The Japanese government inaugurated the new policy of Special Needs Education in April 2007. While the new policy for educating children with disabilities claims to promote a "symbiotic society," we ask: Is that really so? It is true that it allows those children with "developmental disabilities" who learn in regular classrooms to be newly qualified to receive "special educational support based on their special needs," unlike the old policy that had limited its support provision at regular schools only to those children who were officially declared as "disabled" and yet given a special permission to enter a regular school. Meanwhile, however, the new system maintains its segregative policy by keeping the institutions of special schools even though their names have been changed from "Schools for the Blind," "Schools for the Deaf," and "Schools for the Intellectually Disabled, the Physically Disabled and the Health Impaired" to "Schools for Special Needs Education."

The statistics shows that the percentage of students with disabilities who go to these "disabled-only" schools during the stage of compulsory education is 0.52%. In reality, however, it means that there are more than 56,000 students who are sent off to special schools in their elementary to secondary school years. Moreover, more special schools are being built in Japan. There are also increasing numbers of cases where children with mild developmental disabilities who have been learning in regular classrooms are taken out and sent off to special needs classrooms because they are seen to require "special support." Thus it seems clear that segregative policy in Japanese education is being further promoted. Children with and without disabilities are being deprived of the opportunities to learn together, under the banner of "education that meets the individual special needs of children with disabilities." For a year, we have continued discussions on what we should do to change the Special Needs Education and to work toward inclusive education. This document reports the results of our discussions.

The UK Disability Studies, which critique that "the society creates disability" and "the society makes people disabled," understand "disabled people" to mean those who have been dis-abled, or dis-empowered by the society. We believe that segregative education that separate children with disabilities from their peers without disabilities lies at the deep root of what produces and maintains such structures that disempower those who are called people with disabilities. We also believe that, in order to resist this, we must seek to nurture human relationships in which people deemed disabled will not be disempowered as a human being, such as everyday interactions with people other than one's own parents - something that has been robbed of by segregation - through which one learns to be active and to be an agent of one's own life.

In this report, we focused on three kinds of human relationships: relationships with family, with friends, and with service/support providers. And we highlighted issues for each. As we did this, we reflected on and tried to learn from various realities surrounding the schooling and the lives of people with disabilities, such as the history of Disability Rights Movement that fought against societal sympathy toward mothers who killed their children with disabilities by raising a slogan, "Parents are our enemy." Also we examined the common practice of schools to demand a parent to accompany a child with a disability as a necessary condition to admitting the child into a regular school. We critiqued that such a practice could discourage and cut off interactions among children; thus we proposed to reconsider the system of support within regular schools so as not to be exclusively dependent upon parental help. Moreover, we recounted M's story, in which M pushed aside her support teacher and instead asked one of her classmates to help her with lunch. The classmate quite naturally gave her a hand. We learned a lesson from this story about the kinds of relationships that do not disempower people with disabilities.

In Chapter 3, where we examined the new Special Needs Education, especially how it viewed "competence" and a "child," we submitted a warning against the fact that the Special Needs Education encourages schools and teachers to employ checklists to assess students according to how the school and teachers believe a child should be. Then the surveying system would dictate that if a child does not meet the criteria set by and for the adults, the child be marked off as a potential target of Special Needs Education. We also critiqued the notions of "independence" and "societal participation" highlighted as desirable goals in the Special Needs Education. They seem to emphasize the importance of becoming able to do things literally independently (i.e., without any help of others). In our critique, we compared two stories: One was a story of Y who could not do calculation but had had experiences of doing shopping at his neighborhood stores since childhood, had built relationships with people in the community, and was able to do shopping on his own by utilizing his abilities to ask others for help. Meanwhile, T could calculate but did not go outside or shop because he did not know the people in the community, having been bussed off to a special school and never able to go to a school in the community. That is, we argued, having skills to do things independently does not necessarily promote "independence" and "social participation." We must nurture human relationships and empower the abilities of not only those deemed disabled but also those deemed non-disabled. Otherwise, the prejudice held by non-disabled against disabled will remain unchanged and those called disabled will not learn how to resist against it. As such, we concluded that the Special Needs Education that conceptualizes "competence" as individual abilities independent of relationships with others would not lead to inclusion.

In Chapter 4, we focused on the issue of "developmental disabilities" - a disability category newly included in the eligibility criteria under the policy of Special Needs Education - and considered the relationships with professionals in the field of developmental disabilities. After pointing out various issues, we argued for two things: First, to create a partnership with professionals in which both a professional and a non-professional understand the limitations of knowledge each can offer. Second, we also emphasized the importance of understanding that we cannot understand any child completely. The process of interacting with and getting to know a child always involves discoveries and changes. That is, it should be regarded as a dynamic process of trying to develop mutual understanding.

In Chapter 5, we examined what restrict teachers' abilities to be creative and critical, and highlighted the following three factors: (a) various pressures that make teachers busy dealing with "problems" without having time to stop and think what those "problems" really are and whether they are in fact problems at all; (b) narrow definitions of "competence" that ignore and stigmatize interdependent nature of human existence; and (c) ungenerous school environment that does not allow teachers to acknowledge and express the conflicts, contradictions, and ambiguity that they find in the complex realities of working in classrooms.

In Chapter 6, we proposed four suggestions in regards to working toward inclusive education: (a) To diversify teaching approach rather than to solely depend on the teacher-directed whole group instruction; (b) To value and encourage cooperative learning in class; (c) To strengthen teacher's three roles, including attending to individual students' needs, promoting friendships among students, and building a class as a community; and (d) To rethink curriculum based on the ideas of universal and flexible needs-based curriculum that does not disconnect any child from her or his learning community.

Finally, in Chapter 7, we identified and tried to learn from one of pioneering examples in creating education that does not exclude children with disabilities from their community schools since in 1970s - Toyonaka City of Osaka. As we collected and recounted several stories of inclusive practices, we learn how inclusive education affects the views and identities of children, teachers, schools, and community.

Full text of the final report in Japanese (PDF)

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