ABSTRACT
It is not uncommon for educational movements that the inclusive education agenda has been victorious and subsequently defeated by its own success. The same can, in a sense, be said of the progressive education movement since its vocabulary is increasingly becoming a driving force in the vocabulary of concepts, such as entrepreneurial learning and human capital education, and, polemically put, since it has opened the door to the death of the teacher. That does not mean that progressive and inclusive education respectively have not caused massive advances in educational theory and practice. Inclusive education has contributed to our understanding of how discrimination and exclusion function, and are perpetuated through and in our educational theories and practices. As Julie Allan and Roger Slee showed with their insightful and, at times, very humorous exploration into the research and the researchers of inclusive education in Doing Inclusive Education Research, the community of inclusive education researchers, although they come from very different theoretical, political and organisational traditions, share an unwavering commitment to social justice and equality, which is both commendable and necessary in the present educational climate. So when I walk out a different path, it is not to move away from or undermine the theoretical, political and practical advances that the movement has achieved. Rather, it wishes to contribute to the continued fight for social justice and equality by offering a different perspective and by recollecting, or perhaps even defending, some of the pedagogical and didactical practices and concepts that risk being forgotten in the political struggle against some of the discriminating and exclusive measures of ‘traditional’ schooling. It is a call to reconsider and recover an educational perspective that has been suppressed by the political agendas that have driven the (political part of the) inclusive education movement. Also, and perhaps most important, it has been an attempt to argue that when we seek social justice and equality, we must be careful not to undermine the constitutive features of education, the very features that protect it from becoming merely reproduction and an instrument in the hands of changing political currents. Thus, it is a remembrance of the argument that education is a process which has its aims embedded in the process itself and that at heart, it is a process which strives for (collective) understanding 181and remembrance. Also, it is the space that is established in order to ensure that (all) our children may find a place in the world and begin to make their individual and unique mark on it by setting in motion new beginnings. This space must be cherished and protected.
