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The Inclusive Education Series: A Conversation with Valentina Migliarini · DiveIn: Diving into Special Education's Most Complex and Pressing Debates

0:05
From the Division of Research of the Council for Exceptional Children.
0:09
This is Dive in, the podcast where we ask difficult
0:13
questions about the education of students with disabilities. And occasionally
0:17
we pretend we have the answers. I'm your host,
0:20
Federico Beitola, professor at the University of Filimo,
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Chicago. So, are you ready? Let's dive in.
0:29
Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome to our fourth episode
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of the fourth season of Dive In. Here we're again bringing
0:37
a little disruption to your day. The kind of disruption that allows you
0:41
to ignore your traffic ticket, the laundry slowly developing in its
0:45
own ecosystem in your laundry basket, or the document on your computer called FinalFinal.
0:51
FinalReallyFinal,
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version number 125
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of my paper. That file that you've been ignoring for a while.
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If you've been following us, you know that it's. This season we're doing a special
1:05
series on inclusion education. So far we have heard from
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David Connor, Doug Fuchs and Mel Ainscoe. They have offered
1:13
very different perspectives on what inclusion means, where students
1:17
should learn, one counts as evidence, and what education systems must
1:21
change. Today we add another important perspective.
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My guest is Valentina Migliarini.
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Valentina is an associate professor in education studies at the
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University of Birmingham. Her work sits at the intersections of
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inclusive education, disability rights, immigration, language and social
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justice. She has particular interests in the experiences of students who
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are not marginalized only by one way. For example, disabled students who
1:49
are also at the margins, but also who are maybe migrants, immigrants,
1:53
refugees, multilingual learners, or members of a racially minoritized
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community. In this episode, we talk about disability, critical race theory or discrete,
2:02
a topic that we cover a little bit with David Connor as well. And what
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an intersectional perspective can contribute to inclusive education.
2:10
We discuss how racism and ableism can work together
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in schools, why apparently inclusive policies may still or reproduce exclusion,
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and why models developed in the global north should not be exported around
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the world as they were. Educational furniture from Ikea. Here are the instructions.
2:27
Here are your pieces. Good luck. We also discuss Italy,
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immigration, forced displacement, teacher education,
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and what a more critical and transformative approach to inclusion may look
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like. And more important, I also disclose in the interview the
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day that Valentina almost kills me in a Greek island. But before
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we get to my near death experience, I wanted to ask you a few
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things. First, take a look at our episodes.
2:55
We now have a large library of conversations about disabilities,
2:58
special education, inclusion and many other topics that may be
3:03
very well fitting to your own learning or to the learning of your students.
3:06
If you are a teacher, educator or a university professor. If You're a
3:10
doctor or student, you may find some useful your literature review or some
3:14
important topics that inspire you. Some good research topics.
3:18
Second, whether you're listening to Spotify, Applecast or any
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other platform, please hit the follow button. It takes only a couple seconds,
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cost nothing and help us to discover the show. Third, remember that we have
3:30
a Discord channel. You will find the invitation in the show description and
3:34
also you can come and tell me what you think about the show or the
3:37
ideas that you have for future shows. Emailing me in the
3:41
email that I also place in the description of the show.
3:44
The podcast is always more interesting when the conversation continues
3:48
after the episode ends. Okay, that's enough of
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an announcement. No more assembling educational furniture from Ikea and hopefully
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no further attempts to end my life. Are you ready?
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Let's dive in to my conversation with Valentina Migliarini.
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Thank you, Valentina, so much for being here with us. Thank you,
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Federico, for inviting me. This is great to have you here.
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You know, full disclosure, Valentina and I are good
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friends. Despite that she and her friend almost kills me
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once. So I want to start with this. You know, for the sake
4:27
of transparency and about my feelings about the interviewee,
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I want to start with this brief story for
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the audience. So. So they giving a contextual of our relationship. We were.
4:39
I mean, we were pretty privileged. One summer was September,
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I remember, and we went to do a writing retreat in an
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island in Greece. Come on. I mean, it can get better than that, right?
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And that was your first time in Europe. So I took you,
4:54
like briefly after you moved to. To Spain,
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I took you to Greece. I mean, this is what friends are for, right?
5:03
Yes, yes. And friends, you know, for moments we were friends.
5:07
There were moments that I thought of you with other feelings because
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one night we have rented a car and we're in
5:16
the car where you, your friend. Georgia.
5:19
Georgia, Georgia. And your other colleague from Belgium.
