The economic narratives tied to university programme closures across the UK require us to raise questions about their validity and their long term impact. Programmes that specialise in Inclusive Education are underpinned by values that seek to bring equality and justice to the lives of many families, children and young people. As closures happen in this area, I’m mindful that the concepts and values that underpin them, are also being diminished. We are removing opportunities for students and student teachers to receive an education that enables them to cultivate safe, inclusive, equitable and respectful educational spaces.
While programmes around inclusive education are never large, they were designed to develop specialists to work across many sectors. Inclusive Education programmes address issues of injustice that have arisen in our societies - they seek to ensure that the rights of children and young people, as outlined in the UNCRC, are guaranteed by specialised oversight in schools. The dismantling of such a service within our institutions undermines the collective efforts and commitments built up over years to ensure the needs of a wide range of pupils were not overlooked nor homogenised.
Inclusion as a concept and as a practice embodies the values that we seek to uphold and live by within a democratic society, such as justice, fairness, human rights, diversity, belonging and equity. Prioritising such values shapes who we become as human beings, how we live alongside another, and what we are as institutions. We are socialised into these values as we practise them, cultivate them, and share them in our day to day lives.
We have seen clearly on our screens what happens in societies and within governments when EDI (equality, diversity and inclusion) is stripped back, framed as woke, or considered to be something we don’t need. The abandonment of EDI in the United States serves as a reminder of how acts of cultural vandalism linked to concepts and practices of equality, diversity and inclusion affect the values and behaviours of people and societies at large.
This week, Prime Minister Andy Burnham talked about the seeds of hate and division that have been sown across the UK by certain world leaders. These narratives of hate are also being spread by far right groups, some populist politicians, certain elements of the Press, and across social media. Such narratives (are lies that) challenge the values embedded in our uniquely Scottish nation’s understanding of justice and inclusion and do not represent all of us. Instead, many of us have embodied the values associated with our understandings of inclusion, ensuring we have a better story to live by. A story shaped by radical empathy, justice and grace - values that are woven into the very fabric of our Scottish society.
How are these societal issues linked to programme closures in university settings, you might ask? When we abandon programmes that provide specialist education for schools for economic short term gain, we limit the impact we have on the wider population. This lack reduces our exposure to the values and ethics that have shaped who we are and how we act as human beings. The discourses and ethics around inclusion get lost or diluted resulting in a reshaping of the institution itself. (Yvonne Foley)
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