During the last Professional Development Day on November 1, I introduced the first part of an ongoing workshop series we will be offering at various moments. The general theme of the workshop is “Inclusion.” In that initial session, following our experiences with medical referrals that aim to medicalize normal childhood behaviors, we discussed functional diversity. In this first workshop, my question to the educators was straightforward: Is your program an inclusive program for all childhood experiences?
Throughout the workshop, no one gave a concrete answer to whether their program was inclusive or not. Some educators ventured to share good practices that promote inclusion, but no one fully articulated the argument that their program was indeed inclusive. But I’ll address that in future sessions. For now, I want to revisit an example shared by an educator that underscores the importance and urgency of discussing inclusion.
After my opening remarks, in which I explained my approach to these topics and posed some thought-provoking questions, a provider interjected: “Jaime, in Colombia, since 1992 with our new constitution, we’ve already achieved inclusion. In our countries, these issues are resolved—the problem is here.”
I didn’t want to stray from the topic, but I’m well aware of how significant the Colombian constitutional process was and how it brought together diverse groups in an attempt to create a genuinely democratic exercise. However, I can’t stop thinking about the claim that “in our countries, these issues are already resolved.” At least in Puerto Rico, for instance, femicides remain alarming. There were also Mexican educators in that session, and we’re well aware of the high context of violence there. We could also point out how multifaceted and diverse gender violence is in each of our contexts.
We must be extremely cautious with the idea that just because an issue was addressed long ago, it is now “resolved.” Often, this can simply mean that we’ve grown accustomed to living with those levels of violence.
Inclusion isn’t fully realized here, nor has it arrived in our countries, and it’s certainly not reflected in the U.S. education system in which we currently participate. That’s why we’ve launched this ongoing seminar series, where we’ll address various topics and provide best educational practices to confront gender, racial, economic, and geographic violence.
Let’s begin this new year with a serious examination of our practices—what we understand inclusion to mean, how we apply it in our programs, and how we build safe, violence-free spaces. Because what matters most to us is providing safe, peaceful spaces for optimal child development.