5:23
Oh, yes, yes, Jan, yes,
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yes, yes. And one night we went to town. We were in a
5:30
hotel that were on a beach. We're like 15, 20 minutes on a drive and
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we have to go over like a mountain to the other side of the island
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to go to the main town. And when they are to have dinner, remember to
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do something. And Georgia was driving,
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Valentina was in the passenger seat and I
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was on the back seat. And we noticed a couple of things as we're going
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back. First, the gas was
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empty. And we tell these two Italian women in
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front of us to fill the gas. And like a good careless
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laces fair Italian, no stereotypes. Sorry about any getting hurt
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by this. I said, no, it doesn't matter. We'll get there. It's all
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good. So it was Sunday. It was probably midnight by this point.
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We're start driving Mike over this mountain and there is absolutely nothing
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on this road. We start getting lost before getting to a hotel
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with an empty tank. And then just to top that off,
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the engine light starts coming on and
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we are getting lost. The engine lights thought we almost have no gas. I say
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I suggested let's go back to town and figure it out. And these two Italian
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women, Valentina and Georgia. No, everything is fine.
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Nothing is happening. Well, I was seeing myself
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lost in the mountain and being eaten by the wolves or coursed
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by seals that probably was around there. And it's in Mont in Greece anyway.
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But I don't know how we got back to the hotel. I don't remember.
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I have, I have, I kind of blank out of the terror of that night.
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And I, we got back to the hotel, they say, oh,
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see what's fine. Nothing happened. Next day we wake
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up, we call someone to fix the car. And I, I, I don't know how
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this happened, but the car had a flat tire. Okay, that's could
7:18
be normal. But the other thing that was really abnormal is there was a hole
7:22
in the engine. There was a pipe like ripped off
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of the engine. I don't know how that happened. It was a car renting in
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Greece, you know. That's right. It was a car rental
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in Greece. What do you want? Right? And the cheapest one was not just any
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car rental. We probably rented the cheapest car possible. Yeah, but remember
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that they asked us for a deposit of thousand euros,
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remember? And you had to swipe your card and we were like,
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wow, you know, and then with the deposit, they gave
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us a car with the hole in the engine. Typical.
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Incredible. Despite that story and how irresponsible
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drivers were, Valentina, her friend, will continue being
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friends. And you know, this is a podcast about teaching
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and learning students with disabilities. So we'll get to that. But I thought that was
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important to know that this interviewee almost kills me.
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So let's get to what we came here for. Valentina, what do
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you think? Absolutely, absolutely.
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We're doing this series in inclusive education. We have a lot of
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great interviewees in the last shows.
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It seems that everybody seems to agree that inclusive education is important,
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yet people often mean very different things
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by it. Sometimes slightly different, sometimes dramatically different.
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So I would like to start the interview with this question how
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do you define inclusive education and what may
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distinguish authentic or real inclusion
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or to simply just placing students with disabilities
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in schools? Absolutely. I mean, thank you for the question,
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because I think that starting by definitions
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and contextual definitions, I think it's really important.
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As you correctly pointed out, it's a concept
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that it's been very contested and
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that, you know, throughout the years and throughout, you know, like the different
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education systems, it assumes very different meanings.
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Now, the way I as
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an Italian person, of course, being brought up
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in a country with an education system
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that had a. Had developed back
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in, you know, starting from the early. The late 70s to when
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I went to school, so in the 80s and in the 90s up to the
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early 2000s, a very radical approach
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to inclusion. And that is also
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part of, you know, how I conceptualize it is
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really trying to shift the
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power, right, the power boundaries of,
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you know, who's worth receiving, you know, education and
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who's not, right? So it means really looking
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at the ways in which the institution,
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the government is creating the
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conditions or not for all
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students to receive good,
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quality education. So essentially,
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for me, inclusive education is something that goes beyond
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one specific identity marker.
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Most people think about disability,
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you know, when thinking about inclusive education.
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For me, it means many identity markers,
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right? And the intersection of their, you know, complex.
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And their complex intersection, right? So we're talking about,
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you know, social class, race, gender,
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citizenship, migratory status,
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language, and many other
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identity markers and how they play out. And so
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what are the sort of conditions that the institutions
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and the governments create and also the citizens, right. Create to
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make sure that, you know, everyone and especially those
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who, you know, live complex identities have
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the possibility to achieve good
11:50
quality of education. We were talking about the fact
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that, you know, in many places in Southern Europe, you know,
11:58
because of our history, education is public and is free from,
12:03
you know, the K to 12 system to the university. And that
12:07
creates different dynamics, right? Takes out the
12:11
pressure from the kind of poor families to pay
12:16
for good education and makes sure that, you know,
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everybody has a chance to. To learn. For example,
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I mentioned this quite often, you know, in Greece,
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despite, like, very many issues that the country has had because
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of, you know, an experiment of the European
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Union, still the government is fighting against the privatization
12:40
of education. And the universities in the
12:44
country are free and the government provides for the books for the students,
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which. It's a great thing if you think about how much,
12:52
for example, medicine or engineering or technical books
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can cost. I mean, the fact that the government is providing for it, it's an
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example of very radical inclusion.
