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The right to inclusive education: why is there so much opposition to its implementation?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2017

Gauthier de Beco
Gauthier de Beco*
Affiliation:
Lecturer in Disability Law, School of Law, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK. E-mail: g.debeco@leeds.ac.uk.
*
gauthier.debeco@gmail.com
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Abstract

Although the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) proclaims the right to inclusive education, and much attention is being given to the goal of inclusive education in debates on human rights, there are doubts as to whether this right has led to a new direction in policy-making. The under-researched question is: why is there so much opposition to the implementation of the right to inclusive education? This paper examines the question by distinguishing between both the concept and practice of inclusive education. Using a specific interdisciplinary approach in order to critically analyse a legal norm, the paper looks into the very meaning of inclusive education by utilising some central conclusions from disability studies to appraise the ideal of inclusive education, and seeks to resolve related challenges by drawing upon political philosophy to investigate pragmatic solutions to the obstacles to inclusive education. This paper claims that it is thereby possible to incorporate the element of actual achievability into such an ideal.

Type
Article
Information
International Journal of Law in Context , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , September 2018 , pp. 396 - 415
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

The author wishes to thank Luke Clements (University of Leeds), Andrew Francis (University of Leeds), Angharad Beckett (University of Leeds), Dan Goodley (University of Sheffield) and Katie Cruz (University of Bristol) for their valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper. The author also benefited from discussions on the topic at the occasion of a workshop on ‘Inclusive Education: A Rights-Based Approach to Policy Making’ that he organised on behalf of the Centre for Law and Social Justice (L&SJ) at the University of Leeds on 14 September 2016. All errors remain the sole responsibility of the author.

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