Inclusive and Supportive Education Congress International Special Education Conference Inclusion: Celebrating Diversity? 1st - 4th August 2005. Glasgow, Scotland

home about the conference programme registration accommodation contact

Inclusion as the hidden curriculum of participation
and citizenship in the Arabic speaking world

J.R.A Williams
Education & ECCD Advisor, Save the Children
Middle East & North Africa
j.williams@scuk-mena.com

Freedom and Democracy!   Freedom and Democracy!   Freedom and Democracy!

Thus a mantra has been born, my daughter has made a hip hop song out of it.   Free, free free Freedom and Freedom and Freedom and Democracy.   What I would like to do today is to show how we can wrest these ideas from the mealy mouthed lips of US politicians and from the amplified gyrations of a teenager with attitude, and give them back some meaning in the context of the Middle East, and in the application of the principles of Inclusive Education.   My paper could be subtitled:   How the disabled have lead a revolution for their rights and will lead another for the rest of us:   Wheelchairs topple despots, children with learning difficulties outwit repression and corruption.   But that would be a misnomer because what I am going to suggest is that by engaging everybody in the processes of developing inclusive schools, kindergartens and other centres of learning, they become the agents for the practical application of rights inherent in the concepts of freedom, democracy, citizenship, good governance and participation.     

This paper looks at Save the Children and its partners’ recent work in the Arabic speaking world to see how   a process of bottom-up, participatory planning and development, may actually be bringing some of the elements of a 'citizenship' curriculum into schools through a process of learning by doing. The suggestion is that children involved in lowering barriers to learning and participation for themselves and others (especially those previously excluded through 'disability'), are also engaged in a hidden curriculum providing training in a form of citizenship which may challenge much of the authoritarian and repressive orthodoxy which so blights the region.

There has been recent and well publicised support for this suggestion,   particularly in the way education systems relate to the quality of governance, and how poor quality education specifically penalises the most vulnerable and marginalised citizens. The United Nations Development Programme’s Arab Human Development Report  2004 (published in   2005) is entitled “Towards Freedom in the Arab World” (UNDP 2005).   It gained notoriety, and a long delay in its final publication, because of its very frank criticisms of both governments in the region and international powers seeking influence and control over its resources.   Needless to say, the United States was prominent among those criticised, and was the most vocal in attempting to have the criticisms suppressed.   The government of Egypt, my adopted country, was similarly stung by being described as a “Black Hole State” undergoing a crisis of legitimacy.   In the context of an examination and analysis of ‘the deficit of freedom and good governance’ the report says that “education in Arab countries is essentially flawed by its poor quality.   People who have been to school often lack the cognitive skills of learning, criticism, and analysis while their creativity has not been encouraged”.   Consequently, they are unable to acquire or produce knowledge which can extend freedom and nourish good governance, and   “deprivation of the right to acquire knowledge …discriminates against the most disadvantaged”(UNDP 2005).     

Some years ago I was asked to explain why Save the Children had translated and introduced the Index for Inclusion to the Arabic speaking world of the Middle East and North Africa.   The project was, I said, a healthy combination of analysis and strategy. The analysis is very stark.   The region faces an ongoing crisis in education. Although spending a higher percentage of GDP on education than any other developing region, the quality of education in the Arabic speaking world has deteriorated continuously. Adult illiteracy rates have declined but are still very high: more than 65m adults are illiterate, almost two-thirds of them women. Between 10 and 25 million children (most children with disabilities among them), receive no schooling at all.  

In response, and throughout the region,   education reforms and successive training and retraining of teachers has had little effect on the traditions of rote learning and paper-chasing.   Initiatives lead by government, and supported by regional and international organisations and donors have consistently failed to reverse declining quality in general, or make any significant changes in what happens in the classroom.   The strategy for Save the Children had to be one which recognised that if changes were desired at the school (or KG or other centre for learning) level, then that is where our efforts should concentrate.   We would work directly with the people most effected, and by-pass the ineffective institutions of government.   We also recognised that if we were to concentrate on including all children in education and development, then we would have to address the components of 'quality' that appear so lacking in the region's schools.