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So I hear you saying a few things that I think are interesting. One,
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you're contextualizing inclusive education beyond disability,
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looking at different issues of class, race, gender, et cetera,
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and very important issues of access.
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How important is to you within that definition that
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students are placed all in the same
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space in the same classroom? Because it has been one of the major debates in
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inclusive education too. It's like, oh, yeah, inclusive education, let's put it.
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But that doesn't. But for some people, doesn't mean that they need to be in
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the same classroom all the time. What is your take on that? So,
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first of all, again, my take comes from,
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you know, Italy,
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you know, has been judged as the. One of the most radically
13:53
and visionary place in which
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inclusion and inclusive education has been implemented
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because of the cultural transformation that
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was started by basalia in the 70s, but also
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because the society was reacting to fascism,
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right? And many of us think, okay,
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you know, sometimes you need these very extreme
14:20
regimes to actually, you know, create the
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social conditions for really authentically democratic
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forces to emerge. And in that vision,
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right, there was very much the idea that
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the teacher was really a pedagogue.
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And so somebody. And we've had very
14:45
many examples of great, you know, Italian educators,
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Italian pedagogists in our history, right?
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We have a very dense history of pedagogy in Italy that
14:57
is extremely democratic. And it's. It was not really,
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you know, based on standardization, but on the
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experiencing of learning, the experiencing of,
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you know, living together in a society,
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the experiencing of understanding that everyone
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is bringing something that we can learn from
15:22
each other. So that was the kind of idea
15:26
within a react reactionary forces
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of sort of against the fascism that instead was,
15:33
you know, very elitist, the very divisionist and so on with the sort
15:38
of like combating that, with the idea of we need to embrace everyone's
15:42
uniqueness and everyone's contribution. And so it's important that,
15:47
because we need to all live together eventually in
15:51
society, because that was the vision of Basania. When they closed
15:55
the asylums, they were like, okay, everybody needs
16:00
to be integrated in society. Everyone needs to
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be able to leave the public spaces equally.
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And so there was no reason, if that was the vision
16:12
of the society, there was no reason for the schools, as a,
16:15
you know, byproduct of society, to be different,
16:19
right? And so the idea that we are all occupying
16:24
a space, it was. It's still,
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I think, very important. And for us, you know,
16:31
in Italy, it was coming from,
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you know, that particular vision.
16:39
Now Obviously, unfortunately,
16:42
the forces of capitalism,
16:45
right, and of the big empires,
16:49
namely the United States, States and the UK also arrived
16:53
in Italy through, you know, the neoliberal reforms. And of course,
16:57
you know, they made sure that whatever things communist
17:02
and socialist we had were actually pushed aside.
17:05
And so standardized texts,
17:08
tests and, you know, learning arrived there as
17:12
well. And now, even though the structure. Right.
17:16
Of schools remain the same, that is, everyone should be
17:19
in the same classroom, we have different forms of exclusions
17:24
that happen in the classrooms because teachers are no longer trained to
17:28
be the pedagogue of the 1970s and the
17:33
1980s. But just again, just to say simply,
17:36
you know, they need to learn, they have to achieve
17:40
those specific standards. And those who are not achieving,
17:44
we push them on the side because, you know,
17:48
this is what we need the schools to be.
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So within that background, where do you stand, do you think?
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I guess my question comes from. There are. Scholars say
17:59
that inclusive education is fine, but sometimes it's okay to separate and to have,
18:03
for example, intensive instruction. Where do you
18:07
stand on that? Do they need to be, to be inclusive education? Do they need
18:10
to be everybody in the same space all the time? Yes, I unapologetically
18:15
sustain that at the risk of, you know,
18:19
getting the hate of people who think
18:23
so. But this goes against the individual needs of the students.
18:27
That's, I'm sorry, you know, that's again,
18:31
we'll do a peep in the. Yeah, that is again,
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if you analyze it critically, that's again the byproduct of
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capitalism, you know, and how capitalism wants
18:43
the society and the school to be so at the
18:47
cost of being seen idealistic. I think that the
18:51
problem is not with the students, but it's in how we
18:55
train the teachers and how we think about education. And because we
19:00
are at a moment in which we
19:04
are really facing very strong extremist,
19:09
far right forces, very dangerous. Right.
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For us Italians, we know what that is, right? We, we know this
19:17
very well and we need to be able to contrast
19:21
those forces with the same tenacity that our grandfathers
19:26
did and like push back against any
19:30
sort of thinking. Oh, you know, we need to separate.
