The Disenchanted Assembly: The Consultation on Religious Observance in Scottish Schools
This article explores issues of social inclusion, social cohesion, culture and identity in education. The medium through which these themes are addressed is a critical analysis of the consultation on religious observance in Scottish schools. The consultation took place between November 2002 and March 2003, under the aegis of the Religious Observance Review Group (RORG). The written and oral submissions to the consultation were analysed by a research team based in The SCRE Centre in the Faculty of Education at the University of Glasgow. The consultation exercise generated a large number of responses — over 1,400. This is considerably in excess of the number of responses to other recent consultations, and is a measure of the level of public interest generated by the consultation. For example, the consultation exercise launched in the autumn of 2002 by the Expert Panel on School Meals generated a total of 208 responses (Lowden and Pirrie 2002).
Martians in the playground: researching special educational needs
This article offers a critique of what has become known as ‘inclusive education’ under the New Labour administration. The initial impetus for the article was a research project designed to ascertain the impact of the ‘presumption of mainstreaming’ contained in Section 15 of the Standards in Scotland’s Schools etc. Act 2000. This stipulates that the needs of disabled children and others with ‘additional support needs’ should be met in mainstream schools. The authors reflect on the implications of this change in terminology, and examine the consequences of the attendant ‘disappearance of disability’. They also explore how ‘inclusion’ became a largely self‐referential concept that has generally failed to attract critical scrutiny. The authors argue that a highly politicised and ideologically‐charged ‘mission inclusion’ has had the unfortunate effect of tightening the boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’. This, they argue, is demonstrated by the emergence of a significant new ‘‐ism’—disabilism—at a time when inclusion was already firmly embedded in New Labour policy. Take me to the station And put me on a train I’ve got no expectation To pass through here again. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, 1968, from the album Beggars Banquet
Poetry and Human Growth.
Relying on some of the insights of Jungian psychology, this paper analyses the confusion in the language of political economy in Britain which generates and sustains moral infantilism in the civil polity. It goes on to suggest that both politicians and educators are, or perceive themselves to be, powerless to arrest the progress of the transnational juggernaut which has displaced government as the sustainer of individual and collective aspiration. As an antidote to these movements, the paper offers a rehabilitated understanding of the power of the poetic imagination in equipping the individual with control over her or his own decision-making. The power on offer is rooted in the development of Verstehen as a method of engagement which embraces emotionality, ambiguity and provisionality. Finally, it explores some of the pedagogical implications of this thinking.