Destroying the Trojan Horse of ‘Lazy Inclusivism’: Collective Wit of Chinese Children, Parents, and Educators in the Context of ‘Learning in Regular Classroom’

ABSTRACT

Since the publication of the Salamanca Statement, inclusive education has gained prominence at a global range. In China, this has seen the implementation of ‘Learning in Regular Classroom’ – a nationwide program initiated by the Chinese government in the 1980s to make regular schools accessible to children with disabilities. The developments of ‘Learning in Regular Classroom’ over a nearly four-decade time are laudable. Yet structural problems abound and persist. One has been ‘lazy inclusivism’ that insidiously conceals the unequal social order by strategically labelling certain populations as disadvantaged and diligently providing support to them through a mainstream framework that de facto silences their epistemologies and practices. ‘Lazy inclusivism’ sustains an astute system that tailors a cloak of laborious business to shroud its own laziness in achieving inclusion. Such labourious business is paradoxically lazy owing to its reductionist approach to inclusion that shows little interest in deconstructing the conservative understanding of disability, which itself is constructed and sustained within current schooling. This Special Issue collects wisdom of Chinese children, parents, and educators to force ‘lazy inclusivism’ to retreat. At the core of the collective wisdom is agency and resilience, both demonstrating autonomy and power in precarious conditions.

KEYWORDS:

• Agency
• children with disabilities
• China
• inclusive education
• lazy inclusivism
• Learning in Regular Classroom
• psychology of resilience
• sociology of resilience

Acknowledgment

I thank the Editor, Robyn M. Gillies, for making this Special Issue possible. Each article in the issue received external reviews in addition to my review as Guest Editor. I therefore thank all the reviewers for their thoughtful work. I also thank Megan Watkins and Greg Noble for their work on ‘lazy multiculturalism’ that informed my discussion of ‘lazy inclusivism’.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [DE180100107].