19:34
We need to, you know, make sure that those kids receive
19:39
one to one support because otherwise,
19:43
you know, they are not going to get to where they need to be learning
19:47
should happen. You know, in my vision,
19:51
I recently visited a school in Greece and
19:55
imagine they have a. They've built it because of
19:59
the weather permits, a small amphitheatre,
20:03
you know, like the Greek theater in their playground. And sometimes
20:08
teachers take the kids to have lessons there,
20:12
everyone you know, and the classroom
20:16
that goes on, it's a mess. You see some people,
20:19
some students laughing, moving,
20:23
shouting, moving freely, yet learning still
20:27
happen. I observed the class where, you know,
20:31
they were given a task and as
20:36
I said, you had the really energetic
20:40
boys on one side that they were pushing, shouting,
20:43
you know, laughing, yet the teacher did not do
20:47
anything. No discipline, no shouting, no nothing.
20:51
It was just again, reiterating the
20:55
task and talk, go talking to them, okay, you need to do this, you need
20:59
to do that. And in two hours they were on task.
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They did it. Hmm. So let
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me ask you a follow up question about that, because one of the criticisms
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that often happen to inclusive education is like it has
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become very ideological and aspirational instead of
21:19
evidence based base, right? There is critics that say that empirical evidence
21:23
for full inclusion, like all the time in the classroom, like you were saying,
21:28
does not have an empirical base, particularly for
21:32
those students who may need more extensive support needs. How do
21:36
you respond to that criticism? With another question. Who says
21:40
that evidence based is science? If those
21:45
critics can actually convince me
21:48
that their science is more science
21:53
than my perspective, then that's fine.
21:56
But the question remains, how do
22:01
we define what counts as science? And why are we giving
22:05
the mic to somebody that says that evidence
22:09
based counts as more scientific knowledge
22:13
than experiential one?
22:17
How would you differentiate that between
22:21
evidence empirical based and experiential?
22:25
It's really interesting how some people say,
22:30
oh, but your perspective, because it's based on
22:34
the experience or the stories or
22:38
the narration, right? Of, of students
22:42
or of teachers, it's more of an ideology,
22:46
right? And for someone who
22:50
comes from Italy and who is sitting at
22:54
the center of empire where a pseudoscience was
22:57
created under the name of science.
23:00
And I'm talking about eugenics, Galton is from Birmingham,
23:04
the guy is from here, you know. So the
23:08
question is, I want to ask those critics what
23:12
makes your perspective a science with
23:17
the arrogance in which they are saying that evidence based is
23:21
science and my science is not a science.
23:25
When they can counter argue to that,
23:29
then we can have a discussion. Because to be fair, at the historical
23:34
and political times in which we are now,
23:37
maybe the Americans don't know history, but we know the
23:41
history of eugenics, right? And how it was born.
23:45
Again, we have ucl, we have a
23:49
guy named Galton who was born in Birmingham, who we
23:53
have Cesare Lombroso in Italy, who, who built and
23:57
made up evidence based science of who
24:01
was a criminal and who was not. So again,
24:05
I would. In this period of time, I would take that with
24:11
a very strong counter question. I don't engage
24:15
in a dialogue with somebody that tells me that
24:19
I bring forward an ideologist because those in itself
24:23
can be very dangerous ideologies themselves.
24:27
Yeah. You know, because you put me almost on the border of
24:32
death one night in Greece. I'm gonna push a little. I'm gonna push a little
24:36
more on this. I'm gonna push a little more on this. Yeah. Yeah.
24:40
This interview was just an excuse to. To take revenge on
24:44
you. No, just an Argentinian
24:49
taking revenge on an Italian. Okay. Oh, wow.
24:52
Okay. So. So let me say this. Let me say
24:56
this so I can say, yeah. All those narratives
25:00
and experiences that. That you have collected,
25:04
analyzed, you know, show that, you know, for some students, inclusive,
25:08
it's. They're valid, but they're just. For some students.
25:11
There are some students that definitely,
25:15
inclusion doesn't work. How. How do you respond to that?
25:18
Well, first of all, you have to understand why it doesn't work.
25:22
What are the conditions? What are the sort of motivations
25:26
of, you know, like, beyond that idea, who tells
25:30
you that inclusion doesn't work for them? The parents,
25:33
the teachers, the community? Who tells you,
25:37
you know, so I'm curious, you know,
25:40
when I. The, you know, the teachers
25:45
or the school professionals tell me, oh,
25:48
this inclusion doesn't work for the students. But who told you?
25:52
Is it you because you can't really cope with the expectations,
25:57
or is it really the student? Because if, you know, the students,
26:01
again, cannot cope with the demands? Then again,
26:05
it's not the problem of inclusion. It's the problem of how the
26:09
school system is structured. It's that simple,
26:12
you know, so it's, of course, the easy way out
26:16
is to say, oh, you know, of course the students can't
26:20
cope because there are too many inputs. There is cows in the classroom.
