911 tragedy and inclusive education?

[michael peterson <jmpeterson@MEDIAONE.NET>]

Here's a message I posted to students in two university classes related to
inclusive education.

Michael
____________________________

This has been a week of tragedy, for all humanity. For the first time,
indiscriminate killing of typical people for political reasons has come to
America, a situatin that most of the world has lived with for many years.
Many of us have heard the name of bin Laden for the first time and
gradually become aware of how little typical Americans know of our own
country's activities in the middle east and elsewhere. How many knew that
bin Laden was trained and supported by the CIA. And now we stand on the
brink of a retaliatory war that some think has the potential for opening
up World War 3.

We are teachers. How do we deal with this situation as teachers. There's
been much online dialogue in which I've been involved in the last week
regarding that question. Here's a wonderful site with alternative views
than we are seeing in mainstream media but with links to all sorts of
media and information sources that may be useful in your own learning and
that of your students: http://www.commondreams.org.

We are already seeing hate attacks against Arabic and Muslim citizens of
this country throughout the United States. I will shortly post here a
message sent by a friend and colleague who asks all of us to join in
helping to protect those people unjustly attacked.

So what about the title of this message. What is the relationship between
this tragedy and inclusive education? As we go through class, I'd
encourage you to let your mind ponder that question. For starters,
however, consider this line of thought.

Our real problems in dealing in care and community with one another
starts, it seems to many, with our inability to build communities, and the
social institutions within them, that can allow, tolerate, and more --
actually celebrate real diversity, where people of difference of all sorts
can be together, be who they are, yet value and appreciate one another.

The second issue, it seems, is highly correlated with this -- that those
who seek power and fiscal resources (at all levels in all countries)
actually use these divisions among us to advance their own gain. You can
see this in Hitler. Some say (both US and Afghani) that you can see this
in bin Laden. However, you can also see this happening in our countries
policy and military actions in the middle east and elsewhere throughout
the world.

What to do? Well, the actions to take are both big and small. However, a
critical place to start is to take seriously the challenge to create
places in our communities, and schools are one of the most important,
where we show, in concrete form, that if people are different they don't
have to leave and go somewhere else -- to their own country, to a separate
class or school, to a separate part of town. That some schools are
learning to include children of very different academic, social-emotional,
and physical disabilities together, children from different levels of
wealth, differing ethnicity, culture and language, gives us hope. The more
schools we have like this the more that we help children learn, by living
it, that we CAN all be together, in peace, each getting what we need,
giving to others to help them.

The paradigm of separation and segregation ultimately leads to a message
of violence.

My encouragement is that you grapple with this concept, trying to shift
away from the ideology of segregation that pervades our society towards
one of inclusive community.

Look forward to the semester.

Michael

___________________________

Michael Peterson
Wayne State University
Detroit, Michigan  48202

Whole Schooling Consortium
http://www.coe.wayne.edu/CommunityBuilding/WSC.html