Spirit in Action

Transforming the World Through Inclusive Education

It's almost trite to say that we can transform the world through education of our children, but Mara Sapon-Shevin does it for real. In her book Widening the Circle: The Power of Inclusive Classrooms, Mara lays it all out, including the real-life evidence of how we can foster a better world for all in how we teach our kids. Be ready to find new vistas in thought beyond the traditional paradigm(s).

Duration:: 55m
Broadcast on:: 06 Apr 2014
Audio Format:: other

[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeat. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ If you go to the Nordenspiritradio.org site, you'll see that what we're trying to do with these programs is to bring you inspirational voices that promote world healing, and that is exactly what Maris Pone-Cheven is and does. It's often said that children are our hope for a better future, and that is where Maris concentrates her work. Teaching inclusive education that, as it becomes the model for our lifelong culture, holds the promise of a much better world. We'll speak with Maris in a moment, but first I want to remind you of how these programs are able to come to you. First of all, it's through the good graces of your local community radio station, an invaluable alternative resource for this country. Remember to support them with your donations. Second, through your donations and support for Nordenspirit Radio, which you can easily do at nordenspiritradio.org. Third, support for today's program comes from Friends Journal, a monthly magazine whose mission is to communicate Quaker experience in order to connect and deepen spiritual lives online at friendsjournal.org. And now to Maris Pone-Cheven, professor of inclusive education at Syracuse University, an author of a number of books, including "Widening the Circle, The Power of Inclusive Classrooms." Maris, I'm delighted to have you here for a spirit in action. Thank you. I'm glad to be here, too. How are things going over at Syracuse University? Is it on the upswing in terms of inclusive education? Well, I think the university is very committed to inclusive education, but getting that to happen in the schools depends very much on many other things. And it's actually a tough road right now because of some of the other things that are going on nationally, and in terms of how schooling is regarded and configured, and regulations and policies that are actually making inclusive education more difficult. Maybe it'd be good to start out with your idea of what the purpose of education, of our educational system is or should be. Well, I think what we have right now are schools that rank and segregate and isolate and preserve many of the existing inequalities that we have in our country. So people often say the schools are failing, but from a more radical perspective, the schools aren't, in fact, failing. They are doing exactly what they have done for many years, which is to maintain kind of hierarchies of privilege that we have in our country. Now, what the schools originally were designed to do, or at least the origins of public education, were supposed to be to provide a common framework for children to learn and grow together and become good citizens. So the gap between those is really what needs to be addressed. I note that you have, as part of your credentials, that you're a professor of inclusive education. Is that a new title, a new subject, a new discipline? Is there a department of inclusive education at Syracuse University? No, Syracuse University has been for 20 years, the center and the origins of inclusive education, but that's simply really more of a title that I've given myself as a way of saying, "I'm not special education. I'm not general education. I am inclusive education." Historically, in this country, both in terms of how teachers are prepared and in terms of how we teach students, we've had two separate groups, regular education, special education. And we've acted as though there were two separate kinds of preparations for those teachers, and that there were actually two different kinds of kids. So you're either regular, or specialized. And inclusive education is an attempt to really disrupt that dichotomy and say, "There's many, many kinds of kids." And as I say to my students, there are either one kind of kid, or there are 30 million kinds of children, but there are not two. And so any attempts to really separate kids into regular and special means that we're doing many, many ways in which they are different, and many other ways in which they're the same. And so we need to look at children as individuals, and we also need to look at how they interact and work with one another. It was called special education when I was young, when I was going to grade school and up through high school. I think you started out working as a special education teacher in that field, didn't you? I originally worked as a special education teacher, and it was that experience that actually made me aware of some of the major problems. At the time that I started working in education about 35 years ago, already there was a talk of a concept called mainstreaming, and that was sort of described as that children who were in special education could, when they were ready to rejoin the regular classroom, be moved into that setting occasionally, gradually, and hopefully permanently at some time. But the problem with that system was, the research shows that the longer you're out of the mainstream, the less your chances are of ever rejoining it, because you become more different, more separate, your curriculum's different, your experiences are different, and you don't have the relationships with other kids. So it really becomes a sort of self-perpetuating second system that's very hard to exit from. So I would work with kids in my special education classroom, and every year they would come to me and say, "Is Michael ready to go back?" And I'd say back to what, and I'd say back to the regular classroom, and I'd want to ask who's regular classroom, how is it organized, how is it structured, who's the teacher, what's the teacher's attitudes, beliefs, understanding, experience, training, and I was sort of asked to say, "Nope, this kid can just go back to the regular classroom," as though that was a monolithic thing, that they're all the same. Therefore, since I really couldn't give that kind of an assurance, I would say, "Well, maybe I should keep them another year just to be sure." And so it really decreased the chance that he would ever go back. And so that's really the issue is, instead of having two separate systems that we try to connect, we need one system that is from the beginning inclusive. All kids are there. They may be having different kinds of instruction, different kinds of curriculum, but within the common context of being in the