26:24
You know, there's many dynamics going on.
26:28
And we need to do. Prepare for a test. We need
26:31
to make sure that they are reading at that level. We need to make sure
26:35
that they are writing at that level. So, of course, inclusion doesn't work.
26:39
And I'm thinking, well, of course inclusion doesn't work because,
26:42
you know, not because it's the problem of the student,
26:46
but it's because, you know, like, the teacher cannot
26:50
push back against the ways in which the school
26:54
system is equipped. And I'm sorry,
26:58
but I said this even in the European Parliament when I was asked,
27:02
and I was speaking in front of an audience of mostly white
27:06
European teachers right at this historical moment.
27:10
Especially in Europe, right. If you don't
27:14
have the courage to push back, starting from
27:18
the classroom, then we are, we are done because we have xenophobia,
27:23
we have, you know, the far right on the rise, we have anti
27:28
migration discourses on, you know, on the rise.
27:31
It's everywhere, everywhere. And so if you
27:36
know, we are not courage in courageous, right,
27:39
Just the same way that our grandfathers were during
27:44
the World War II, then we are finished.
27:48
And so, you know, again, I am
27:52
strongly arguing against this shortcut of
27:56
oh, inclusion doesn't work for certain students. Of course
27:59
it doesn't work because again, have you entered a
28:03
public school classroom?
28:07
It's really. They don't have resources,
28:11
right? The government doesn't put resources into
28:15
them. They don't really. Even the local administration
28:18
doesn't put resources. The teachers are not supported.
28:22
You know, there is no collaboration. There is no collaboration
28:26
with the communities, there is no communication.
28:29
Of course inclusion doesn't work, but it's
28:33
not the fault of inclusion or, or the student. It's the fault
28:37
that the soul system needs to be really rebuilt
28:42
and revised or better abolished than
28:46
reconstructed because it's not working. Yeah.
28:50
So you, I mean what I hear you saying is I don't. It's not that
28:54
inclusion doesn't work or the student cannot be included.
28:57
It's more than the system needs to be restructured.
29:02
So it's not just doing something for a student, doing something more at the systemic
29:06
level to change the way we think about teaching and learning,
29:11
the ways that we think about difference and
29:14
variability. Like it happens
29:18
here right at the moment, you see, see, like of
29:22
course, the situation of disabled people in the uk, it's atrocious.
29:27
Atrocious. Atrocious. Right.
29:30
I mean for me again, I'm unapologetically
29:34
Mediterranean and Italian and for me all the special schools here are
29:38
to be burned, right? Because they are institutionalized prison.
29:42
As I say, this is the pedagogy of the colonizers.
29:45
They do it to whoever is not white,
29:49
British, following the standards. But apart from
29:53
that, the reality is that a lot of parents of
29:57
children with disabilities here in the UK are now who
30:01
are by the way left on themselves. They are left alone
30:04
to actually get the support that they need from different
30:08
institutions, educational and healthcare institution.
30:12
It is a constant battle, a constant struggle.
30:17
So, so many of them are now trying
30:21
to escape to special schools because that's
30:25
the only way. Because teachers in the public schools,
30:30
even those who want to take the students
30:33
with disability, they are overwhelmed. There are
30:38
no funding, there are no supports There are no trainings,
30:41
there is no nothing. Right. However, I say to the
30:45
parents because it's, it's interesting how the English people think,
30:49
right? And this is, you know, different from how we think
30:53
in Europe because you know, when we see some kind of
30:57
injustice, we go to the street and burn everything down.
31:01
Learn from the Greeks right here. Instead of
31:05
going in front of the government and say protesting
31:09
like they did very well for many other things,
31:13
but you know, they go and say, okay, the shortest route
31:17
is to send our children to special schools because they
31:21
have no other options. But it's a systemic problem. It's not
31:24
a problem of inclusion. Yeah.
31:28
It's just that they don't see that the system is rotten. And instead of
31:32
taking the government and say we need a
31:36
serious, you know, cultural revolution,
31:41
we need a serious restructuring, they are exhausted and
31:46
they just say, you know what? Instead of having my child being constantly
31:51
expelled, we are talking about primary school children with
31:55
autism being expelled because of teachers
32:00
inability to manage with them. This is anti
32:04
democratic. And I want to cite Tom Sktik who
32:08
came here, you know, many years ago and he said,
32:12
and I fully agree with him that the existence of special
32:15
schools and segregation system like the UK is,
32:19
is profoundly anti democratic and I subscribe
32:23
to it all. So on
32:28
one way you're putting forward your ideas about inclusive education,
32:32
at the same time I want to acknowledge also from
32:36
where those ideas are coming from that you have too, in your recent book with
32:40
Brian Elder, your colleague, the Future of Inclusive Education
32:45
and Humanizing Disability and Inclusive Education Research in the
32:48
Global south, you argue that many of these dominant ideas
32:53
about inclusive education come from the north right countries like the us,
32:56
like England. So as you
33:00
put forward these ideas about inclusive education, at the
33:04
same time you are critiquing them for being very Western
33:09
European American ideals. How do you reconcile that?
