The Oregonian, Inclusion & The School For The Blind

An editorial in today's Oregonian gets the story of the School for The Blind essentially right. The editorial and the follow-up comments show that there is more public support for the School and state services than the legislature realizes. read that editorial here.

Several letters published in the hard copy edition of the paper today deal with the matter of inclusion and make the case that inclusion works.

So what?

We have never said that inclusion doesn't work. Shifting the subject to a debate about inclusion helps to insure that the fate of the School remains in the hands of the legislators and "experts." Granted that the issues may be related, the continued existence of the School is related to many other questions as well and none of these questions or decisions should fall solely in the laps of politicians and "experts."

The letter writers deal with inclusion as the only model available. We have said throughout this struggle that a spectrum of models should be available to parents, students and the visually-impaired community.

The letter writers are not seeing the School as a state service and are not dealing with the closure of the School as yet another state service being cut. We have defended the School as both a needed state service and as a center for a geographically dispersed community. Closing state services and the center of a community has implications and yields results far beyond what we are dealing with today.

A more democratic process, we have argued, would yield different results and bring others to the decision-making table. Democracy was intentionally hobbled in this process and whenever this happens the causes and outcomes are suspect.