Inclusive education in the 21st century 15The Histor y of Inclusive EducationPerhaps one of the reasons

that inclusion is described as a journey is that this word also describes its history: the story of how and
why inclusive education came to be. It is important for anyone involved with inclusion to understand
this history, because it highlights the differences between inclusive education and everything that came
before it. This, in turn, enables educators to know when educational provision is truly inclusive or
whether that provision belongs more properly to a former evolutionary stage. The four definitions
articu-lated within the CRPD GC4 effectively describe these stages. Without their place in history, there
would be no need to define these stages and there would be nothing from which to distinguish inclusive
educa-tion. If these stages had been consigned to history, there would not be the need to define them
at all. As illustrated by Figures 1.1 and 1.2, however, they clearly still exist. The history of inclusive
education varies across the world. Some countries are just discovering the concept for the first time.
Others, such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, have been engaging with its
foundational concepts since the 1970s (see Chapter 2). Each country is at a different point in the
evolution process and, while outstanding examples of inclusive schools can be found in many education
systems around the world, few can claim to have implemented inclusive education at the system level.
The various stages of implementation internationally have further muddied the Social and economic
exclusionSegregationIntegrationInclusionFigure 1.3. Features and outcomes of the real ‘continuum of
provision’. 16Inclusive Education for the 21st Centurywaters, because some countries are still in the
process of implement-ing mass education. Inclusive education, as defined by the CRPD, has struggled for
political traction in some developing countries due to the sheer scale of the reforms needed to
modernise their education systems and because it is perceived as a white colonialist idea imposed by
rich countries from the Global North (Walton 2018). For this reason, there are no clear evolutionary
stages that we can confidently describe as having been completed. Rather, there are continuations of
each in all systems, even in rich countries with mature education systems, such as Australia, where
home schooling and part- time enrolments are increas-ing, especially of students on the autism
spectrum (Poed et al. 2017). That said, there are some broad historical features that are impor-tant to
understand. Until the late 1800s, children with disability did not attend school. Most were
institutionalised or kept at home. This is what GC4 refers to as exclusion, and it still occurs in many
develop-ing countries around the world. In Australia, this began to change in the 1860s with the opening
of special schools by the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children. For the next 60 years, education for
children with disability was considered a private concern until govern-ment special schools began
opening in the early 1900s (Graham & Jahnukainen 2011). From the 1940s, governments took over from
charities, establishing an increasing number of special schools and classes. At this point, increasing
numbers of children who previously would have attended their local school began being directed to
these new settings, especially students described as ‘maladjusted’, ‘feeble- minded’ and ‘educationally
subnormal’ (McRae 1996). In other words, where special education once helped children previously
excluded from schooling to receive some form of education, it began leading to a different form of
exclusion. This form of exclusion is what GC4 refers to as segregation. And it was rampant. Questions
started being asked at very high levels about who was being segregated and for what reasons. For
example, in 1968 the President of the Council for Excep-tional Children in the United States, Lloyd Dunn,
raised concerns about the overrepresentation of children from culturally and linguis-tically diverse
backgrounds in segregated special- educational settings.

MLA 8th Edition (Modern Language Assoc.)

Linda Graham. Inclusive Education for the 21st Century : Theory, Policy and Practice. Routledge, 2020.

APA 7th Edition (American Psychological Assoc.)

Linda Graham. (2020). Inclusive Education for the 21st Century : Theory, Policy and Practice. Routledge.