Save the Children UK defines quality education as having six characteristics. It is:    relevant to children's experience, appropriate to their interests, abilities and development, participatory in engaging the child actively in learning and decision making, protective in terms of providing a safe environment for learning and development and as a haven from abuse;   flexible to allow for individual diversity and new demands, methods and ideas, and inclusive of all children regardless of background or ability.   It was a short step to realise that in addressing the quality of service offered to marginalised children, all children within the system stood to benefit.   Our mandate to work with and for children with disabilities, girls who might otherwise be drawn in to domestic labour, children deprived of hopes for the future by displacement and war, became an opportunity to directly address the ‘big issue’ of   the region: The poor and declining quality of education.   We were going to use the cause and rights of disabled and other marginalised children to foster a reform of education overall.   This would begin the process of  Arabs taking “the place they deserve in the world at the beginning of the knowledge millennium” (UNDP 2004).

The challenge for affecting any change in education is to overcome the fear of losing the security of so much invested by so many people in the existing system.   This leads to an inertia that characterises education systems worldwide.   Worthy efforts have been made, by local, regional and national governments, by United Nations agencies, by international aid donors and lenders to modernise ageing and colonial systems of curricula, assessment and methodology throughout the developing world.   While efforts to provide 'education for all' have had some successes, the quality of that education has hardly changed.   Where there are exceptions to this, quality has increased as a result of very modest and small scale initiatives, managed at the level of individual schools and centres of learning.   This 'whole school improvement' approach has the advantage of attempting change with and throughout a context.   For instance, countless millions have been spent training teachers in colleges or training facilities, from where they emerge enthused, skilled and ready for change.   But back in school they find colleagues, managers and parents unwilling and unable to change or tolerate change, and soon the expensively trained teacher lapses back into the old and   familiar.   School improvement addresses issues of training, alongside other challenges: resources; curriculum; management; assessment; gender and so on, throughout the whole school: all the teachers; all the managers, and with involvement of parents and the wider community.   Everybody changes together; inspired, informed and supported   by each other.

Save the Children's strategy then, is to work for improving quality by improving access for the most marginalised children, and to improve access by improving quality.   We are to do this by encouraging and supporting schools, kindergartens and other centres of learning to identify for themselves what can be changed and how this can be done utilising the resources available to them.   During the development of this strategy, it became obvious that the Index for Inclusion was potentially a powerful tool in realising this strategy.   For those who have not yet had the pleasure of this amazing document, I will briefly explain that the Index is a resource to support the inclusive development of schools.   It comprises several hundred questions that a school might ask of itself, related to 42 indicators of inclusion (in "participation and learning”), addressing the school's culture, policies and practices.   It proposes a process involving a cycle of analysis using the questions, planning for change based on the findings, implementing change, reviewing the process and impact and leading to a further analysis etc.   The process is managed in each school by a coordinating group, including teachers, administrators and other staff, and a 'critical friend', someone who knows the school but is not part of it.  

Over the past three years, Save the Children has been piloting the "Index for Inclusion" in schools, KGs and other centres of learning in Lebanon, Morocco, Egypt and Occupied Palestine.   In 2003, we published, in collaboration with CSIE, the Index for Inclusion for the Arabic World , and are now carrying out an evaluation of the tool with a view to producing a second edition in 2006.   One of the many changes of emphasis made in 'Arabising' the Index was the insistence that children should play a central role in all phases of the Index process.   In Lebanon, children formed the majority of co-ordinating group members in two schools, and were particularly active in taking the consultations in 'finding out about the school' to other children and parents who might otherwise have been left out.   In Palestinian refugee camps, children's committees have used the Index to question there own and their institution's attitudes to outsiders.   Adults in Morocco were more reluctant (and not sure how) to involve children, but when they eventually did they found that their work in planning school improvement became much easier, and much more effective.   For those schools using the Index in the Middle East, children are now expected to be members of   co-ordinating groups.   I have seen children involved in all aspects of developing and implementing school plans, from analysis through to evaluation.   One eleven year old girl in Kenetra, Morocco told me that “children have to participate in the development of the school”.  