same school community. When my son was in grade school, I think they did what was called mainstreaming, but the way that I observed it, I would go in weekly throughout my son's grade school tenure. I would go into his classrooms. I made this arrangement with his teachers. I'd go in and I'd teach them a little French, and we'd play French games, and I'd get everyone involved. And his classrooms, there were a few kids who would have been called special education when I was a kid. They were in the classroom, and occasionally someone came and took them out for some special education around certain topics. But a couple of them were with me when I was teaching French, and I remember one cute little girl who just a sweet, great smile, and she would always say, "Bazure Mark," and it was sweet and wonderful, and it worked just fine in the way that I was working the class. Is that mainstreaming as well, or is that kind of a flip side of it? Well, we call that kind of having pull-up programs in which kids who have what are identified as special educational needs are pulled out to another setting to have services delivered. And that's not as bad as being a segregated classroom, but one of the problems with that kind of model is that when they're pulled out, what are they missing in the regular ed classroom? So a lot of times, because of the timing and the structure of it, you know, kids pulled out for reading support during social studies, so they miss social studies. Are they pulled out during music, or are they pulled out during science education? And so, again, all of that just contributes to them being kind of different and not a full member of the classroom. So instead, we talk about pushing it. In other words, if a child has, you know, needs of that are not being met by the standard curriculum, who is it that can be also in that classroom as a co-teacher, as an advisor, as someone who works with that classroom teacher to make what's happening in that classroom more inclusive of all kids. So if the teacher is doing a unit on dinosaurs, but there's somebody else saying, you know, another way you could teach that, which would help it be reachable by many more kids is if you did it this way, or I have another activity that would help you do this in a broader way. And one of the things that we have found consistently is that when modifications or, you know, adaptations or different strategies are used for a particular child, they end up really helping many, many more children, because it broadens the way that we look at the curriculum, and it broadens the way we look at, you know, what's being taught. You mentioned two different tracks. There's regular education, and then there's special education. My experience included that there's gifted education, and then there's also those with physical disabilities who've been taught in a different place instead of having someone to sign in every classroom when there's only one deaf person in the room that there's been schools for the deaf. Inclusive education is about bringing the whole diversity together in one classroom, right? Right, and gifted education is the other end of the spectrum, but also often has some of the same problems, which is primarily done as a sort of segregated set of services. And the bigger question is which kids get it and which kids don't. So typically the kids who are in gifted education are the kids who come from more privileged backgrounds to start with. So you take the kids who already have some advantages of income or family background, and you give them some of the exciting and rich experiences that the other kids don't get. And I'll give you an example of that. When my own daughter was in second grade, they had her tested without my permission, actually, and sent me a letter telling me that she was eligible for the gifted program. I went to the meeting of the parents, whose children were selected for this program, and I sat there and wanted to know, "What is it that you're going to be doing with those kids?" And they said, "Well, we're doing a special unit on birds, and they're going to be learning about birds from different cultural stories about birds. They're going to learn to draw birds. We're going to go out bird watching. We're going to study environmental pollutants that damage birds. We're going to build bird houses. We're going to be writing stories about birds." You know, it sounded just wonderful. And I said, "Well, it sounds great." And one of the kids in the regular classroom doing, they said, "Oh, they'll be doing worksheets." So my question then, and now, is show me the proof that that rich, exciting, multilevel, multi-modality, integrated, hands-on, creative curriculum about birds wouldn't have been the best curriculum for all kids, because it would have provided multiple places of entry for kids who had different skills and would have exposed them to really a broad understanding of birds, something much greater than what's going to be accomplished by worksheets. So there's a lot of problems, and with the selection mechanisms, and who gets to do what, and who gets denied that. And also, and this is relevant to inclusive education as well, that when you have segregated programming like that, you have to deal with the questions of who decides, who gets it, and how does that get explained to the kids? How do they come to understand who they are and how they connect to other kids? So I did a research study, a book called "Playing Favorites, Gifted Education and the Disruption of Community," in which I interviewed teachers in a school with a gifted program. And one of the questions I had was, "How do you explain the gifted program to the other kids?" So the kids ever say, "How come Jason gets to go blah, blah, blah?" And what do you say, and what was very depressing, was the response of one of the teachers who said, "Oh, they're very good, they don't ask." And I thought, "Isn't it amazing that we construct not asking about an inequality to be seen good, that is, we've learned not to see, not to question, not to query kind of injustice or inequality?" So that's the silencing of an understanding of how we're different. And also one of the teachers also said, "Oh, by this grade they know who's smart and who isn't." And that again sounds like we have a very narrow conception of what does it mean to be smart. You know, is it the kids who read well and that's it? And so reducing people to a single continuum of, you know, marks up here at an eight and Fred's here at a seven, Mary's here at a six and Louise is here at a two, as opposed to saying, Mark's really great at this and Mary's really good at this. And Mark's working on learning this, but Louise is really learning this, you know, to really just see things more broadly. Anytime you reduce people to a single label or a rank them on a single criteria, you're going to be in trouble. You