Inclusion and Diversity: Exploring Relationships and Linkages

Dr. Annie Koshi is the Principal of St. Mary’s School, New Delhi, where she has done pioneering work in creating an inclusive educational institution. She also undertook doctoral work on inclusive education at IIT Delhi. She has consistently advocated the cause of the disabled and has worked towards legislative changes that foster their educational rights. She is the winner of many awards including the prestigious National Award for Teachers, the National Child Care Award, and the India Development Education Award, amongst others, for her contributions towards education.

Samuhik Pahal: Can you please share the genesis of your work in the space of inclusive education? Are there any individuals or incidents who influenced or inspired you to enter this space?

Annie Koshi: What is education if it is not inclusive? Any process of learning that is not inclusive, can it be called education in any real sense of the word? Inclusion is not only for the challenged, it benefits all children. This needs to be said upfront. Inclusion is a way of life that needs space and place of honor first and foremost in our thinking.

While I feel there is no individual or incident that actually influenced or inspired the school to move down a particular trajectory, I do feel that the kind of people who were at the helm of affairs at the beginning of the school were a different breed. The founders of the school were people from an age when everybody lived together. We all looked after each other. They influenced the trajectory of the school through their view of an inclusive world where quality education needs to be offered to everyone.

We must remember that inclusion is not a destination. It is a journey. You never actually reach being inclusive. You have to be constantly working at it.

You know the popular adage these days that, “It takes a village to raise a child.” We were raised by the village. And the village did not say that we’ll not raise this child, or that child. All children were raised by the village. We’d run around in the streets because the streets had spaces for us to run around and play. The next door aunty would scold us if we misbehaved. And the other aunty would give us khana [food] if we were there at that time. So everyone was like that. So in such a context, the school was born and raised.

When we started, we had a child in school whose brother was a CP [Cerebral Palsy] child. The parents stayed just across the gate of the school. The mother came to us and said, “Komal ghar pe hai; woh kuchh der ke lie school aa sakta hai kya?” – “Komal stays at home. Can he come to the school for some time?”

He was severely challenged. He came to us wheelchair bound, his speech terribly compromized, with no hand movements. But he had a very good mind, all locked up in that body. And he would come on his wheelchair to the school. He was across the road. And we said, “Ane do – Let him come.”

When you have a student, you automatically start making adjustments to the ways in which you tackle things. When Komal came to us, we could see that Komal can’t write; but Komal understands what we say. Children were able to understand him, although teachers might have had a little difficulty in the beginning. The more time we spent with Komal, the better we were able to understand what he was saying. And we could see that he was a very bright fellow.

There were no special educators in the school in the older days. And all the students were the resource people. Teachers also had to learn how to create inclusive methodologies. So lectures were recorded for Komal so that he could go home and listen to them again. He had a writer. We didn’t have a lift or a ramp at that time. So Komal would be carried by the children up and down the staircase. That took great bravery on Komal’s part, as his was not some flashy wheelchair.

Komal would be given a whistle for football matches where he would blow the whistle if somebody had done a foul while everybody else was running around. So he was made participative of many things. And we learnt how to change strategies to suit the individual.

You have to be aware that inclusion is just not about special needs. It’s also about including the excluded.

Samuhik Pahal: Given the relative lack of awareness on inclusion (as we currently understand it) when your school started, what were the important shifts in your journey towards inclusion?

Annie Koshi: We learnt that when methodologies change for an individual you knowingly also help some quiet child in the classroom. For instance, we had a visually challenged child. So you need to have more experiential kinds of activities. So that quiet child in the corner who can’t say that, “Madam I cannot understand what you are saying, when you are doing this drawing on the board,” he benefits from the changed methodology. When you adapt for one, you also tend to adapt for someone who is not presenting apparently with a challenge.

So, inclusion is really an attitude and understanding of diversity, and to understand that we have to adapt. Now standardization is the greatest goal, I feel, of the modern world. On the other hand, inclusion is all about responding to diversity to allow a child to go on an individual trajectory if necessary.

So we might think that there are forty children in the class and if they have forty individual trajectories, how we’ll manage. Any teacher will know that your trajectory and my trajectory somewhere have commonalities. A teacher would recognize these commonalities and work on them. She will use the children as resource people.

So, through our experiences we recognised that diversity is actually a positive thing. If you have the economically challenged, the tribal child, the north-eastern child, children from Jammu & Kashmir, some from top of the economic pyramid, and those with various challenges related to mental and physical cognition in the school – teachers benefit and are better teachers when they are dealing with this diversity, rather than having a standardized format of pedagogy. When you learn how to deal with diversity, you are allowing your child a rich environment of growth and understanding.