While the experience of working with the Index in the region has produced some excellent results in challenging discriminatory cultures, promoting inclusive school and administrative policy changes, and improving the conditions of teaching and learning for teachers and children, there has also been a contribution to wider, and very topical debates.   These concern the problem identified most clearly in the Arab Human Development Reports of 2002 and 2003 (UNDP 2003, 2004),   which is the stagnation in the Arab world.   “What went wrong in the Arab world?” asked The Economist on June 4 th 2002.   “With barely an exception, its autocratic rulers, whether presidents or kings, give up their authority only when they die; its elections are a sick joke; half its people are treated as lesser legal and economic beings,   and more than half its young, burdened by joblessness and stifled by conservative religious tradition, are said to want to get out of the place as soon as they can”.   Well we can’t expect from TheEconomist a balanced and disinterested view, but there is truth is what they say.   The AHDR  for 2004 (UNDP 2005) identifies the structural constraints on change:   flawed state structures; political blocking of rights in order to maintain power; stifling of creativity and so on.  But it also notes how ‘global governance’, where a few powerful countries can override the will of the majority, seriously undermines the principles underlying international law and the most basic of human rights.   In other words, as in Iraq, the perceived self interest of the United States threatens directly people’s right to life and personal security, and “weakens the hope that people will be able to enjoy freedom, justice and peace”. (UNDP 2005:83).

A major barrier to ‘freedom’ is identified by the report as the ‘crisis of citizenship’.   Here the UN suggests,  ‘undemocratic regimes oblivious to the welfare of their people’   combine with tradition and tribalism to rob the citizen of initiative.   The Model Citizen for those in power does not participate in political life, does not ask questions and does not hold his rulers accountable.   And traditions of paternalism ensure that similar obedience is observed by women and children within the family.   Model Citizens are produced “as the regime wants him or her to be”.   There is opposition: civil society institutions represent the desire of Good Citizens to participate and question.   But the regimes exploit violence and oppression to ‘crush every dynamic initiative’, and they have the power, they have the armies and they have the support of world powers (sometimes in the form of foreign occupation) to ensure that the status remains quo.   (UNDP 2005:84)

The AHDR prognosis is bleak.   But within the analysis lies a hidden hope.   Isn’t participation, questioning and accountability the basis of our approach to Inclusive Education?   Aren’t we in the business of questioning whether traditions and tribalism must result in discrimination and exclusion? Aren’t we trying to replace the culture of pitying disabled people and consigning them to charity to be replaced supporting them and their families in asserting their rights?   Aren’t we saying that schooling provides a counter-balance to closed familial allegiances and exploits their role in, as Arab writer

Ilghali Ahreshu describes “improving the socio-economic cultural and educational conditions”,    by demonstrating how all can benefit from embracing diversity and difference?    As Sharon Rustemier noted at a conference on ‘Developing Inclusive Education: Supporting human rights in local mainstream schools’ in May last year, people who “have really grappled with inclusion as a concept they develop an important sense of ownership of inclusion, a new sense of responsibility for ensuring the children in their school get inclusive experiences, and an increased determination and drive to make things happen”.   School communities helping themselves improve is an example of people exercising   initiative, and ultimately, I would argue, providing practical lessons in the fundamentals of Good Citizenship.

Save the Children has for a long time been concerned with supporting children in asserting their economic, social and cultural  rights.   Recently, there has been a

recognition that political and civic rights must also be championed, and this has developed into a goal for children identified as children recognised and respected as citizens.   "Citizenship" has been introduced as a new curriculum subject in the UK over the last few years.   The content reflects a liberal democratic notion of the citizen as an informed and responsible social actor influencing governance structures in order to achieve equity and accountability. Three interrelated strands run through the England  curriculum for citizenship.  

OHT

“Strands of citizenship

Social and moral responsibility

Pupils learning, from the very beginning, self-confidence and socially and morally responsible behaviour, both in and beyond the classroom, both towards those in authority and towards each other.   

Community involvement

Pupils learning about and becoming involved helpfully in the life and concerns of their neighbourhood and communities, including community involvement and service to the community.   

Political literacy

Pupils learning about the institutions, problems and practices of our democracy and how to make themselves effective in the life of the nation locally, regionally and nationally, through knowledge skills and values - a concept wider than political knowledge alone.”        

Advisory Group on Education for Citizenship and Teaching of Democracy www.qca.org.uk/downloads/crick_report_1998.pdf

Our approach to Inclusive Education, and particularly the whole school based, grass roots methodology proposed in order to achieve it, serves to introduce children (and their teachers, their families and the school community) to just those ‘strands’ of the curriculum.   Let’s look at what one ‘cycle’ of the Index for Inclusion process entails in terms of our ‘hidden curriculum’ , and what we can expect the children who are engaged in all aspects of the process to be learning.