know, I want to compliment you about one thing that you did in the book. Again, the book is "Widening the Circle, the Power of Inclusive Classrooms" by Mira Sapon Chevin. One of the things that you did in that book, Mira, that it got past some of my defenses right away, is you talked about historically what my dad grew up with, one room classrooms. My dad lived on a farm in the country. They had a one room classroom, you know, half a mile a mile from where he is. He could walk to it. So they had all the classes, all ages up to eighth grade. They're all in one classroom. And that kind of mixture of all these different abilities and people helping each other, how does that compare in your conceptualization with what an inclusive classroom looks like? Well, that's a really excellent point because in those classrooms the teacher acknowledged that she had diversity. She didn't pretend everybody was the same. She knew she had a seven-year-old just learning to read and a 14-year-old who could read well. And her goal was to meet everybody's educational needs. And she couldn't really run 14 different programs at the same time. So it was first of all, her planning took into account that she had real differences in skills and interests and abilities. And second of all, as you said, there was tremendous amount of peer interaction in peer teaching. It was sort of acknowledged, well, hey, you're good at this. Can you sit and listen to this kid read? Or can you explain this to someone else? So it was really seeing it as a shared goal for the community to help one another. I mean, some classrooms in which if a kid goes to help another kid, the teacher says don't do that, that's cheating. And another classroom that's actively encouraged and developed. And even in one school, the kid got instruction on how do you help someone learn? You don't just give them the answer, really very sophisticated teaching them to be your teachers of one another. And acknowledging that we helped one another in this room and that's what we're about here. So I think inclusion really means reframing not only how we teach people, but how we teach them about their responsibility to other learners as well. It's not just, well, I understand it and how with you, it's like I understand it. And I can also help you learn it. And there's lots of evidence that teaching others really promotes your own learning so that when you actually have to explain to somebody why something works or you know what they understand about it, then all of a sudden you start analyzing it at a much more sophisticated level. I absolutely understand that. I have people do it with folk dancing all the time. I teach folk dancing. I tell people the best way to learn a dance is if you try and teach it to someone else. All of a sudden you'll know what you know and what you don't know and what you need to add in to make it so that you know it from your center. One of the other stumbling blocks that I ran into when I was thinking about the inclusive classroom was arguments pro and con in my head about competition. Because I grew up in a system that these people are going to do well in the class. These are going to do less well and it's the competition so you can be the best. So there's a whole lot of stuff that you go through in the book, a whole lot of analysis about competition and what works and doesn't work about it. You answer the question, doesn't competition lead to better outcomes or more achievement? And in a system where we've got race to the top, isn't that the focus of the federal education programs right now? Well, that's a whole series of questions. Let me sort of take one at a time. The first question was, does competition lead to better education? And the research on competition actually says that competition is actually only effective as a motivator if three conditions are met. And if you think about the typical classroom and as I go through these, you'll say, oh, not really. The first condition is that everyone has to feel that they have an equal chance of winning. Well, in the typical classroom where the teacher says, we're going to have a math contest. Well, there's 30 kids and maybe it's going to be Lucas and maybe it's going to be Tyrone. We all know that those are the kids who are good in math. And a bunch of other kids are going, nope, not me. I have no chance. Sometimes I'll say to my students, okay, let's play first stakes that matter to you. We're going to have a race from here, the student union, which is eight blocks away. And the first person back, I'm going to give an automatic A for the class. How many of you are motivated? Three students will raise their hand. They're the kids who are the runners. And I say, how many about the rest of you? They went, no, no way. Why bother? I don't run. I have a leg that isn't that strong. Or I don't have the right shoes or whatever. And so they're not motivated. They actually literally take themselves out of the running metaphorically and figuratively here too. And then the second criteria is that people have to be able to monitor the performance of the other person. Well, if I say, everybody go home and write a haiku and I'll pick the best one, well, I have actually no idea what you're doing at your house. And so I don't really have a way to push myself more or, you know, make myself do better. If you're in a foot race mark, I can see exactly where you are. And I might be able to put on the steam a little bit to try a little harder. But that's usually not in any classrooms either. It's really very individualistic and then it's evaluated later. And then the third, which sounds almost counterintuitive, is that in order for competition to be motivating, the outcomes of the competition have to be not that important to the players. Because let's think of what happens in sports where the outcomes to the players are very, very big. Whether it's money or league championship or, you know, the World Series or the Super Bowl, what we have is rampant cheating, doping, you know, Lance Armstrong, etc. So when the stakes are high, people are not as focused on doing well. They're focused on winning. That becomes the rubric is, will I win? And so it actually diminishes not just creativity, but certain kinds of performance. So when the teacher announces the first kid to read 10 books in here gets surprised, you are really going to read Harry Potter, but it's 364 pages long. And it's going to take you a while. So instead you'll read something short or something really easy. And that way you'll get to 10 quicker. So it doesn't encourage you to stretch. I always wanted to read Sherlock Holmes, but I know it's kind of hard. But, you know, I'd really like to try to work with that language and it'll be different for me. It said, no, you're not going to do that. So creativity and risk taking, which we know are essential skills for real education