Free Articles from Interaction 28 Issue 2 Perceptions can not control reality ... | Page 3

v28/2/’14 : interaction

We have faced some challenges in the early stages of Julius’ life but have also held
firm to the view that we would prepare him for mainstream school like his sisters
and his peers. In his case, that has meant some surgery for his hearing, getting used
to glasses and other assistance of this nature, but it has been primarily reading to
him, teaching him numbers, letters and colours, encouraging him to talk nicely to
others and involving him in social activities in the community like gymnastics and
dancing that have made the biggest difference. We also avoided much of “early
intervention” – especially that based on “special needs” – when we knew his were
fundamentally typical “boy” needs.
What we have come to realise in taking this journey, as time has passed and as Julius
has grown up in our family, loved and valued by his parents, his sisters and his
extended family, is that it is imperative to change the way that we, the community,
think about disability – to see the individual, unobscured by assumed limited
expectations as to potential and free from the stigmatisation that is inherent in
defining people by medical labels.
I believe that students with disability and their parents actually need to (and
therefore should) feel that they “belong” in the mainstream school environment, i.e.
that they are welcomed and supported – not merely accepted or tolerated. The
school environment is not only the place where individual students’ self-perceptions
emerge but also where the next generation’s perceptions and values are culturally
shaped.
Further, the evidence is that a genuinely inclusive cultural environment is critical to
successful inclusion and the maximisation of academic, social and health outcomes
of inclusive measures. An inclusive culture and perspective is the oxygen necessary
for inclusive measures and all students (particularly students with disability) to thrive.
As we enter the more formal aspects of Julius' education, we hope to work with a
structure that adopts a cultural perspective that is welcoming, not only of Julius and
our family, but of all students. Essential to that hope is the mainstream schooling
community being able to appreciate the importance of developing a genuinely
inclusive cultural response for all students. This necessarily requires being able to
identify, not only the overt but also the more subtle indicators of exclusion, as well
as recognising our entrenched history of exclusion and the subliminal constraints of
a cultural response that is based upon that history. The following table has been
developed as a succinct guide to facilitate school administrators, teachers and in
particular parents to reflect upon and strive towards developing that necessary
appreciation of perspective.

Australian Institute on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

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