My formal teacher training was so long ago—and so irrelevant to my subsequent career, for the most part—that I almost never think of it. Recently, however, a term from those Curriculum & Instruction days found its way to my conscious mind, where it’s accumulated new layers of meaning, perhaps a bit like a grain of sand irritating its way into a pearl.
The term is “Least Restrictive Environment,” and as my memory recalls, stretching back to the early ’90s, it pertains to the world of special education. The idea is that those students unable to function in a regular classroom should be given one as close to it as they can manage. In other words, Special Ed kids may require greater restrictions—restrictions intended as supports: fewer options or more oversight, that sort of thing—but those restrictions should be minimized, so that their classroom experience is as close to “normal” as possible.
For what it’s worth, here’s what Google put at the top of my search page just now: “In the U.S. Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), least restrictive environment (LRE) means that a student who has a disability should have the opportunity to be educated with non-disabled peers, to the greatest extent appropriate.”
So my memory seems relatively accurate: but now, after nearly twenty years’ experience with Sudbury schools, I have questions that wouldn’t have occurred to me as a beginning teacher. First and foremost, why should only people with a “disability” be provided an environment that’s the “least restrictive”? I understand that the context of these restrictions is the mainstream classroom, but really: Why should anyone’s education be any more restrictive than absolutely necessary? Continue reading →
Like this:
Like Loading...