are minimized by competition. And as you mentioned, race to the top, we should know that there's a problem with a federal policy that says race to the top. Now what do we know about race? One person wins. A lot of people lose. So to put schools in competition with one another so that one school is going to get the funding and the resources and the rest aren't. How do we think that gels with every child is going to get a good education? I mean, there's something bogus right there in the title. It's not called success for all. It's called race to the top. So that just perpetuates the idea that some kids are going to get the good stuff and most kids are not. I'm imagining also that competition can be counterproductive because of shame and pride that result from competition. For instance, when I was in school, I did well. I think that the educational system worked well for me. But one of the things that's true about me is I'm almost completely shameless. But that means that I just don't feel ashamed if I get a good grade or bad grade. I like getting good grades. It's what worked easy for me. There was something that happened when my son was in school. I picked him up after school when he was in second grade and he told me something. He said, "Dad, you know, we went running today. And in my class, I think I may have been the slowest runner. There may have been one girl slower than me. But no, I think I maybe was the slowest runner." And he said it without shame, which I thought was great. He was just noting one of the things that was happening for him. Does the inclusive classroom lead to some kind of reduction in shame or strutting or whatever the features of the competitive classroom include? I think it's really what it does is broaden our understanding of who we are. So your song was able to be fairly calm about the fact that he's not a fast runner because I'm guessing there were things that he was good at and things that he felt proud of himself for doing. So I could say to you, "I'm not really great on ice skates. My ankles buckle and my knees go in and I have trouble losing my balance, but I don't say and therefore I'm a worthless human being." I say, "I'm not very good at ice skating. Now, there's some things I'm great at. I'm an amazing quilter. I think beautiful quilts and I'm a good singer and things like that. So I have a way of looking at myself that's really multi-dimensional and therefore I'm not defined by any one particular aspect of my skill and my behavior." So in an inclusive classroom that's not a teacher that's really thinking well about this stuff, every kid begins to see that people are multifaceted. We'll say he has a lot of trouble reading, but you know when people are in a fight he is the best person to figure out how to help people be friends again because he really understands that. Are that kid such a good listener? Or that kid really can make up songs. It's amazing. Are that kid draws? So instead of having one hierarchy of here, the smart kids in our class and here are the dumb kids in our class, we understand that people are complex. So I would like to think if we thought of the outcome we wanted, it would be that if some adult went into the classroom and said to the kids, "Who's the smartest kid in this class?" the kids would say, "What?" They would automatically say, "Carlos is the smartest and Michelle is the stupidest because they would understand that everybody is multi-dimensional." And I've seen this happen in inclusive classrooms in ways that are really, really heartwarming. A teacher came to me at a conference and said she was a first grade teacher and she had a very inclusive classroom with kids with disabilities and really had just, she said it's really changed my teaching and how the kids, she said like never had such a community before to cover the way they help each other and interact and understand each other. And she said in one of her first graders, typical child was going down a hallway with his book from the library and this big kid walked by, saw his book and said to him, "Oh, that's a beauty book." And the kid looked up and said, "Guess, we all read different books." So she said, "That came directly from understanding that people are different." So, and that connects to your thing of shame instead of like, "Oh, I'm ashamed I'm reading this book. You know, you're reading War and Peace and I'm reading Frog and Toad." It's like, you know, we read different books and we're all learning and we're all growing and it's different things that we're working on and different things we need to help with and different things we need support with and we're all human beings. We want to learn, we want to grow, we want to be supported, we want people to know us and appreciate us and that's what we share in common. But within that there's, you know, loads of differences and those differences are interesting. We're curious about one of those differences, not, you know, judgmental or naming or blaming about how people are different. But one of my goals when you talked about a goal of school is what would it be like if we produced a generation of kids who in the face of something they'd never seen before didn't understand, would say, "Never seen food like that. What is that?" Or, "How does that taste?" Or, "Why do you wear the thing on your head? You know, what's the meaning of that for you?" Instead of like, "Oh, she's got something on her head." Or, "Oh, that food is disgusting. What would be like if we were just not fearful or dismissive of people's differences?" But just like, "Wow, cool. I've never seen that. Never heard of that. Never heard that language before. What is that?" Teach me to say something in that language. Where do they speak that? Show me where your country is from. What would it be like if that's how we responded to people's differences? And I want to follow up on that in a moment, Mera. But first I want to remind our listeners that this is Spirit In Action. And I'm Mark Helpsmeet, host of this Northern Spirit Radio Production on the web at northernspiritradio.org, where you can listen to and download almost eight years of programs, find further info and links to our guests, and post comments on the programs. Please do this. Make our conversation two-way, and let other listeners know what you think. We've got a donate button and an address where you can send donations, which is so very important to help us keep this going. It's also crucial that you support your local community radio station, a vital alternative to mainstream mush and rehash. Support for this week's program comes from Friends Journal, a monthly magazine whose mission is to communicate quicker experience in order to connect and deepen spiritual lives online at friendsjournal.org. Mera Sipone-Shevin is our Spirit in Action guest today. Her site is Mera Sipone-Shevin.org. Or just look for the link