33:13
Well, it's again, you need to pay attention to the
33:17
context. As I said, said, you know, I am very convinced
33:21
after, for example, living in the, in the United States that
33:26
there is a monopoly of knowledge and of concepts race
33:30
first of all, right. That, that the ideas in
33:34
which racism and ableism are
33:37
understood are talked about are of course monopolized with the vocabulary
33:42
that comes from the UK and with, from the US And
33:47
I am frankly at the moment very much invested in,
33:51
you know, shifting that understanding
33:55
on the basis of the context of
33:59
each country. Because while the US
34:03
and the UK they gave us incredibly
34:06
insightful theories. I'm thinking about, you know,
34:10
disability studies, I'm thinking about critical race theory, you know,
34:15
and even, you know, conceptualization of disability justice,
34:19
it will be against the very principles and
34:23
vision of those epistemologies and of those theories to just take them
34:28
and just go, I don't know, somewhere in the global south
34:31
and just say, here is how you should be understanding racism
34:36
in your context, or ableism, you know,
34:40
in your context. I had a doctoral
34:44
student from Palestine who did an incredible work
34:48
on how Palestinian mothers with children with
34:52
disabilities faced the multiple layers
34:56
of discrimination. And one thing that
35:01
we were insisting on a lot was you need to understand
35:05
how is ableism defined there,
35:10
right? It's great that you are taking,
35:13
you know, inspiration, but, you know, given those practical
35:17
experience, given that social context,
35:20
how is the definition of ableism expanded
35:25
with insights from, you know, that specific
35:28
situation, that specific society,
35:32
you know, and you find that, you know, there are,
35:36
you know, incredible new ideas and incredible
35:40
new expansion to the context and nuances,
35:44
right, that come out can really be
35:48
useful to the theory in, in itself. So it is very
35:52
important to, I always say, go in this
35:57
contexts that are on the receiving end of imperialism
36:01
with a lot of self scrutiny, especially, you know,
36:05
if you come from the global north and
36:09
with, with, you know, an open heart to understand how
36:13
those understandings, concepts can be, you know,
36:17
expanded at the cost also of feeling,
36:21
you know, that there are frictions in
36:25
your understanding and how the people are seeing, you know,
36:29
and so that you need to negotiate, you know, and shed
36:33
light on issues again, to make sure
36:37
that you are starting the process for them to
36:41
make changes. And I give you another example, right?
36:45
Lebanon. So of course I lived in Lebanon.
36:49
There is, you know, again, very many
36:53
issues in the country. But one of the things that really struck
36:57
me was the line of color. And when I was living there,
37:02
I didn't have the language to talk about it,
37:05
but I realized how Lebanese can be, for example,
37:09
racist towards black migrants.
37:12
And inside myself I was like, hang on, those people are
37:16
discriminated against because like us, the Europeans,
37:21
we see them as Arab and yet they can be discriminatory towards.
37:26
So that is a powerful example. And now, you know,
37:29
again, the, the Lebanese themselves have organized
37:34
and mobilized to fight, you know, racism and other
37:38
forms of discrimination, you know, by, you know,
37:41
themselves and in their own way acknowledging,
37:45
right, the systems in which they are operating
37:49
and again, finding community ways of
37:53
fighting back, back against, you know,
37:56
this kind of forms of discrimination. So you,
38:00
and also, because, you know, like, if you go in this con, in those contexts,
38:05
they will tell you very clearly you are coming as a European,
38:09
you know, you have colonized us. And so you.
38:12
You also have to quite, you know,
38:16
say, yeah, and so I'm working with you, scrutinizing myself
38:20
and just being supportive. I'm not like, coming here
38:24
with, you know, my knowledge to tell
38:28
you how you should be doing things and how you should be addressing
38:33
systemic discriminations in your context.
38:37
Yeah, I should go with a lot of humility and idea
38:42
of like going to understand the contest and learning from that.
38:45
Exactly. I want to point out that the story that you bring from Leon is
38:49
very interesting because it reinforces, I think, the idea that neither racism
38:53
nor ableism or ethnocentrism, it's something owned by certain
38:57
kind of people. There are ideological tools that are being used by
39:01
different kind of people, and people use them, you know, in very oppressive ways.
39:04
But there are, you know, tools to making sense of the world.
