Many autistic people suffer in mainstream schools.  They can be bullied and victimized, isolated and ostracized.  They can experience the distress which comes from being in an environment that is hostile to their senses.  Their mental health can suffer.  Some autistic people, in the schools, do not learn the subjects being taught in their curriculum, but helplessness and fear.

There are at least two major responses to this problem.  One group – those who could be called “full,” “universal,” or “radical” inclusionists – dismiss the idea that there is anything fundamentally wrong with mainstreaming, and they campaign for further improvements in an attempt to fix the mainstream school.  However, their prospects for success appear (to put it mildly) rather dismal for the immediately foreseeable future.

Therefore, others have adopted a more restrained position.  While many still think that inclusion of everyone in the schools would be a fine thing in theory, they are prepared to accept that in practice it would only harm many of those forced into the mainstream.  They concede that a parallel system of special schools and homeschooling provisions can continue to exist for the benefit of such students, at least until the flaws of the mainstream have been dealt with.  This position has been called “selective,” “responsible,” or “moderate” inclusionism.  In this post, let’s use the term “moderate.”

At first glance, we might think this moderate school of thought offers us the best path forwards.  However, a serious problem remains.

Educators suggest that students more suitable for integration in the mainstream school should be academically capable and cognitively able, and they should not exhibit serious challenging or disruptive behaviours (Sansosti & Sansosti, 2012; Segall & Campbell, 2014).  These views have apparently been put into practice, because autistic students integrated in public schools do, indeed, have fewer challenging behaviours than those outside the public schools (Lauderdale-Littin, Howell, & Blacher, 2013).

In a sense, then, it appears as though educators want mainstream settings to be populated by students who will not make their own lives more difficult.  Educators want their students to be smart enough to keep up, and they don’t want students who will make their lives more difficult through disruptive behaviours.  I don’t agree with this at all, but given the challenges which teachers in the mainstream face, and given the lack of resources available to them there, I can at least understand why teachers would think this way.  Even with paraprofessional support, I imagine it would be difficult to simultaneously teach a class of cognitively-able neurotypicals and look after the needs of (for example) a nonspeaking student with challenging behaviours.

However, teachers who think this way are ignoring the needs of another group of students.  There are students who are intellectually and academically able, and who do not disrupt the lives of teachers and other students through challenging behaviour, but who nevertheless suffer in the mainstream.  In a world with moderate inclusion, they can be isolated and bullied, and their mental health can wither away, but they suffer in silence – and, when educators are only offering special education provision to those with more obvious needs, they do not get rescued from the environment that inflicts this suffering upon them.

This is, unfortunately, the fate of many cognitively-able autistics.  Nor is it unique to that group: as an autistic person, I’m obviously more personally acquainted with the experiences of autistics, but the Deaf community has long faced similar challenges.  While we are (thankfully!) no longer in the dark days where deaf children were forbidden the use of sign, and made to struggle to learn through lip-reading and oral methods alone, there are still many deaf children in mainstream schools where their fellow students cannot sign.  This naturally poses a serious barrier to communication and meaningful inclusion, which interpreting cannot always overcome – but in settings specialized for the Deaf, this barrier does not arise.

Furthermore, although I’m afraid my first three posts on the topic of inclusion focused largely on the needs of cognitively-able students, I’m actually just as concerned by our tendency to kick those with intellectual disabilities and challenging behaviours out of the mainstream as I am concerned about our habit of forcing the cognitively-able kids to remain in the mainstream.  It’s important to remember that students with very obvious and severe disabilities can sometimes do quite well in mainstream settings (Cole & Meyer, 1991).  Anecdotally, I think some of the aspects of the mainstream educational environment that can be so damaging for many cognitively-able students – especially victimization and isolation – aren’t as much of a problem for less cognitively-able students.  This might be because they aren’t such appealing targets.  (Restraint and seclusion by teachers might be a bigger issue than victimization by other students.)  I’m sure some severely-disabled autistics will still do better outside the mainstream, but for many, the mainstream school could serve very well.

However, many (though not all) students with milder impairments might urgently need alternatives to the mainstream.  Otherwise, they might enter adulthood with their mental health still in tatters from a long, painful experience of continuous, silent suffering in an unsuitable school environment.

To protect against this, I believe we need to offer students and families themselves choices about educational placement.  Teachers and school administrators inevitably have an interest in approaching decisions about educational placement with the goal of making the teaching of classes in the mainstream easier – but that angle doesn’t always protect the interests of vulnerable individuals with disabilities.  In contrast, students and families have an essential interest in their own individual well-being, and for that reason, I believe they should have the leading role in guiding placement decisions.  That way, those who need to be in the mainstream could remain in the mainstream, and those who are suffering in the mainstream and need to escape it could find the alternatives they need.

 

What do you think?  Comment below!

References

Cole, D. A., & Meyer, L. H. (1991). Social integration and severe disabilities: A longitudinal analysis of child outcomes. The Journal of Special Education, 25(3), 340-351. https://doi.org/10.1177/002246699102500306

Lauderdale-Littin, S., Howell, E., & Blacher, J. (2013). Educational placement for children with autism spectrum disorders in public and non-public school settings: The impact of social skills and behavior problems. Education and Training in Autism and Developmental Disabilities, 48(4), 469–478.

Sansosti, J. M., & Sansosti, F. J. (2012). Inclusion for students with high functioning autism spectrum disorders: Definitions and decision making. Psychology in the Schools, 49(10), 917-931. https://doi.org/10.1002/pits.21652

Segall, M. J., & Campbell, J. M. (2014). Factors influencing the educational placement of students with autism spectrum disorders. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 8(1), 31–43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rasd.2013.10.006