"Prejudice is a burden that confuses
the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.” What’s the starting point? Morality and fairness?
Or Success and effectiveness?
I stepped out of a session on ‘Building
inclusive classrooms through the Arts’ and much to my surprise, rather shock I
see a group of people screaming, or should I say theatrically articulating
using body and movement J
. The noise was to convey that the land little beyond the lease land on which
the school is built cannot be used for anything else as it needs to be set
aside for a temple on the far end of a hill that it overlooks. The voice and language intonation and
vocabulary had threats, curses, abuses , swears and more. The principal said
something that most of us would echo with ‘Inka
inclusion kaise karein? We can work with the children in the classes at set
up model centres, but what do we do about this prejudice and mind set?’ Having
been through similar situations, I could see where she was coming from and also
how far we have come in the way we think about these things, in the steps we
take each day.
Inclusion is about the
intentional building of relationships and creating conversations. Inclusion
embodies the idea that identity is something to be continually re-negotiated as
successive waves of groups enter into conversation with the majority. So in
this way conversation is not just an excellent metaphor for the meaning of
inclusion, it is also a vital mechanism to achieve it. It is through
conversation that we can respectfully negotiate the terms of a partnership, but
at the same time we appreciate conversation for its own sake, are not
threatened or dissatisfied by the fact that it is open-ended.
But if building an inclusive
society through conversation is to be sincere and productive, it has to be done
between partners who demonstrate mutual respect, and be capable of freely
engaging; partners with a clear sense of others, but also of themselves. It
seems to me that this sort of capacity or capability is also at the core of
what we mean by “inclusion”.
An important prerequisite of this
sort of freedom is having a fully developed sense of self, of capacities to
define what we value, and to make the choices necessary to get us there.
I would like to put the focus on
children, and suggest that if a society is inclusive, it is in the very least a
society in which children can become all that they can be. Obviously this is
not the only dimension, and part of the task facing us is to clarify other
dimensions through our conversations and deliberate efforts. But focusing on
children and educators, facilitating these conversations through creative
non-threatening artistic tools allows us to illustrate a framework for
understanding the underlying drivers of inclusion, of the challenges facing schools, institutions; in short societies
seeking to be more inclusive.
Unless diversity is welcomed, and
relationships are consciously nurtured, there will be little change in the
educational experience for children. Of course, policy and legislative change
is desirable, specialist skills can be useful and a greater financial
investment in schools would be excellent, but making the correct choices that
are effective is critical.
As I look back at what happened
at the school I feel ‘Social Cohesion’ that brings and hold people together in
society is what we need to aspire for. A society in which all individuals and
groups have a sense of belonging, participation, inclusion, recognition and
legitimacy. By respecting diversity, we harness the potential residing in societal
diversity and are less prone to slip into destructive patterns of tension and
conflict when different interests meet and collide. Then creating an
environment where everybody can fulfillJ.
