Inclusive Education Policies: fragilization of the right to inclusion of people with disabilities in regular schools

Abstract

This text analyzes inclusive education policies, aiming at problematizing the displacements operated in discourses on inclusion, which have fragilized rights historically conquered by people with disabilities. From a Foucauldian perspective and inspired by the contemporary studies of Brown, Dardot and Laval, the materiality of analysis consisted of the “National Policy on Special Education: equitable, inclusive and with lifelong learning”, the Decree 10.502/2020, which established it, and disapproval notes produced by scientific organizations and civil society. Such materiality has enabled us to see the advance of neoconservative policies in at least two axes: 1. in approaching the principle of individual freedom as the right of families to choose the best space for schooling, which is transmuted into the right to exclusion of subjects with disabilities; 2. in re-signifying the notion of school inclusion as something that takes place in the present and in the school setting. These discursive shifts have both weakened the right of people with disabilities to be included in regular schools, and strengthened the ongoing process of (de)democratization in contemporary Brazil.