Tim was not your typical student. Back in the 1970s, all I knew was that Tim had some learning difficulties, as well as a speech defect, and I suspected that processing new information took Tim longer than most other students.
These days, Tim would have some kind of diagnosis, which would lead to the development of an Individualized Education Plan, but in those days, apart from doing what I could to provide a little extra attention and support, we all just moved ahead.
Tim, like many kids who couldn’t really “keep up,” passed through the system and we all turned our attention to the next group the following September.
I was surprised and not a little dismayed when, only a couple of years after Tim had been in my classes, he showed up on my doorstep one sunny Sunday morning. The speech defect had not changed and he still spoke slowly, but he looked pleased when he extended his invitation to me.
“Mr. Johnson,” he said, “I’ve got a pilot’s licence now — want to go flying?”
To my shame, my immediate response was to invent some excuse and not risk becoming another small-plane statistic by flying with Tim, who really only squeaked through high school. But then empathy took over. Tim proudly showed me his flying licence and described how, while the classwork had been a real struggle, flying the plane presented no problem.
I agreed to go, and we headed off to the airport, where I watched my “slow” student meticulously go through a detailed pre-flight routine I had difficulty following.
We took off and within minutes, I relaxed. The student none of us thought could be successful at anything much really knew what he was doing; flight plan radioed in and checked again, instructions from the tower understood, the mechanics of flying clearly under control.
I tell this story because I now know that had Tim and thousands of kids like him been relegated to “special class,” his vision of his future would have been limited by years of “special class immersion.”
As it was, even though school was a struggle and he was at the low-performing end of a fully inclusive class, Tim’s vision of what possibilities life held after school had not been restricted by the boundaries his academically oriented teachers, perhaps unconsciously, designated as his future possibilities.
The late federal finance minister, Jim Flaherty, whose contribution to us all was not confined simply to our national economy, was a champion of people like Tim. Flaherty eschewed terms like “people with special needs,” preferring “Canadians of differing abilities” — a term much more resonant with our Canadian cultural generosity about the community within which we live.
So here’s the problem: By restricting public education’s ability, even as our understanding of the Tims in our classrooms becomes clearer, by not supporting teachers in their effort to accommodate a full range of kids with differing abilities in their classrooms, we might be literally exiling some kids from the mainstream of our national experience.
Tim found his own way, found that while school did not work at all for him, there was a world of opportunities that did.
Not every kid does, though, and to those who perceive kids “with differing abilities” as a burden in classrooms and are unwilling to provide the funding to back the support teachers needed, I say: Give your head a shake.
Private schools do a terrific job with the kids they are willing to accept. It is possible that people who can afford to put their kids in those relatively homogeneous classrooms with other kids “just like mine” don’t have much insight into what public education does for everybody else’s kids, for the majority of Canadian kids with all their differing abilities.
I’m not sure how “class composition” became such a controversial term as part of a bitter labour-relations struggle. “Class composition” isn’t just about Tim; it is about all of us, from elected officials who make the big decisions to the kid who bags my groceries. It’s about all of us because in Canada that’s what public education must be about — all of us — and the sooner it is just about how things get done in public education and not another negotiable item, the better.
Geoff Johnson is a retired superintendent of schools.
