If I was ever asked how I would organise support for learning in secondary schools, which by the way is very unlikely, even though I am a parent of an autistic child. I would do my very best to minimise the feelings of 'being different' that many or all young people with disabilities or learning difficulties feel.
It seems our educators have forgotten what it was like to be a teenager. The crushing embarrassment they feel when out in public , not all teenagers of course but many, and the teenagers with autism feel the clumsiness and awkwardness most keenly. So why then would you want to single them out by creating a so-called HUB.
On first analysis it seems like a good idea to set aside a place where the teenagers with learning difficulties can go, somewhere to relax and find a quiet place away from the hub bub of pupil life, but that by definition is not inclusion, that is segregation any child seen walking in or out of the HUB will immediately be singled out as different. And different is wrong, bad even in the minds of the less enlightened teenagers of our society.
The teenagers most likely to bully are the ones who feel most insecure, for whatever reason,and there is nothing more empowering to an insecure person than the ability to bully some one so obviously more insecure than themselves.
That last statement does not take a rocket scientist to formulate, in fact it is psychology 101.
So why then would the educators of our precious children want to go out of their way to create a system that basically puts targets on the backs of our most vulnerable young people, at a time in their young lives were you could argue they are in fact at their most vulnerable.
If as I said, I was asked what I would do . I would integrate the hub and all its practises into the whole school structure. I would encourage the mixing of all of our young adults no matter what their individual challenges were.
I remember seeing signs posted in my sons school ,saying, some people are gay get over it , or words to that effect. But I don't remember coming across a HUB for the gay teenagers in the school ,they were able to go about their lives with out that kind of exposure.
I really feel like my son and others like him should be able to go about their lives without that kind of exposure, who knows what the future brings.
