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For example is there a point system of some kind for children who are born with diabetes, autism, or Down syndrome.

And how does that point system compare against the typical/normals attending our neighborhood schools?

After all, aren’t all children are created differently, so where is the line actually drawn?

How do children earn the right to be in a classroom? What is the criteria? Is it solely on the basis of intelligence? And if so which form of intelligence are we going to measure?

Inclusion education recognizes that each child has a value and a right to participate in the classroom in which his or her siblings participate.

Let’s examine the value of a child and how that valuation is established.

If we are willing as a community to invest in the process of educating a child then that student has a sense of value. If on the other hand we are investing our time and resources in preventing a child from fully participating in the neighborhood school then we are expressing our devaluation of that child by simply excluding that child from the classroom.

The basis for most systems of acceptance and rejection is formulated by assessing the child’s academic performance and then making a determination as to whether or not the child belongs or not.

A child’s value and worth is determined first by affirming an identity. It is our obligation as adults to develop that identity in the most unique and dynamic method available.

Since there is no finality to identity formation in that it is constantly developing then it is our obligation to continually strive to increase the contribution to identity growth.

The ultimate goal of every child matriculating in school at any level is to attain some level of autonomy.

Since every child develops at their own unique pace it is normal then to expect that this process is never completed. Therefore at every level of progress we can expect ever increasing improvement.

It is this combination of an ever emerging personality that in combination with the disability itself that is the determinant outcome of the identity of the child born with a handicap.

This process is not one of free will. That is even though we are all free to chose our destiny it is the lack of free choice that is the ultimate limitation and final determinant for the child born with a handicap.

So it is the adults in the life of a child who will in the end decide how that child is to be educated and how his or her unique and very special identity will be shaped. The adults in this child’s life are his/her free choice.

In the absence of a full range of experiential opportunities we are in the final analysis then limiting our children’s potential by not insisting that all children be included together as one variable with an infinite potential possibilities.

Isn’t it our physical, material essence that we must strive to negate and our spiritual or divine soul that we are reaching to develop? So how do we allow another’s journey to be limited by our inability to accept their probabilities of success?

In the attempt to succeed at inclusion into the society we as adults cannot fathom that there is an inner desire to be accepted and fully participate on the part of the handicapped amongst us, merely because they cannot be fully express that desire.

If there is truly an “affirmative action” to be heaped upon our society in order to correct the wrongs meted out upon a segment of our population by an ongoing societal failure then let it be our handicapped children. After all isn’t this sort of societal discrimination against the handicapped historically wrong and ongoing.

Doesn’t this form of discrimination supercede our limited ability to communicate and therefore prevent us from fully comprehending the need for full inclusion, acceptance, and the affirmation of a fully developed life?

The yeshiva’s of our home communities must begin to realize that inclusion does not prevent learning from taking place. It does not interfere with the teachers ability to teach. It does not cost any more than accommodating a child with ADD and even though it is not yet fully understood it improves the midos of the typical children in the classroom. *

Johns Hopkins University Comprehensive school wide restructuring program called “Success for All” student achievement was measured. In assessing effect they measured a control group with students in “Success for All.” (Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery 1984, Durell Analysis of Reading Differences, 1980, Student Attention and Retention).

While assessment showed improved reading for all students the most dramatic was amongst the lowest achievers.

Inclusion has been shown to 1 reduce fear of human differences accompanied by increased comfort and awareness (Peck, et al 1992), and 2 increased growth in social cognition (Murray-Seegert,C., “Nasty Girls Thugs and Humans Like Us: Social Relations Between Severely Disabled and Non Disabled Students in High School,” Baltimore; Paul Brooks, 1989)