Departmental Order 03/2008: (re)visiting the foundations of Inclusive Education in the Dominican Republic

Abstract

The inclusion of people with disabilities in schools is a much discussed topic nowadays. During human history, the human being with some disability condition has gone through different levels, so to speak, in relation to being totally excluded, to a process of integration, segregation, and finally to inclusion. In this sense, the debates on inclusion in education that occur nationally and internationally go beyond the basis of the World Conference on Education for All, held in 1990 in Jomtien, Thailand, as well as the Salamanca Declaration, in Spain, four years later. Based on these debates, theories, and the realities we have observed, we question how the Dominican Educational System is including people with disabilities in schools, thus making the commitments it has signed up to in practice. To this end, the present study, of qualitative approach, is based on the theoretical assumptions of Michel Foucault (2002) and aims to answer the research question: what is the idea of inclusive education that exists in the Dominican Republic, from the legal framework in education in the country? Having as the objective of this study to identify and analyze the knowledge involved in the legal texts that maintain the idea about inclusive education in the country in this place. The results pointed to the severe willingness that exists in the country to bring those who, for a long time, have been excluded from school, due to differences or conditions of disability that they are afflicted with, i.e., the "abnormal" because school, in its genesis, was not designed for ALL.