On Rhetoric: A Response to Fuchs and Fuchs

The article by Fuchs and Fuchs on the "inclusive schools movement" published in the February 1994 issue of Exceptional Children was neither fair nor scholarly. It attacked the proponents of inclusive education, rather than debating the issue. Fuchs and Fuchs have employed some common rhetorical devices in their article. Let me identify several. CREATE THE VILLAIN In the Fuchs and Fuchs version of our field, the villain is the leadership of The Association for Persons with Severe Handicaps (TASH), portrayed as a small band of chanting loudmouths who are out of touch with reality and out of step with everyone else. According to Fuchs and Fuchs, TASH "took the field by storm no doubt intimidating by their vigor alone many who disagreed with their radical message" (p. 299). Fuchs and Fuchs argued that the views of the TASH leadership - "a relatively small arid insular group" (p. 301) - are so extreme that they do not represent the views of many members of their own association. In one of the many misleading statements in die article (p. 301), Fuchs and Fuchs supported this latter assertion by depicting Stainback, Stainback, and Moravec as TASH leaders and Lou Brown (see Brown, 1991) as an insignificant and ignored rank-and-file member of the association. Juxtaposed against TASH in the Fuchs's article were The Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) and other associations that may not share TASH's position statements or the views of some of its members. In an article published in Exceptional Children, this seems like an attempt to play to the audience. ACADEMIC SLEIGHT OF HAND When Fuchs and Fuchs offered evidence to support their position, which was rare, it was seldom relevant to the discussion. An obvious example was their attempt to discredit inclusive education through the citation of newspaper stories, commentaries, and the testimony of a psychiatrist on the failure of deinstitutionalization. Throughout their article, Fuchs and Fuchs discussed educational policy regarding the "high incidence" and "low incidence" groups and referred to associations concerned with people with severe developmental disabilities (TASH), learning disabilities (the Learning Disabilities Association), blindness (American Council on the Blind), deafness Commission on the Education of the Deaf), or children with exceptional needs (CEC). Yet, grasping for evidence of the inevitable failure of inclusive education, Fuchs and Fuchs compared it to the policy of deinstitutionalization for adults with mental illness. Fuchs and Fuchs wrote, "deinstitutionalization has caused more than 250,000 people with schizophrenia or manic-depressive illness to five in shelters, on the streets, or in jails" (p. 302). A fairer comparison would have examined the evidence on deinstitutionalization of people with developmental disabilities. No scholarly study of deinstitutionalization of people with developmental disabilities has confirmed the horrific findings reported by Fuchs and Fuchs. The research evidence has indicated that people with developmental disabilities in community settings fare better than their counterparts in institutions on virtually all measures (for a review of relevant research, see Lakin, Hayden, & Abery, 1994). Probably the strongest criticism of deinstitutionalization of people with developmental disabilities that can be made is that it has not always resulted in social participation or "inclusion," and this can be attributed at least partially to the "continuum" concept so vigorously defended by Fuchs and Fuchs. Parenthetically, Fuchs and Fuchs misrepresented my own published work; my 1988 article (Taylor, 1988) provided a philosophical, conceptual, and empirical critique of the related concepts of "least restrictive environment" and the "continuum" ("Cascade of services model"), but it said nothing about the elimination of special education or "ridding the education landscape of professionals called `special educators"' (p. …