It’s time to drop the S word
I hate my job title. If it’s not offensive already then it surely soon will be. In fact I’ll wager good money that the term will have become obsolete by the time I retire. I am a Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator. ‘Special’ here refers to the needs that some students have in the classroom. The ones who are on the SEN register. The needs of all the other students are, by this definition, not special. Presumably their needs are... what? Ordinary? They must be, because they are not on the register of children whose needs are special. Teachers can educate all those other students in a regular humdrum fashion. They reserve their special teaching for my students. It’s a horrible term. It manages to be both patronising, offensive, but also antithetical to the goal of meaningful inclusion that we are trying to achieve. To define someone by their ‘special’ needs is the quickest way to other them. To establish that they are in a category removed from the commonplace. To define their ...