday morning and the woman who verbally slam-dunked me for my choice.

• I would say I vociferously support her choice to place her daughter in a regular school environment.
• I would say that I regret her immediate view that I was vile because our family made a different choice than hers – a choice fuelled by what we felt to be in the best interests of our son.
• I would say that I will continue to fight for and lobby for the option of choice. Rarely, does one size fit all, and we need to make decisions and monitor those decisions to see if they are relevant as the years go by. I would add that the most important criterion, in my opinion, is what is in the best interests of that student.
• I would say that I will continue to advocate for sustained and fundamental changes to our education systems to better address the needs of all learners, including those with exceptional requirements.
• I would say that I am saddened by acrimony and divisiveness between parties based on the educational venue of their child or the type of school in which they teach.

Being parents of children with exceptional learning needs is hard. Let’s stick together and collectively lobby for fundamental changes to our systems. We are wasting valuable energy that divides our community. We need all our energy to lobby for and work towards sustainable progressive change. Fighting takes away from that more important goal. Like the song says, “Why Can’t We Be Friends?”

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Kathryn Burke holds a master’s degree in sociology. In addition to starting the LDExperience, she is a writer and consultant. She is the part-time Executive Director of the Learning Disabilities Association of Alberta Canada. Before this, she held executive roles in hospital management and health policy. Kathryn can be contacted at:

This column was originally published at the LDExperience:  http://www.ldexperience.ca/?p=423&cpage=1