5.1 Inclusive education and dilemmas of difference
5.1.2 Sabko saath lekar chalna: Taking everyone along curriculum time
Teachers often used the phrase sabko saath lekar chalna, that is, taking everyone along together to describe inclusion as achieving uniformity. The aim of inclusion is to dissolve differences between students. Inclusion is understood as achieving consistent standards of learning across all children in the classroom,
Inclusive education means like when we started so ma’am (the principal) said that each child should get their share which…that is, whatever we’re teaching one child, that much every child should be able to understand. And it’s not that if that even if one doesn’t understand you leave them or teach them in a superficial way. We have to plan out in a way that all our children can understand it well. (Noor, Ahmedabad)
Here, inclusive education is defined as every child achieving the same level of understanding such that no child is left behind. Teachers believe they are responsible for ensuring that “every child should be able to understand.” Planning is a crucial aspect of this facet of inclusion.
Annual, monthly, and weekly plans feature prominently in teacher narratives in Ahmedabad.
Teachers believe they are responsible for the learning achievement of each child in the
classroom, But I cannot do this gadbad (error) in my profession. No, whatever I taught, like if I taught A-Z then the children should know that much. Every child should know. (Fatima,
Mumbai)
Yet, leaving no one behind is not straightforward. There is a tension between completing the curriculum in the prescribed time and ensuring every child achieves grade-level standards by the end of the school year. This temporal tug-of-war between the pace of the curriculum and the pace of individual students’ learning is characteristic of the mismatch problem (Horn, 2007;
Walton, 2018b). In the previous chapter, I argued how the mismatch between the pace of the
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curriculum and the pace of children’s learning rests on an a priori construction of childhood and renders children “out of age” in the classroom. This way of doing inclusion, by emphasizing that all children learn and demonstrate learning in the same way, focuses on dissolving differences between children in and out of time. When describing why she uses a ‘no opt out’ strategy to ensure classroom participation, Noor (Ahmedabad) responds, “I mean, the way everyone comes to school to learn, it is also their entitlement/right that they learn. So the way everyone else is learning, they also should learn.”
The ‘no opt out’ strategy was taught to teachers in Ahmedabad through TFI-alumni-led professional development. It requires teachers to ensure the child is not allowed to sit till they provide the correct answer to the question. The notion of ‘learning the way everyone else is learning’ is demonstrated in practice in a variety of ways. One is by imploring students to
“ensure that they know as much as their higher-achieving peers” in group work settings. Another is by setting formative and summative assessments in ways that “keep everyone in mind” such that “every child can do it.” That is, to create assessments that are not too difficult or too easy but allow teachers to demonstrate that all children achieve grade-level proficiency.
Thus, the age-grade sequence of education and predetermined educational trajectories serve as the context within which inclusion is enacted and understood. Dismantling the age-grade sequence of education is a complex debate with important implications for equity. One policy solution to the mismatch problem is grade repetition (Walton, 2018b). In 2019, the Right to Education Act ruled against grade repetition through what was popularly known as the ‘No Detention Policy’ (Joshi, 2019). That is, the policy sought to ensure that all children of the same age, regardless of disability, caste, class, religion, indigeneity, or gender progress across grades together through elementary education. This policy was instituted to ensure equitable access to
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education: to promote universal primary and reduce dropout rates for those from disadvantaged communities, a key priority of the Millennium Development Goals (Sachs, 2012). It was argued that this policy further contributed to the learning crisis – with children moving across grades with little accountability for grade-level outcomes. However, with the shift towards quality and learning outcomes in the Sustainable Development Goals, the RTE was amended in 2019 to reinstate grade repetition. The implications of this policy shift on educational access and equity for disadvantaged communities are yet to be determined. Further, introducing grade repetition does not dismantle or question the age-grade sequence of education. It reinforces deficit
perspectives and constructs the “dis-synchronous learner” (Walton, 2018b, p. 55), who requires more time to achieve predetermined learning outcomes.
Crucially, the emphasis on achieving ‘bare minimum’ or ‘basic’ grade level outcomes renders “out of age” children a particular challenge to the collective vision of inclusion. Enacting inclusion as taking everyone together and leaving no one behind rests on the idea of equality as sameness, creating deviations from the norm (Baker, 2002; Campbell, 2012; Gillies, 2008).
5.1.2.1 Inclusion as enforced participation.
Under the broader theme of inclusion as taking everyone along, inclusion is practiced and understood as the achievement of uniform standards, synchronized attention, collective pace, and enforced participation for all. However, this notion of a collective learning journey is not limited to uniformity. Inclusion within this theme is also about togetherness and consensus building. As a form of togetherness, inclusion is viewed as a means to ensure belonging, that is, “every student in the class should feel included.” As a feeling, inclusion is the opposite of being left out and excluded. At the same time, inclusion is about doing things together, “in a common way”
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and “with love.” The behavioral aspects of this include creating platforms for student voice and opinion in the classroom, teachers sharing ideas, celebrating festivals of different religions, praying together, involving parents in the classroom decision-making, and dissipating cliques and favoritism amongst teachers and students. As Rizwana (Ahmedabad) elaborates, “Inclusive education means that the disabled and the normal child, both are treated equally, that is we should give opportunities to both. They should participate equally in everything. This is what I understand by inclusive education.” Rizwana invokes equal treatment, equal opportunity, and equal participation as pillars of inclusive education. It is important to note that teachers are not keen to modify the terms of participation such that everyone can participate. The focus is on ensuring that “everyone gets a chance” to be involved in the classroom: they should all come up to the board to answer questions, and they should all perform the same tasks in the same way at the same time. Within the notion of equality as sameness, differential treatment is seen as discriminatory. In many ways, this is reminiscent of and tied to the idea of dhyāna as norms about attention.