on northernspiritradio.org. She's a professor at Syracuse University and author of a number of books, including Widening the Circle, The Power of Inclusive Classrooms. Also, because we can change the world, and one of her latest educational courage, resisting the ambush of public education. A moment ago, Mera, you were talking about how classrooms could be different, and that's closely tied with why I brought you here today for Spirit in Action. Do you think that if inclusive classrooms were common in the USA, that it would change our culture, you know, like the selfish, me, me, attitudes of greedy bankers and corporations or individuals, for that matter, and the narrow view of God bless America, implying us and no one else outside our borders. Obviously, these are caricatures and stereotypes, but there's a validity in them, at least to some degree. Do you see inclusive education as changing those kinds of attitudes? Well, I guess all I can say is yes, yes, yes, exclamation point. Let me kind of answer it in terms of the book called Because You Can Change the World. That's a very big image, you know, of changing the world. It's not just about changing classrooms, and I can tell a funny story about the name of that book when I was trying to decide what to name that book, and it's a book of practical strategies for the classroom for teaching, about difference, resolving conflict, teaching cooperatively, broadening children's understanding of social justice, through children's literature, and children's music and activities. And I struggled with a title for the book. I kept coming up with ones that, you know, I or other people would reject. I was like, "How about many voices? One song?" And people said, "Sell like a music book." And then I said, "How about, you know, together we're better." And somebody said, "It sounds like a commercial." And I said, "How about, you know, many stones can build an art, it should build something like its architecture." And then there was even one that's very metaphorical that I love that says, "The ocean refuses, no rivers." I just loved that images, and people said, "I don't get it." And finally, I came up with, "Because We Can Change the World." And I called up the editor of the first edition, and I said, "I think I've got a title that I really like." And he said, "What is it?" And I said, "Because we can change the world." And he said, "Well, I'll talk to the editorial board." And came back to me about a week later and said, "We don't really understand the title." And I was like, "What do you mean?" He said, "Well, I thought this was a book about schools." And I said, "Well, it is." He said, "Well, shouldn't it be called because we can change the schools?" And in that moment, there was that failure to understand that although having a good year in kindergarten is definitely better than having a terrible year in kindergarten and having a great year in sixth grade, which kids are nice to each other and said the mean to one another is certainly an improvement. The reason we're doing it is not just to have a good year in kindergarten or a good year in sixth grade. It's because we understand that we're shaping human beings, and we want them to be different, and that we want them to move out into the world as different kinds of people, people who can understand other perspectives, people who can respond to different positively, people who can help and support people, people who can let themselves be helped and supported by others. So, yeah, to me, it's a much bigger vision. It is about changing the education we give kids so that they can be different in the world. And I just want to go back for a second to the idea of competition. Many of us grew up with the game of musical chairs, which kind of people walk around the chairs, the music. They're not enough chairs. The music stops. Everybody has to sit out of the chair for the group to win. The person who didn't get a chair is out. You know that game. Are you bad? I played it a lot. Yeah, we all played it a lot. And ultimately, there's one winner and the other kids have lost the game. And I always say to people, first of all, who made the rules of that game? Who created that scarcity situation? Well, the leader did. And what happens in that game if you and I both try to sit on the same chair together, the leader will probably say, "No, which one of you is here first?" And then the other person has to leave. And then what happens in that game to the kid who is slow or short or smaller than speaking English didn't even understand you were playing? That kid's out first. So what's the message about difference? Well, if you're different, you lose. And the responsibility of the rest of the group towards, you know, this kid who didn't speak English or didn't understand the game, nothing, you know, just to get them out. And in fact, kind of in some ways, oh, that said, he was easy to get out. He's not even from here. He didn't know the rules. So that's our response. The difference is that we use people's differences against them. And the contrast of that is a game called cooperative musical chairs. And the way that looks is there's, you know, eight children and seven chairs that starts out looking the same. But the rules are different. The rule says everybody walks around the chairs to the music. And when the music stops, everybody has to be on a chair for the group to win. So all of a sudden we have to figure out, well, how do we get eight children on seven chairs? Well, we're going to have to do laps. We're going to have to balance between two chairs. And we're going to have to figure this out. And then you stay to the group. Okay, you did great. Now we're taking away another chair. And then you have eight children on six chairs and then eight on five. And the interactions are what matters. You hear a kid saying, Sammy, Sammy, come over here. No, no, no, no. Nicole, sit here. Tyrone, put your leg here. No, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Carla. Carla, wait a minute. Put her here. And you hold on. You can hold on to the back of this chair. So all the problem solving, all the creativity, all the collaboration is in the service of how can we all make this work for all of us. And that's a very, very different model than sort of who won and who lost and how can I push you out of the group. When you think of the kids who've had the experience only of competitive musical chairs, it's been said that if the only tool you have is a hammer, then you see every problem as a nail. So if all you understand is competition and you have a real life situation, three people get on the bus and there's two seats, then it becomes, okay, I got to get one of the seats. That's the solution. Two people are going to get seats. One person is going to not get a seat. If your experience is around collaborative problems solving and cooperation, you