39:08
Right. Oppressive ways to make sense of the world. And people use them in different
39:12
contexts. It's not just a lot of people say, I wish it's white people's
39:16
racism. No, racism is an idea can be opted by many
39:21
different communities, even those who are themselves oppressed. Right.
39:24
Yeah. That's an enableism is the same thing. Right.
39:28
Those are great. And, you know, you wrote this book, you have many different
39:32
authors writing from different parts of the world.
39:36
What can we learn from the global South?
39:39
Oh, many things. I mean, at the moment, I think it
39:44
is sort of like in the moment that we are in politically,
39:48
like we. We need to learn, for example, that the.
39:53
There are communities despite the systemic
39:58
issues, inequalities, as we said,
40:01
you know, discriminations that happen.
40:04
Right. All across, you know, the global north
40:09
and the global South. I think what came out is that,
40:12
you know, there are community forces that come together
40:17
in very interesting ways to
40:21
actually face those systemic oppression.
40:25
Right. And again, for me, the nuances,
40:29
the ways in which people organized despite the multiple
40:33
crises that they face,
40:36
it's incredibly fascinating. And it's something that we
40:41
really need to learn more. But the idea of, you know,
40:45
community resistance in those spaces and
40:49
the ways in which also people tend to sort of resist
40:53
the empire and the domination also of the certain knowledge
40:57
of certain, you know, education imposed
41:02
on them, it's. It's very powerful and it's. It's a great lesson.
41:08
You know, throughout this series, you know,
41:12
I have interview scholars who approach inclusive
41:16
education from different, very different perspectives. Some begin with
41:20
disability rise, you know, inclusion as a democratic project,
41:24
like some of the ideas that you were bringing today. Others emphasize
41:29
more institutional effectiveness. Other ones
41:34
emphasize the capabilities of the General education classroom
41:38
to include all students. Others emphasize universal
41:43
design for learning. I mean, if you have to think about all these different perspectives
41:48
in inclusive education, that a prima facie may be very
41:52
different. Can you find some agreement between them? Can you find
41:56
some common ground? Exclusion. It's the common ground.
41:59
Like for me, the resistance
42:03
and the reproduction of forms of exclusion throughout
42:09
the years and throughout the context is definitely
42:13
the element, right, that has
42:18
perhaps pushed different people to,
42:21
you know, think or to respond
42:26
to, in, in, in different way.
42:29
I think that the permanence of exclusion is the,
42:33
the real common ground that then
42:37
different people started to actually react to that.
42:42
Embracing different perspectives as it should be, you know.
42:46
No, absolutely. It's like the same idea of special
42:50
education or separate classrooms, separate schools. I mean, that's a particular solution
42:55
to the exclusion that was going on from the get go to students
42:59
with disabilities, to other minoritized communities. The thing is,
43:03
we have, well, in the case of the US not so much
43:07
Italy, but in the case in the US and many other Western countries, we have
43:10
created this separate system to deal with that exclusion rather
43:15
than dealing with the problem in the first place, was we
43:19
have generated an educational system in where
43:23
only certain kinds of students can be learning and succeeding.
43:29
I would like to end the conversation with some hope.
43:33
There's a lot of stuff going on in the world.
43:36
In Europe, in Latin America, we're seeing increasing
43:40
debates about migration, nationalism, school segregation. You know, we,
43:44
you have mentioned some of this, but if we, we got a
43:48
hope from here to 5 to 10 years,
43:52
what changes would you like to see? What would you hope to
43:55
see in these five to 10 years in terms of the, the teaching and learning
43:59
of students with disabilities? So this is a great question and
44:03
I want to digress a little bit by talking about my own
44:07
experience when introducing the idea of intersectionality
44:12
in Italy. So, for example, when I started my
44:16
PhD and I was arguing for a more intersectional
44:21
approach to inclusive education to fight intersecting oppression,
44:26
people in 2014 really told
44:30
me, oh, what is this? Are you just bringing some
44:35
American theories here to impose
44:40
on us and to bring the Yankees here, so to speak.
44:44
So they were really, you know, hostile about the
44:48
idea and they were not really looking at the dynamics,
44:52
right, that I was uncovering. They were more like,
44:56
oh, what is this intersectionality thing? You know. But now,
45:00
right, like a decade after,
45:04
more than a decade after I started,
45:08
you know, doing this research, schools,
45:11
universities, you know, they've realized that,
45:15
you know, there are intersecting discrimination happening.
45:19
And so it is important to understand, talk about it and train teachers.
45:24
So you see, they are very slow social changes,
45:28
but they will eventually, you know, you know,
45:32
be embraced because these are real problems, you know.
