Death of a Nightingale

A book for today and tomorrowAbout 100 special schools havebeen closed in the UK since1997. Another, Brighouse Schoolin Westborough, is threatenedwith closure. An internationalconsensus that children withspecial educational needs have theright to be educated in mainstreamschools drives this policy.But what if it is not such a goodidea? What if it is just a flawed andexpensive social experiment that isgood for some children but bad forothers, fine in the libraries of themind, but not in the classrooms ofthe real world?What if lawyers asserting humanrights enjoy the fruits of Utopiawhereas everyone else has just apartial glimpse of it? What if academiais leading its students down a blindalley? And maybe the system ofgoverment is wanting, too.What if mistakes and misconceptionshere help to explain what iswrong elsewhere and also threatenother things that we treasure?And what if the rising generation is illequipedto meet the new challengesof the twenty first century?No-one should ignore these questions.