might say like, well, you know, I can switch over here and you can sit here too. Or how about if I hold your backpack? If you stand and I hold your backpack. Or do you need to sit down? Actually, I have a bad back. Oh, that's fine. I'm fine to stand. So there's communication, there's collaboration, there's problem solving. And so there are many solutions to two seats and three people that aren't two people get it and one person won't. And so we are actually teaching more critical thinking and problem solving through a cooperative inclusive model than we are to competition. As I said before, Mera, in this book, sometimes I was marshalling my arguments against what you were talking about. And you seem to be reading my mind. You must be really good at that. When you were talking about inclusive classrooms, you talked about the concept of least common denominator, that kind of thinking. I'm not sure you and I are completely on the same page about it, but I think we may be. And so I just want to check that with you. The book starts with a metaphor, an example about inviting a diverse group of people to a meal and thinking about the various needs to be addressed in the preparation for that meal. And some people right away will go to least common denominator thinking, you know, what can I put on the table that no one will object to? What will be acceptable to everyone? So you can't have any pork if there's any Jews or Muslims or vegetarians and no wheat if someone is gluten intolerant and so on. So you can get down to something that nobody objects to the least common denominator, but nobody is excited about. That's a great extension. And the other way of looking about it is what incredible rich feast could I prepare that would make sure that everybody has something to eat? Right. So my approach to it is usually how can we do a potluck that will meet everybody's needs, but it's got a rich diversity of things that some people want, some people won't want. How does inclusive education compare to either least common denominator thinking or the potluck approach? Well, I think a potluck is fine, and then I would extend your metaphor by saying a potluck in which nobody is made to feel bad, if they can't eat everything, and also a potluck in which every food is carefully labeled, so everybody is clear on what they're getting. And I also think that you can do a combination of saying it's a potluck, but it's a vegetarian potluck, you know. So we have a much greater chance that the vegetarians and the Jews and the Muslims who have particular dietary habits will have something to eat. So we can be thoughtful, and we can learn it was coming to the party, and we can think about what can we prepare, and we'll have the salad, but we'll put the dressing on the side, and that way people who can't have that, we can just be thoughtful in those ways. One of the stories I always tell is when my older daughter was almost three, I suddenly, and I was eight months pregnant with child number two, I suddenly lost my daycare provider, and halfway through the semester, and like six weeks left, and so I kind of desperately needed to go find a setting for her, and I decided to look at daycare centers. I went to one, and I liked very, very much, and at the end of visiting the center, I said to the director, well, you know, there's something I haven't mentioned before, you know, we're vegetarian, and I was vegetarian, and the director said, oh my god, we've never had a child like that before, and that would mean different food, and explaining it to the teachers, and the kids said, I'm not sure we can do that. And I laugh at that story now, because I've worked with schools where a child has been fully included, who's tube-fed, you know, and so vegetarian seemed to me like, it was going to be so hard, but I kept thinking, well, if that's how uncomfortable the director is, what is that director going to put out to the teachers? Oh my god, we're getting a child, and she's vegetarian, you know, so it was just going to be the sense that she's weird and strange, and so I thought this is not going to work. And then I went to the last place on the list, and that always makes me nervous, because if that one doesn't work, you're kind of in trouble, and again, it was a very nice place, and I was nervous now to raise that final issue, and I said, and there's something I have to tell you that I was vegetarian, and the director said, oh, that's fine, we have Muhammad, he doesn't eat pork, and we have Rachel, she keeps kosher, and we have Justin, he's lactose-and-tolerant, and we just make that part of the teaching curriculum for the children, and I was sort of like scanning it with my mouth open, because it was such a different response, and it was like, oh, I mean, when I was three, I didn't know about multiple dietary habits, and I didn't know about food allergies and things like that, but these kids were not just accepting, they were even smart, you know, they understood it, and they'd say things like, Justin, you're rich in dairy products, but you could probably, you know, dip your carrot sticks in the peanut butter instead, or things like that, and they would think about inclusive snacks, you know, what snack can we make that everybody can eat, and there were conversations about that, and it wasn't done secretly, like, don't tell anybody, I'll just give you a separate cookie, it was like understanding what was going on, and there was a child in the class who was diabetic, and the kids knew that, and they said, oh, she can eat sugar, so that's why she eats special cookies, and I'll have sugar, you know, it wasn't like, well, having diabetes is just a terrible thing, and we can't talk about it, and we'll sneak you the cookie so nobody knows, it was like, oh, you know, that's some people are, and they were relaxed about it, so I think, again, it goes back to how we talk about differences, how we think about differences, how we teach people, that this may feel awkward or strange at first, but, you know, you'll get used to it. There are some differences, though, that seem to butt heads with one another, and I'm interested on how inclusive education deals with those, so one example that I think I've seen in operation was what books you include in the class, and some books, you know, they'll have two men or two women as parents together, that is to say gay or lesbian parents together, and some people are horrified by that because what a school is supposed to do is teach good moral fiber, which means that being gay or lesbian is the devil's work or something like that, so you try and put those kids and those parents of those kids influencing the same classroom, how does inclusive education mediate between competing ideas or competing needs demands on what can or can't be included? Well, I mean, I think that's a great question. I would say that the role of education