ABSTRACT
Baroness Warnock is a distinguished philosopher, but in her writings for a wider public, she rarely refers to philosophy directly. When the Warnock Report recommended that a ‘special education element’ be included in all courses of initial teacher training, it affirmed the much discussed continuum between so-called ‘special’ and ‘non-special’ needs. Warnock became concerned about the legacy of the 1978 report when her daughter, a teacher, told her about the reality of many children with autism in mainstream settings: ‘they did not flourish, they were miserable and they tended to be bullied. The abolition of slavery marked an ‘advance in moral sensibility’, as did the 1978 report’s abolition of the concept of ineducability. Moral progress is not just about the affirmation of moral truths; it is also about advances in feeling or sensibility. It can be real; moral relativism is unsustainable.
