Camphill Special School is celebrating it’s 50th anniversary this year and they gathered former board members together, myself included, last weekend to reflect on the recipe for success of the school. Greg Ambrose, president of Camphill’s Board of Directors, eloquently summed up that “a great dish is better than the sum of it’s ingredients.” And in the same way for a school, “if you bring together the best ingredients, (teachers, special children, nature, music), and stir them with love” then you will be successful. No matter how hard I try to capture in words why Camphill is indeed special, I fall short because the magic of what happens daily at this school is intangible. You have to see it with your own eyes and feel the spirit of the place with your heart. I encourage everyone I know to visit so that they too can feel this intangible. For me, it is the quiet rhythms of the day, the peacefulness of the hilltop setting , the kindness of the co-workers, the clarity of love for the children. It all awakens in me something greater than myself that is hard to articulate. But each time I go to pick up Leta, I am re-energized. And I feel so lucky that Leta is part of this amazing community.
I recently wrote an article about the existing system of inclusion in the classroom and why Camphill is special. It has not been published yet, but I would love some feedback. (See below:)
Does Inclusion really work?
It is time to rethink the existing system of inclusion in the classroom. There are about 1.5 million children in the United States with some form of special educational disabiity and mainstream schools are failing to meet these children’s needs. Inclusion is noble in theory, but confused in practice. It strives to value diversity within our educational community, however, in reality mainstream teachers do not have the resources or training to make it work.
On the eve of the 50th anniversary of Camphill Special School in Pennsylvania, I want to assert that as a nation we need to look to Camphill for the example of what actually works to educate severely disabled special needs kids.
In a very restrictive environment, Camphill has quietly educated special needs kids to their fullest potential for 50 years and has not only helped them become meaningful members of our larger communities after graduating, this school has educated thousands of families on the true meaning of diversity. In the 1960’s, when Camphill Children’s Village was established in the United States, they were given a large Federal grant by the Kennedy Administration, who believed strongly in the concept of a special needs village. Not an institution, but a specialized and holistic environment that nurtured special kids to their fullest potential. But sadly, in the decade to follow, a movement came underfoot that took over the nations zeitgeist of what is fair and appropriate for children with special needs. The drums began beating for the notion of “inclusion” in the mainstream classrooms. Now that the country had worked through civil rights issues, a fight began, rightly, to give kids with disabilities equal rights as typical kids. In 1975, The Education for All Handicapped Children Act was passed to ensure that children with disabilities were given the opportunity to receive a public education. In 1990, 1997, and 2004 reauthorization of the Act took place, and the law came to be know as the Individual with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). IDEA mandates that not only should individuals with disabilities be provided a public education, they also should have the right to learn in the least restrictive environment. This means that students with any kind of disability, both in public and private schools are to be educated in classrooms alongside students without disabilities. Inclusion was the civil rights issue of the 70’s in education. A separate education for special needs kids was no longer considered a fair and equal education. And so special needs kids were mainstreamed and families no longer sent their kids with disabilities away to “special schools.” Alongside this law, a new silent bias developed in the country. Sending your special needs kids “away” to school seemed morally wrong. Inclusion, we were told works. It helped all children learn to accept individual differences and to overcome misconceptions about disabilities.
But when I began the process of looking for the right school for my daughter with mental retardation in 2003, this mindset did not ring true for me. The argument seemed more grey, than black and white. I knew that my daughter would not thrive in a regular public school. But I was told that this was my only option. And after years of speaking to other parents of special needs kids, I realized I am not alone in my thinking. This wholesale approach to inclusion, has left thousands of parents frustrated and confused. Some like myself have been willing to speak up and say that inclusion just doesn’t work. Our kids are ignored, bullied, and removed from the classroom for disruptive behaviors half the day. We know from experience that our child requires specialized services and better trained teachers. But this is not a popular position. I was willing to fight the status quo and be the squeaky wheel and get my daughter placed in an Approved Special Schools (APS). But I am the exception because the school districts do not like paying for these expensive APS placements. And if lawmakers were honest with themselves, they would agree that APS’s are often the more appropriate settings for some special needs kids to rise to their fullest potential. Approved Private Schools offer trained special education teachers that provide one-on-one attention for our kids, provide special assistive technology equipment in the classroom and provide a structure that can deal appropriatly with the all too often behavioral problems of many cognitively disabled children. As the parent of a 16 year old special needs child, I know first hand that kids with severe disabilities have the best chance of being treated like an individual and learning to their highest potential when they are educated outside a regular classroom.
And this is why my daughter goes to Camphill Special School. They not only treat her differences with respect and dignity, they teach her with songs and games and in ways that she truly learns. So instead of her being bullied and teased as an outsider in a typical classroom, she is blossoming to her fullest potential. And she is contributing to the world, we are just not trying so hard to pretend that she will ever be normal.
As I see my daughter grow and mature in the Camphill environment, I am grateful that she gets to be one of the 108 students lucky enough to attend this amazing school. But this is the only children’s special needs village like it in this country. What was once a Federal movement to fund schools like Camphill, has all but disappeared, as our nation continues to buy into the culture of inclusion in the classroom. It is time to think about where we spend our federal dollars, now earmarked for only one kind of special education.
The backlash to inclusion is starting to rise up. Parents of some special needs kids are desperately looking for alternative educational environments. Special programs exist but they are expensive and most families can not afford them without some sort of state or federal funding. The Approved Public Schools that are specialized for kids with severe disabilities, like my daughter, can cost from $60K to $100,000 a year. We were lucky to fight the school district and get them to pay for our her to go to Camphill. But for every one family lucky enough to opt out of the public school inclusive classrooms, there are 100 more families who know it is not ideal for their child, yet do not have the resources to make a switch.
The American Federation of Teachers has urged a moratorium on the national rush toward full inclusion. Their members have cited concerns that students with disabilities monopolize an inordinate amount of time and resources and in some cases create violent classroom environments. And The Council for Exceptional Children,(CEC) a large international organization of special educators, parents, and other advocates for the disabled, issued a policy statement on inclusion in 1993. A strong endorsement for a continuum of services to be made available to children with disabilities.
In Camphill’s 50th year of service to our children with special needs, it is time to rethink the paradigm of special education. What The Kennedy Administration in the 60’s knew to be true about this special program, still exists today. Programs like Camphill, while unknown and under-funded, are actually the one’s helping our special kids learn the most.