5.1.2.2 Difference as a barrier to inclusion
In this way, the challenge to doing inclusion becomes individual differences, “not everyone has the same brain.” Teachers find themselves flummoxed by the fact that some children “are far ahead by the end of the year.” In addition to the challenge of dealing with children who are “out of age”, children who are “out of pace” and “out of sync” pose particular challenges to the achievement of collective attention and pace that are central to this mode of doing inclusion,
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Interviewer: I said...I was asking do you think generally inclusion is something that like, you're able to work on? You're not able to work on? Or...?
If you’re talking about with the kids, that you tell me take everyone along together, then yes, of course. But if you say that no, are all students learning then inclusion is a very wide topic. Very wide topic, there’s a lot of things that come within it. You can do inclusion in every topic.
Interviewer: Hm. Hm. What do you mean is the difference between taking everyone along and ...?
Because you know there are many children who after a while become a bit…so maybe they get left behind somewhere. Then for them there are energizers. But if I do the energizers then the naughty kids become too energized. That is also a challenge (Sadiya, Mumbai)
Energizers are activities introduced by the NGO in Mumbai to engage children in the classroom.
However, for some teachers, these activities with notions of engagement that require all children to be synchronized. That is, teachers envision a classroom wherein “all my 56 kids catch what I am saying at the same time.” Sumaira (Mumbai) explains further,
Interviewer: Hm, if a teacher is trying to make their class inclusive, what advice would you give them? Based on your experience?
Like now…there are slow learners in every class. And some whose speeds…there are very fast and they grab everything quickly. But the teacher should understand both and take them along. They should find some way for that. (Sumaira, Mumbai)
Inclusion is about finding ways to take the “very fast” and “slow learners” together, maintaining a collective classroom pace. This allows teachers to ensure that “Sab ek saath karenge, ek saath
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rakhenge” – everyone will do things together, everyone will stay together. To maintain collective attention and pace, teachers incentivize speed through behavior trackers, give revision tasks to students who finish early, and ensure that writing work is assigned at the end of class such that slower students write after class hours. Related to collective temporalities is enforced
participation: everyone must get a turn, and everyone must participate in the same way. That is,
“inclusion means everyone must get a chance.” Yet, as demonstrated before, if dissolving difference is the aim of inclusion, within this temporal orientation, including difference becomes a challenge to inclusion,
To include every child. Each and every child. Which is kind of impossible. Because not every children has their brains in the same place, that no, they must do it. So for example, I’ll tell you one thing. I did this activity to teach this concept and I’ll share a video with you of how I taught this later, you see how I taught it. But even after the activity, not all children were giving dhyāna (paying attention). (Sadiya, Mumbai)
For Sadiya, including each and every child is impossible because of the impossibility of a synchronized time-space where all students are paying attention, doing the same thing at the same time, and are in pace with the plan and the curriculum.
Thus, to take everyone along together is to dissolve difference. The desire to do away with difference is expressed in two ways – equality, that is, to demonstrate that differences do not matter, and non-discrimination, to prevent differentiation or singling out of those considered different. Yasmin highlights how these go together,
Means teaching everyone together is that poor, rich…everyone should study together. I mean all students, even those who might have some problems…some kids have different schools no ma’am? Sorry what do you call it…disability…some students are there who
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might be…yes, they are different schools. But this should not happen. We must have everyone together…poor, rich, disability students must be taught together. We should not identify that these students are this and you will not be able to learn….(Yasmin,
Ahmedabad)
Teaching everyone together involves teaching students together across lines of difference, here class and disability, and not identifying difference. Identifying difference is viewed as a form of discrimination, singling out, and as a way in which expectations might be lowered. Dissolving difference involves “dealing with all students in the same way” and “no one is flawed.” Further, dissolving difference, especially disability as difference, involves considering disabled children as “normal”, “they should not feel that they are different from others, they are like everyone else.” Teachers consider it their responsibility to teach this form of inclusion to the students, to prevent bullying, and to ensure children form friendships across lines of difference. Partiality or favoritism is considered particularly problematic. Further, teachers attempt to dissolve individual differences through group work, such that “weak students” can learn from their high-achieving peers.
As discussed in the previous chapter, difference is constructed in time and pace. Within this orientation to the dilemma of difference, difference is viewed as a site of potential
discrimination and stigmatization (Artiles, 1998). Paradoxically, in attempting to enact inclusion by dissolving difference, the futility of these attempts is highlighted. Teachers recognize the paradox of curriculum times, enacting inclusion in another vein.