is to prepare kids for a diverse society, and there happened to be people in our society who are gay and lesbian, and there are gay and lesbian families in their African-American families, and they're people who are Muslims, you know, and there's people with disabilities, and I would say that as a responsible teacher, I want to make sure kids understand these issues. I'm not promoting homosexuality by reading a book about family with two moms, but I am saying this is one way to be a family. Families are about loving each other and taking care of each other, and just like you lived just with your grandpa, and you have two moms because your parents divorced and you've got a mom and a stepmom, you know, there's lots of different kinds of families, so I think schools need to be really clear that their first job is to make kids feel safe and comfortable and accepted in the school, and there is a lot of diversity out there. We would never say, you know, I don't believe in interracial marriage, so I have a child in my class who has a black mom, and a white father, and I will never include a book on multiracial families because I don't approve of it. We would say kind of get over yourself really is what we would say, and so I think this is another issue, and if you're somebody who feels so strongly about these issues, perhaps you want to put your kid in a religious education setting where you have that kind of control over the discourse, but in terms of public education, you know, it's our job to make all kids feel okay in the classroom about who they are and who their families are, and to help them also be prepared as global citizens. You know, we would think ourselves remiss if we sent a kid out there who couldn't read. Well, I think we also remiss if we send a kid out there who doesn't know that there's other languages besides English and other families structures besides their own, and I want a kid to know about all these things if they're going to function in the global society. You've gotten an awful lot of good answers to so many of these questions in widening the circle mirror, but there's one thing that I'm still not quite sure I've ever seen or I can't quite calculate what the effect would be. It seems to me that to do a good job of being an inclusive teacher, you can't just have your curriculum written down and just repeat it next year. It takes a lot of imagination. It takes a lot of interaction with the students there. Doesn't it require a whole lot of work? Isn't it incredibly demanding on teachers to do this? Well, it is demanding on teachers to do this, but it's the kind of work that they need to be doing in any case. You know, they need to be thinking about the curriculum and their and their pedagogy and school climate and how kids treat one another, and these are all things. And I do have to acknowledge again because I don't want people to be sitting out there and saying, but wait a minute, schools are under attack right now because the truth is they are. There's really kind of a culture war going on between people who envision multicultural inclusive schools and those who are really supportive of the corporate globalization takeover of schools in high stakes testing, which is really pushing us away from being one community and away from people really learning about one another and pushing us farther and farther into the haves and the have-nots. You know, we have charter schools. Now we have a lot of private programs, and so we really see in the destruction in many places of public education. And public education and inclusive education are very closely related because many private schools can make choices about who they take and who they don't take. And that really limits kids' ability to know and work with a whole different range of people. And so this is problematic. And I'm very supportive of teachers who are trying to resist the new book with Nancy Schneiderman, my colleague at State University of New York at New Pulse, is all about teachers who are actively resisting in parents who are resisting in administrators who are resisting in high stakes testing and corporate control of education and trying to make sure that they are allowed to teach in ways that kids need and that are responsive to the social emotional issues, going on in classrooms, and that they have control over the decisions that they make in classrooms because they are the ones who are with the kids day to day and have the best information about what's needed. And it's very supportive of people who are actively resisting some of the current regimes of control that are really problematic. So, Mera, do you have examples that prove that this can really work where it's being put into effect? And I want to let you know what your answer should be. You probably want to say Wisconsin, because that's where I live, that we're leading the pack in terms of good, inclusive education. But give me the real answer, okay? There are pockets of it everywhere. And, you know, you can't say this school has it together and, you know, never has a problem. There are schools that do it very well. It usually happens in places where there's strong leadership from the top who says this is who we are and this is what we believe in, you know, strong mission statement regarding, you know, inclusion and diversity. And then there are schools that are really still struggling with it. I think that the common denominator of schools that are doing well are the ones that treat this as an ongoing issue they have to keep working on. It's not like, you know, show me a family, a couple that has a good marriage. They worked on it, they have it, and now they don't have to do any work on it. You know, we'd laugh and we'd say, oh, probably in good relationships, people keep working at it and they have problems that come up and then they sort of say, oh, maybe we need to talk about this and figure this out or is this working or is that not working? And so I do work with schools that have, you know, constantly re-looking at what's going on and all kids being included. And are they included not just in academics but in non-academic areas and what do we need to do and what do we need to shift and really just keeping working on it. You know, it's not something like we've achieved it and now we can rest on our walls for the next 20 years. But if someone really wanted to see this in place somewhere, could you say, well, if you go look at that school, could you give me some specifics? I kind of hesitate to say that because it makes that school become a con and then somebody says, oh, I went there and I thought something that wasn't great. Too much competition is what you're saying. No, I think it, you know, it makes it sound like it's something that people have. Yes, there's the Hern School in Boston and yes, there are schools, you know, in my own district. There are schools, you