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It seems correct to assume that no one would argue that living in constant chronic and extreme pain is, indeed, “equally valuable” to any other life. As Tom Shakespeare convincingly argues in Disabilities Rights and Wrongs, impairments are sometimes extremely unpleasant experiences that profoundly limit people's lives. However, other impairments that also limit people's lives but do not cause constant chronic and extreme pain, such as deafness, are seen by the deaf community as non-disabling by nature. According to their view, it is society that places a “disabling” burden on deaf people. See Shakespeare, T., Disabilities Rights and Wrongs (Routledge: London, 2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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In 1592, the converted Calvinist Johann I. (1550–1604) – who was impaired – made education for boys and girls compulsory in his principality of Pfalz-Zweibrücken, which was part of the Holy Roman Empire (the so-called “Old Empire” from the Middle Ages until the 19th century, followed by the German Empire 1871–1945). This was the very first time in human history in which education became legally obligatory. (See Sehling, E., Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des 16. Jahrhunderts, Band 18. Rheinland-Pfalz I [Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2006]: At 406). In time, compulsory education was introduced by many nation states, until it became a legal human right in 1948. See Universal Declaration of Human Rights, supra note 14, § 26; UN General Assembly, European Convention on Human Rights (1954), at Additional Protocol Nr. 1, § 2, 1, available at <http://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Convention_ENG.pdf> (last visited October 11, 2013); 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, supra note 15 § 13.+(last+visited+October+11,+2013);+1966+International+Covenant+on+Economic,+Social+and+Cultural+Rights,+supra+note+15+§+13.>Google Scholar

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Proponents of this conservative view are not necessarily committed to the claim that all positive rights are utopian and therefore must be avoided. In fact, the right to education itself is also a positive right that requires the state to provide a means to guarantee the education of the citizens. It would be, indeed, unconvincing to question this particular positive right.Google Scholar

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Of course, the right to inclusive education is not the same as the obligation to participate in inclusive education, but if proponents such as Katarina Tomasevsky claim that integrative and segregated education must stop, because it violates the human dignity of students with impairments, then it is necessarily the case that this option becomes the only possibility. See Tomasevsky, K., Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education (2002), available at <http://daccess-ddsny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G03/104/95/PDF/G0310495.pdf?OpenElement> (last visited September 30, 2013).+(last+visited+September+30,+2013).>Google Scholar

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An interesting point in case is the story about a comatose student who attended a regular class (see Franz, M. J., “Begegnungen mit einer Schülerin im Wachkoma,” Empirische Sonderpädagogik 1, no. 2 [2009]: 68–78). In addition, the Whole Schooling Consortium, which is a program of Wayne State University in Detroit, is an international network of schools, teachers, administrators, parents, and faculty members who are dedicated to creating inclusive schools for all children. In 2001, Michael Peterson, the director of the Whole Schooling Consortium, and Lynne Tamor published a paper, Inclusive Education – Progressive Education: What Is the Relationship?, in which they claim that even in cases where the student is lying in coma or in a PVS, one should include him or her in class. They claim: “It is possible that many disability rights activists themselves may question whether it always ‘can’ be done: They are driven simply by the conviction that it must be done. One often hears activists say that they are willing to entertain the theoretical possibility that a person who cannot be included may exist…but in their own experience they have never met such a person and in fact cannot imagine such a person. Again, they adhere to Judith Snow's powerful statement that the only requirement for inclusion is breathing…and if technological assistance is required for the breathing, that's okay too. One can, of course, derail the basic premise here by spending time and energy debating the status of people in deep comas and so-called ‘persistent vegetative states’. We argue that this debate is a red herring, and further that extending inclusive practices ‘even’ to these people may well bring about changes in individual people's status. Indeed, there is a growing body of stories of people in such states who were none the less included as much as possible in community life, and seem to have emerged from those states, even if to a limited degree, as a result.” See Tamor, L. Peterson, M., Inclusive Education – Progressive Education: What Is the Relationship? Whole Schooling Consortium (Detroit, Michigan: Wayne State University, 2001): At 4–5, footnote 3).Google Scholar

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What type of equality is adequate for inclusive education? It is reasonable to assume that equality in education must be proportional according to a particular standard. It would be unjust to adhere to arithmetical or strict equality – all people receive the same equal shares – since the starting positions for non-impaired people and impaired people are usually different. To provide the latter with the same amount of support in quantity and quality that non-impaired students receive is therefore unfair. The task, then, is to flesh out the particular standard of distribution in detail in order to show how one could guarantee each student an adequate education.Google Scholar

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In order to determine whether people with impairments do have a legal (and moral) claim to rely on group rights, this must be thoroughly discussed. However, a detailed discussion of this issue goes beyond of the scope of this article. All in all, I am skeptical about the existence of group rights in the context of human rights and hence of particular group rights for impaired people.Google Scholar

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In order to cover the costs of, for example, area-wide technologically well-equipped schools, designed to house people with different of impairment, specially trained teachers, and educational programmes of successful team teaching, and so on.Google Scholar

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