In our practice we have moved from charity to rights. When we brought Komal in, it was like “Bechara Komal, ane do – Poor Komal, let him come.” But it wasn’t Komal who was bechara, it was we who were becharas who did not have good thinking. Till we realized that these are your rights, rights that have been given to you by the constitution, and now the right to education for which people have fought for. The minute you see that it is the right of the child to a quality equal education, that is rights-based inclusive education.

Samuhik Pahal: What has been your experience of working with various stakeholders such as teachers, students, school management, parents and community members on issues related to inclusion?

Annie Koshi: If you want creative staff, then you need to give them that kind of environment. If you give them a monochromatic kind of set up, well then, don’t expect anything from them. Why would they want to change? See… A school is made up of students, parents, teachers, and of course the society as well. But society we can leave out for the time being because impacting society is a different ballgame altogether. But the school has to work on its parents, teachers and students to get a certain philosophy into place.

While this was not a conscious decision on our part, slowly the special needs children started coming to us. We always used to admit children from economically challenged backgrounds. You have to be aware that inclusion is just not about special needs. It’s also about including the excluded. Who is a school excluding – when we talk about organizational practices, schools have to consciously see who are you excluding.

You have to do this exercise. What are my practices that exclude and who do I exclude? For example, if you have an entrance test, if it is a time-bound, written examination, it excludes people who can’t write, people who need more time to do things. If your school has steps up to the reception area or the principal’s office, you’d exclude those who cannot climb the steps. If your school has high fees, then you’d exclude those who cannot pay those high fees. So you have to look at all these areas very carefully. Presence of lifts, assessment practices, methodologies, admission practices, scholarships, these are all areas or methods to circumvent exclusion.

Samuhik Pahal: Given that ramps and similar elements of physical infrastructure are the visible, accessible means for most people to understand inclusion, what, in your view, is the invisible story of inclusive education that people need to appreciate? Can you please share a few key challenges in this regard that need to be widely discussed and the ways in which we can meaningfully address them?

In our practice we have moved from charity to rights…The minute you see that it is the right of the child to a quality equal education, that is rights based inclusive education.

Annie Koshi: Including the excluded is important. There is a book called ‘The Index for Inclusion: A Guide to School Development Led by Inclusive Values’ by Antony Booth and Mel Ainscow which works out the ways in which we can move into a more inclusive scenario. The first method it discusses is to identify the modes of exclusion that you have. We must remember that inclusion is not a destination. It is a journey. You never actually reach being inclusive. You have to be constantly working at it.

We started with no special educators. Some children are able to sit in a class. Some children need a one-to-one for some time. Some children require one-to-one all the time. So there are segregated schools, there are inclusive schools. I find all schools catering for a different kind of scenario. And I’d not like to run down special needs schools.

Training your staff, interacting with your parents constantly, talking to your students are important. Organizationally your practices have to be democratic. Teachers have to be always questioning themselves to see how they could be better. Cultivating the environment of reading and questioning in the school is important. Working with all stakeholders constantly; that is the key.

So, inclusion is really an attitude and understanding of diversity, and to understand that we have to adapt.

I don’t think money is an issue with respect to being inclusive. It is really the thinking that is the issue. Society itself is so exclusionary. Inclusion impinges upon all areas. When you start being inclusive, you realise that there are so many reverberations of being inclusive.

Samuhik Pahal: In the many decades of your work in this space, can you please share your observations of key milestones in the ways in which thinking and practice related to inclusion have shifted in the education space in India?

Annie Koshi: Recently there has been a big shift away from inclusion in India. With Corona for instance, look at the way assessment has gone. If CBSE does MCQ examinations, nobody in their right minds can think that it’s an inclusive set up. We may think that the problem is only for class X or XII.

But the fact is, what happens with CBSE at the Board Examinations starts to have a washback into the lower classes. And then everyone starts thinking, “Oh MCQs are a great way of doing this.” For teachers to stand against the tide and hold out on their own is a very hard job. Congratulations and kudos to those who are able to do it.

You have to continuously think about why are you doing what you are doing. Why are we so set on having textbooks? How do textbooks actually help my child to get an education when we know that there has been a knowledge explosion and knowledge is everywhere.

