In Chapter 1, we have identified three factors connected to achieving school integration:
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law — a legal and legislative base
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Advocacy — a vision clearly articulated and effectively advanced
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Innovation — creativ educational practice that captures the vision and turns it into reality in classrooms and schools.
Each chapter in Changing Canadian Schools adresses one or more of these factors. Taken together they offer a broad perspective on the issue in question. The book’s three sections — Philosophical, Legal and Historical Overview; Parent and Self-Advocacy; and Innovations and Practical Applications — parallel the evolution of an inclusionary approach to schooling.
The first section describes the ideals and attitudes that led to a desire for inclusive education. Various contributors explain the social theory and legal action that arose as people began to work towards their ideals.
The philosophical underpinnings of education integration are part of the overall vision of rights for people who have a mental handicap. Chapter 2 explains the vision as articulated by the Canadian Association for Community Living. It explains that education which includes all students is a critical foundation for building communities in which all individuals can participate, regardless of disability. Peter Park, a founding member of People First of Canada, an advocacy organization of individuals who have been labelled mentally handicapped, sums up the situation:
I have to thank my father and mother for not putting me in a segregated school back in the ’50s when they were just starting. They said. “No, you have to go to a regular school”, and I have benefitted from it. I had regular friends, got into regular trouble, and all the things a person does when they are growing up. When you are in a segregated setting nobody else wants to talk to you, nobody wants to have anything to do with you except the people that you have daily contact with. So you don’t make friends there. You don’t know how to conduct yourself appropriately.