know, in lots of places and, you know, people can go to the inclusive schools network and look for examples and, you know, there are organizations like TASH, which is committed to, you know, inclusive education and people present there all the time about their schools and what they're doing. And, you know, I take that they can start asking questions about, is this school inclusive? And certainly that's something that parents with kids with disabilities ask about all the time, where can I send my kid? Where will my child be accepted and validated and included fully in the life of the school? So I think you need to look around and if somebody isn't there, then people should be asking, "Oh, we're on the rest of the kids." Yeah, well, Mira, I know the clock's winding down. There's just one or two questions more. I want to ask you, one of them is, since I'm taking the big picture, spirit and action, we try and find people who are doing something good in the world and find out what motivates them, what supports them in that work. And so my question for you, are there particular religious or spiritual motivations or communities that are behind your work and including your peace and justice work too? I would say, you know, absolutely. I am a child who, from the time I was about eight years old, people would say, "What do you want to do when you grow up?" And I would say, "I want to make the world a better place now." I'm sure that sounded somewhat funny coming from an eight-year-old, but here I am 50 years later, and I still say the same answer. I was raised in a strong Jewish tradition with a principle of what's called "kikkuno-long," which means the repair of the world. And it says that one of our jobs as humans on this earth is to make the world healed in whatever way we can. And I take that very seriously, whether it's at an interpersonal level or between groups or as a whole society, fill an obligation to try to leave the world better than I found it. And I also come from other traditions, Buddhist, pagan, others that are very much about building community and figuring out how people can interact with one another, and what does it mean to have safety in a community, and what does it mean to support one another. And those are the things that really guide me. What's the world I want to live in? How do I want people to treat me when I'm doing well? How do I want people to treat me when we're struggling? And what do we have to do now to prepare kids to create that kind of a world? And I was lucky enough to grow up going to lots of different schools all over the world, and by the time I came back to the United States at eight years old, I'd already lived in three countries, and with all my weight and my fourth language, I already knew that there were lots of ways to be in the world, and it was so exciting and so interesting. And that really did shape some of who I am. I just thought, wow, I want to know about everything and everybody and connect with people. And that's certainly part of what drives my work, is that I want peace. I want people to understand one another, to support one another. I do a lot of work on peace at Israel Palestine, and trying to bridge horrific gaps between Jews and Palestinians, and figuring out how we can learn to live in peace, but not just peace, but peace with justice, that we have to figure out how to share the land, and share the resources, and that peace isn't something that somebody can impose. It's something that really has to come from the conditions of how we live with one another. And so, for me, it's all part of the same thing, you know, peace in the world, peace in the classroom, peace in our hearts, there's all a connection for all of those. It's impressive work that you do. And the fact that you're working with our kids, the fact that you're preparing education, which I really do think that can be part of the Tikkun alam, the healing of the world, I think that's so wonderful, Mera. Again, we've been speaking with Mera Sapon Shevin, professor of Inclusive Education, Syracuse University. She's a faculty member in disability studies, women's studies, programs in the analysis and resolution of conflicts. Her most recent book is Educational Courage, which we are speaking mainly today about widening the circle, the power of inclusive classrooms, and there's also because we can change to the world. And I want to thank you so much, Mera, for being part of the love and that does change the world. And thanks for joining me for Spirit in Action. So you're very welcome. It's been great talking to you. Our thanks to our guests, Mera Sapon Shevin, and also to the folks who helped bring this program to you today. Among them, production assistant, Cassie Cassius, those who donate to Nerd and Spirit Radio, and to support from Friends Journal, a monthly magazine whose mission is to communicate Quaker experience in order to connect and deepen spiritual lives online at friendsjournal.org. We'll close out Spirit in Action today with a song on the educational theme, a song written by Mark Gunnery, but known for its performance by a number of folk musicians, including This From A Live Show by Pete Seeger. What did you learn in school? Pete Seeger. What did you learn in school today? Dear little boy of mine. What did you learn in school today? Dear little boy of mine. I learned that Washington never told a lie. I learned that soldiers seldom die. I learned that everybody's free, and that's what the teacher said to me. That's what I learned in school today. That's what I learned in school. What did you learn in school today? Dear little boy of mine. What did you learn in school today? Dear little boy of mine. I learned that policemen are my friends. I learned that justice never ends. I learned that murderers die for the crimes, even if we make a mistake some time, and that's what I learned in school today. That's what I learned in school. What did you learn in school today? Dear little boy of mine. What did you learn in school today? Dear little boy of mine. I learned our government must be strong. It's always right and never wrong. Our leaders are the finest men, and we elect them again and again. That's what I learned in school today. That's what I learned in school today. What did you learn in school today? Dear little boy of mine. What did you learn in school today? Dear little boy of mine. I learned that war is not so bad. I learned about the great ones we have had. We fought in Germany and in France, and someday I might get my chance. It's what I learned in school today. That's what I learned in school. The theme music for this program is "Turning of the World" performed by Sarah Thompson. This spirit in action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is spirit in action. With every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. And our lives will feel the echo of our healing.