Spaces and places for disrupting thinking about inclusive education in Hard Times

This paper sets out to read closely the National Curriculum Statutory Inclusion Statement in England (2007) alongside Hard Times to see if Dickens offers any insights into ethical responsibility and conceptualisations of inclusive education. I begin by presenting some of the meanings and associated problems of the term 'inclusive education' held by academics, activists and practitioners in the field before introducing my approach. I argue that evidence of three logocentric discourses, the technical curriculum perspective, ableist normativity and developmentalism can be detected within the language of the Inclusion Statement. I present a historical account of their provenance and links to population improvement discourses in the past before introducing Derrida's ideas about differance and deferral. Deconstructive reading of the Inclusion Statement reveals the sorts of technical thinking, hierarchisation, naming, norm-referencing and age-related expectations identified in the logocentric discourses described earlier. The story of Hard Times garnishes insights into the idea of inclusion throughout the paper with the main focus on the novel emerging in the final section, when the circus community is likened to the arrivants - those unexpected visitors who transgress the established order to create space for new, more responsible thinking about education.