Will I teach my child to understand that one textbook and to mug it up, or will I teach him to read, comprehend, and analyse what he is reading is correct or misinformation or wrong information? In such a situation, where will the textbooks come into play?

Now you’ll say what has that got to do with inclusion? But everything is part of it. The crux of the matter is to get your thinking correct. As an educator you should always be asking what am I here for, why am I doing what I am doing. Let’s say assessment, why am I doing assessments like this? Can learning be assessed differently?

If these questions can be addressed, then you can answer why you didn’t admit a child or what is the role of the parents in this process, how do you deal with emotions.

We have a child whose mother is in the red-light area. She gave up this child to the home [from where the child comes to attend school] so that he’d not be influenced by her environment.

She promised to call him every Sunday. But Monday is a bad day for that child because he does not get the call from his mother. And then he is violent on Monday. Because he cannot deal with that betrayal and that sorrow, he is violent with other kids.

So someone may ask, “Why have this child in the school?” Some parent might possibly question, “Why should I send my child to a school that has such children?” So, courage, we have not talked about courage. That’s a very important thing. So when you say what are the necessities, I’d definitely say courage is a core value, in order to stand up for what you believe in and do it.

Samuhik Pahal: If someone were entering this domain now, how do you feel she can meaningfully engage with this space? Can you please suggest resources – movies, books, courses, etc. – for people who want to start exploring the space of inclusive education?

What is education if it is not inclusive? Any process of learning that is not inclusive, can it be called education in any real sense of the word?

Annie Koshi: If people want to be educators and if they want to be more inclusive, they have to allow themselves the experience of dealing with challenges. I’d say try and teach some street children. Try and teach some challenged children. Go out into the villages and see and understand what are the needs and necessities. Problems arise when we want to be inclusive educators, or rather educators in the true sense of the term, and we do not allow ourselves this exploration and learning for reasons such as money.

When you are young and do not have any responsibilities, give yourself the chance to roam the country, understand the diversity, and think about methodologies that may work – up in the hills, down in the plains, in the coastal areas – what are the changes you’ll make in places where there is no electricity and no Wi-Fi, internet, photocopier all of which we take for granted.

What do you know of the world? It’s like being in a hot room. You open the window and the cold breeze hits you.

How Inclusion and Diversity Are Like Two Wheels of the Same Vehicle
Annie Koshi

In our school, we have children from different Homes such as Jeevan Jyoti – a Home run by the Sisters of Charity that looks after children with challenges – Tara Homes and Rainbow Homes. Rainbow Homes was started for children on the streets.

In the holidays some of them are sent to their parents on the streets. Every child in school gets a book bundle, clothes, bags, and these are given to them when they leave for holidays because they are supposed to revise their lessons. So these children go home and when they come back they are invariably without their books.

We would get upset, and say, “How irresponsible is this!” But really it was our thinking that was problematic. They live on the streets. Their bags are hanging on some little nail under some flyover.

Other children are running around. They will pick up the books and throw it here and there, scribble on it, tear it. So it was stupid of us to think that they could take these books and not lose them. We have learnt from our own mistakes to how to do things better.

Similarly, this whole idea of cleanliness. You are in a home with a hundred kids. You have to get up yourself in the morning and get clean. Because nobody is washing your clothes for you, you have to wash them yourself. Even if, you are a five-year-old, you have to wash your clothes, you have to have your bath and come.

We started to say, have your bath in school. We’ll put water and oil and shampoo and everything and get their clothes washed and ready for them. As they grew older, they would say, “We won’t bathe in the school.” Because they must be conscious that other children are seeing that they are doing this.

Then we negotiated and said that, “If you come here clean, that’s fine. But if you are not, then we’ll have to bathe here.” Then they managed on their own.

We have had around sixty children from Rainbow Homes coming to our school. They have been with us for ten to eleven years now. All these children who came to us are a little older than the class.

There have been lots of people who were willing to give them time and energy. It was a period of generosity of one’s own time. We are very proud that this year one of our students from the home passed out. He has gotten into NID (National Institute of Design). We are very thrilled.

As an organization it is important to work with your staff, with your parents. We work with our parents from the very beginning with the understanding that generosity of spirit is core to the philosophy of the school.

So even though we are a Christian minority institution we work on celebrating all religions. We work at accepting all people and understanding the differences. We work on a cooperative model.

The minute we tell our parents about the needs of our children from the home of uniforms and books etc. they generously take it on. We do not take donations from outside. Our own parents pick up the tab. When we ask what is inclusion, it leads us to the larger question about what is education.