Rod Wills

Who’s in, who’s out of New Zealand public schools? How decisions are shaped

Mechanisms of selection and control are utilized in both farming and special education. In a nation where sheep outnumber the population at a ratio of 10 to 1, the processes of drafting and selection have been refined over 150 years of New Zealand focusing on its agricultural primary production. Practices of sheep farming offer an interesting analogy with policy and practice in special education as the aims of efficiency and effectiveness reshape the role of the good shepherd.

The Problematics of Inclusive Education in New Zealand Today

Since 1877, the government of New Zealand has provided free, compulsory and secular education for most children. A little more than a century later, this mandate was extended to enable all children to be enrolled in and attend their local schools.

Pushing the Stone Up the Hill

Learning through stories becomes something that we all might do. By the nature of the invitation, to hear and reflect, we must consider how we listen deeply and focus on what is spoken. Being mindful not to edit the words we hear, too busily constructing our reply.

Easy Targets: Seen and Not Heard—The Silencing and Invisibility of Disabled Children and Parents in Post-Reform Aotearoa New Zealand

Families are positioned by services, professional knowledge and media. Disability charity organisations and support groups have taken on the roles previously associated with state-funded institutions. Families become consumers rather than navigators steering their own course. De-institutionalisation had taken over two decades to achieve, the model of managerialism and reform was implemented in less than 12 months. Print media discourse maintains a negative regard of disabled people, children and their parents. The provision of care by families is linked to the view that disability is an individual’s burden. In contemporary society, the ethos of individualism and choice often displace disability rights.

Reforming Special Education at the Local School

The very strong opinions or preferences for the education of disabled learners, expressed in public debates, by both families and teachers has been a feature of the changes in special education. The intensity of personal emotion and feeling, about the development and implementation of policy needs to be acknowledged for the impact it continually brings to this area.

Thinking about Our Children

Historically the positioning of students with an intellectual disability as ‘other’ by educationalists, informed by the ‘hybridisation’ of a eugenic fear and a sentiment of charity toward the less fortunate, can be understood. What is harder to grasp is the way in which little or no public scrutiny has been applied to the ongoing and deep-seated prejudice that has been allowed to inhabit public, professional and political thinking at so many levels.