Book reviews Inclusive Education – Readings and Reflections Gary Thomas & Mark Vaughan Maidenhead Open University Press 2004 215 pp. ISBN 0335207243 £18.99 I recently asked a member of Royal MENCAP why their organization did not feel able to sign up to the Inclusion Charter organized by the Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education (CSIE), which calls for the long-term closure of Special Schools. It was suggested to me that no organization that represents the parental view could advocate the closure of segregated provision when half the parents linked to the organization were supporters of Special Schools. The argu- ment goes, you cannot deny people their voice if you are meant to represent their views. These issues of parental choice and the closure of special schools have been one of the key points of tension within government education policy over the last couple of decades. Inclusive Education – readings and reflections is very clear about where it sits on the issue of special schools, which is hardly surprising as it is co-written by one of the founders of the CSIE, Mark Vaughan. At least half of its time is spent dismantling the moral, theoretical and practical rationale behind all segregated provision. It does so in a way that is highly readable, thought-provoking and insightful. I thor- oughly enjoyed reading it and would recommend it to anyone…but then I would say that…I agreed with almost every word I read. Whether it will convince doubters, is less certain. This book spans over 200 years of writing and thinking about the rights of individuals to have access to the opportunities (particularly educational) that others take for granted. Its stated aim is to enable us to chart the progress of inclusion and to recognize some of the most significant literature that has been produced along the way. To achieve this the book is divided into four sections: The Context – Rights, Participation, Social Justice; Arguments and Evi- dence against Segregation – 1960s to Today; Legislation, Reports, Statements; Inclusion in Action. Each section is in a roughly chronological order, that presents an appropriate and effective range of readings to demonstrate the key issues and changes that have occurred along the way. From Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man (1792) to Christopher and Renz’s (1969) demonstration of why special education is not that special, to an excellent critique of the Warnock Report (Department of Education and Science 1978) and Thomas, Walker and Webb’s (1998) powerful extract about the closure of a Barnardos special school…all are readable and challenging. The historical spread of the book and its use of substantial sections of text means that each reader is likely to find different bells being run, too. I kept being reminded of how we come back to the same issues across the years from slightly different perspectives. One text that I particularly enjoyed was the recommendations by Dessent (1977) in relation to Local Educational Authority funding of schools. Eighteen years ago, he recommended funding being alloca- ted not according to a Statement of Educational Needs, but in three strands – a sum to fund staff to support all pupils identified as having SEN, a sum based on school demo- graphics, and a top-up for the small number of pupils with ‘unique and unpredictable needs’. This rang two bells. First, this is almost exactly the system that West Sussex are now in the process of introducing just when my son begins Primary School with his Down syndrome label attached. Secondly, when I was training to be a teacher I was told that all educational policy is 15 years behind the theory…here was an almost perfect demonstration of the principle. As is made clear in the Preface, the selection of readings is inevitably a personal one, and there are many significant texts that are excluded. One or two are a surprise, for example there is no mention of The Report of the Special Schools Working Group (DfES 2003) that so upset CSIE and many other supporters of Inclusion, nor of Corbett’s (1996) Bad-mouthing – The language of Special Needs, which encour- aged many of us to reconsider the language we use when talking about others. But generally the quality of the selections is high. There is a strong UK voice, too, without the essential contribution of North American educators, legislators and campaigners being downplayed. At the heart of the book, however, is a refusal to engage directly with the opposition. There is no room for major ª 2006 BILD Publications, British Journal of Learning Disabilities, 34, 57–61