The first phase of the Index process involves the co-ordinating group ‘getting started with the Index’.   This means that they collaborate in  a series of workshop style exercises designed to help them become familiar with the Index, enabling them to lead the rest of the school community in the next phase of ‘finding out about the school’.   Typically we have a co-ordinating group made up of a couple of teachers, a couple of parents, one or two other school workers, several children and the ‘critical friend’.   The dynamics of such a group are fascinating.   The teachers are bound at first to take the initiative, it is often the case that apart from the pupils they are the only fully literate members of the group.   They must understand the activities and be able to interpret the indicators and questions not only for themselves, but also for (typically) 11 years old children, uneducated parents and ancillary workers.   Unlike learning in the traditional classroom, this is a co-operative effort.   All the group must have a sufficient grasp of the material for the activity to move on.   The material is clear but many of the concepts are quite new for everybody.   Teachers must lead the activities, but they will also find that the children and other adult’s ‘guesses are as good as anybody’s’ when it comes to understanding the concepts. An inter-dependence is established which leads directly to the shouldering of   social responsibilities by all parties concerned, and a re-definition of relationships with each other and those in authority.   At the same time, children begin to have an insight into the potential for their involvement in the ‘life and concerns’ of their school an develop the self confidence to take on responsibilities accordingly.

‘Finding out about the school’ engages the whole school community in the Index process.   Here most directly the ‘strands of citizenship’ come into play.   What better example of children’s self-confidence can there be than the children of Beirut conducting class meetings at playtime, taking questionnaires to the homes of illiterate parents in order to help them answer the questions and calling teachers to meetings of the co-ordinating group when they felt it was being unnecessarily delayed?   Social and moral responsibility is enacted through class meetings in Morocco where the children define and discuss the situation of children excluded from school and decide that it is their duty to advocate for the rights of disabled children to attend.   Children in upper-Egypt decide that ‘beating is only for animals’ and begin to question tradition and culture which sees the administration of physical punishment as an obligation on parents and teachers.   Finding out about the school is an authentic, purposeful and direct exercise in   ‘ becoming involved helpfully in the life and concerns of their neighbourhood and communities’ and ‘learning about the institutions, problems and practices’ of their situation.

Similarly, the next phase of the Index process draws on participant’s social and moral responsibilities as they produce an inclusive school development plan.   The team and their informants are faced with the practicalities of (within the context of the school) community involvement and action, and the constraints of institutions, policies, practices and cultures on effective action.  Learning more about the current political realities continues through into the next phase which involves implementing the plan’s priorities.   Children learn how their optimistic attitude of “why not” can overcome adult reluctance to change, they learn that they are capable of making a difference to their own and others’ situation.   Most importantly they begin to see change and progress in action as a result of their efforts. This is captured in the final phase of the cycle which evaluates developments and reviews the work with the Index.   Children, and their previously disempowered adult colleagues, take responsibility for the way they have worked, the changes they have affected and the outcomes of their actions.   The wider implications of this are clear to the children.   As one twelve year old in Morocco said after a year of working with the Index:   “School promotes ability of children to be more active and to fight poverty”.

As we have seen, in the Arabic world, these notions are seen as a direct threat to the established power structures.   While 'lip-service' may be paid to decentralisation and reform, every effort is made to control any dilution of power and influence.   The ‘strands’ of citizenship represent, in their advocacy of self-confidence, participation and political awareness, a threat to the Model Citizen, the ‘unquestioning creature’ that regimes want to cultivate.   The principles of Inclusive Education emerged out of the struggle of disabled people for their human rights.   It is a result of their struggle that we can offer some hope for in the Arabic speaking peoples to be able to throw off the oppression that has so cruelly distorted their development.    I hope this talk has served its purpose in revealing the potential of a hidden curriculum in bringing.

You may have noticed that I have not touched explicitly on the Democracy part of my daughter’s rap.   I am reminded of a joke told by an Egyptian colleague about a demonstration in Syria.     “Freedom, freedom, freedom,” bellowed the crowd.   “Freedom, freedom, freedom,” (and with a quick look around for government agents and in a very small voice) ‘ and democracy’.   But there is a serious point here.   What I think I have been describing in this talk has been democracy.   Not the party political point scoring we saw last April, nor the placing of Xs that followed on May 5 th, but rather an exercise where the people actually gave voice to their concerns and the problems of others, planned and did something about them.  I described this as a talk about the hidden curriculum of citizenship and participation.   I believe that it is the participation of people in the affairs that effect their lives which is the measure of democracy.    It is this, and the acceptance of models other than those of the West, that will best serve the needs of the Arabic world as it emerges from too long in the shadow of despotism and despair.

home . about the conference . programme . registration . accommodation . contact