German far right’s Höcke wants to kick disabled kids out of regular schools

alphacyberranger@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 389 points –
German far right’s Höcke wants to kick disabled kids out of regular schools
politico.eu
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“All children deserve equal participation and more opportunities through inclusive education,” Brandenburg said.

I concur. Unfortunately I also somewhat concur with this weird guy on this topic because the current system does not result in equal participation.

The current system results in a lot of unhappy parents and unhappy students and burned out teachers.

That doesn't sound or look viable. But it is what we got in a lot of the EU.

The inclusion project almost always results in exclusion. Only in the first few years it does work.

After that it quickly becomes very apparent for all the kids that that one kid is different. And that the teacher spends all most all his time on that one kid. Which results in envy and jealousy. And that one kid also feels like shit because of that.

Kids, like adults, can and will be very mean.

In the school of my kids I've seen it work twice, in 13 years. All the other times it ended with a premature departure of the special needs kid.

Now I'm not talking about mild autism or mild adhd or a small mental deficiency. Those are manageable and those kids should be teached at a "normal" school. I'm talking about the severe cases of those and syndromes like down.

(source parent of 3 kids, in the Netherlands with somewhat the same system.)

Yeah, I've no doubt that Höcke is pursuing this for extremely cynical and gross reasons, but the broken clock is right twice a day. “Inclusion" is one of those policies that sounds so self-evidently positive and reasonable at a glance, that people's brains shut down and nobody thinks of potential downsides to it as a universal policy. A majority of kids who require special education fare much, much better in smaller classes taught by a special education teacher who can move through material more slowly and boil it down to easier-to-grasp concepts. Sticking them in a large classroom with 20-30 non-disabled peers, even with a SpEd teacher present, rarely has a positive effect, and more often than not leads to worse outcomes for all students present. Inclusion is at its core a cost-saving measure (it's cheaper to stick the SpEd kids in a GenEd classroom than making a dedicated class for them), but it wraps itself in progressive ideology so well that it's almost impossible for parents or teachers to argue against.

I think a non dogmatic best of both worlds approach, with an individually tailored mix of special education and inclusive education for every child, based on their needs and strengths would be best

I agree, we should aim for regular schools if possible, but should watch out in taking our ideology too strictly and clouding our view on reality. If it's not manageable, a special school might be best for all parties.

We can still try, but not against one's better judgement.

so i come from a much much larger country and I need ask. What is the longest distance a student would need to travel to one of these schools. Over here in Texas we have a special school for the deaf in Austin, which can be more then 15 hours away from some places. So students there often just live at the school. Now for deafness we have hearing aids, CDI and deaf classes can be added to any school. With how rural Texas gets having separate schools would not be a viable option. Take where my mom lives, you could put down a copy of the Netherlands and it would around 10,000 people living in the whole area. With so few people you go years and not run into a single kid with certain disabilities. This makes separate schools completely unusable