45:36
And so in 10 years time, first of all,
45:40
I'm hopeful that for how many times
45:44
I've been saying in different circles here in England,
45:47
burn the special schools down, somebody will
45:52
eventually do that. No, I'm joking. But you know,
45:55
that those institutions will be permanently,
45:59
you know, not only closed, but also that the
46:03
society will have, you know, undergone a cultural
46:08
transformation, a cultural revolution,
46:11
so that, you know, there is a predisposition to engage
46:17
with students with disabilities, with people with disability
46:21
in a different way. And again, in continental
46:25
Europe, for example, to just really understand
46:31
that these topics, these issues, they should be
46:35
debated to honor the dignity,
46:39
the rights and the uniqueness. Right.
46:42
Of all marginalized students. Because we are very
46:47
dangerously again in Europe going back to the idea that,
46:50
you know, marginalized identities needs to be
46:55
fixed and supported through, you know,
46:59
medicalized support. And so
47:03
again, we need to push back against that and again, go with
47:07
more of an idea of it's not assistance,
47:11
but is cultural transformation
47:15
that we need. Practical,
47:18
practical transformation too. Not, not just culture. Right,
47:22
Yes. I mean, transformation practice. Yeah. You know, I have
47:26
a follow up question that I had. And now you brought again the idea of
47:29
intersectional inclusive education. You and I have written about this other,
47:34
many people before us, like Alexia Kofzewski, David Connor,
47:38
and there's, there's plenty of people that have started this, this to bring
47:42
in ideas on intersectionality, inclusive education. But you know,
47:46
some, some scholars within inclusive education would like to use the term all students.
47:50
Right? All students. All students. All students. If we think
47:54
about all students, do we really need to emphasize these
47:58
intersectionalities? Because I mean, we're talking about all students. Where is
48:03
the universe of students? Right. So is there a need really, you think,
48:07
to emphasize these intersections is very fascinating.
48:11
Now I have this dialogue with the Greeks
48:15
as well, because if you dig into their philosophy,
48:20
it's very interesting. The panda, the fact that, you know,
48:24
we are all human, everyone is human and
48:28
everyone should be respected as such. That's pretty basic,
48:32
you know, but when I have arguments with,
48:36
you know, some of them that come from this kind of philosophy,
48:40
I say, well, that's the basic assumption,
48:44
right? We are all human and everyone should have basic
48:49
things. However, that's not enough, I'm sorry. Because,
48:53
you know, everyone is different
48:57
and learning learns in a different way, has a different history,
49:01
has a different, you know, approach, approach.
49:05
So we have to sort of be in this Tension
49:10
between universalism. Right. And,
49:13
you know, respecting the individual
49:18
uniqueness. Not in capitalistic terms, because otherwise
49:22
they'll tell you, oh, yeah, the individual, the choice. No,
49:26
no, no. It's more understanding.
49:30
Again, I'm gonna quote here. Bet Ferry would love
49:34
this, but I'm quoting, you know, Ada Gobetti,
49:38
an Italian partisan who wrote this book around the history of,
49:42
you know, of a very particular chick
49:48
that was completely different from the rest. And the moral of the story compared
49:52
to, you know, the ugly ducklings that fits in the societies that
49:56
the. That she goes his own way with
50:00
his uniqueness, with his vision, with his perspectives,
50:04
and he finds his own way in the world. And that,
50:08
I feel, is the perspective that we should embrace
50:12
between understanding the humanity,
50:16
because we need to also counter the dehumanizing
50:20
forces that are happening right now in full force from
50:24
the United States to the eastern of the Mediterranean. So we
50:28
need to understand the. The panda. That we
50:31
are all human, but also that we are, you know,
50:36
worth of respect because of our uniqueness, worth of
50:40
rights because of our uniqueness and worth of accessing
50:44
everything that, you know, it's possible for us,
50:47
regardless of, you know, our differences. And so,
50:51
yes, it is still important to talk about intersectional identity.
50:57
Well, Athena, I'm very thankful that you are here
51:01
with us today. I hope it wasn't too hard.
51:04
I want it to be too hard to take a little bit.
51:08
Oh, come on. I enjoy this. You know,
51:11
you enjoy this. I know. I know. And my last thoughts.
51:15
Thank you. And I will recommend anybody to never jump
51:18
in a car with you, particularly if it's at night. And all
51:24
my audience, honestly, never go in a car when Valentina in
51:28
the middle of the night in a Greek mountain. Well, this is how
51:32
culturally responsive approach to
51:36
leave places. This is how you do it. You go with the flow.
51:40
If there are problems, you think positively.
51:44
It's natural. No, no, if there are problems, you just avoid them
51:47
and just continue going. Thank you, Valentina.
51:51
Thank you.
51:55
Thank you for listening to Dive In. I hope you
51:59
learned from this episode as much as I did. Please help us to spread
52:03
the word about the show. See you next time.