Amelia Fysh: Pioneering Inclusive Education (1970)

The source I chose to provide my comments from was a draft by Amelia Fysh, the author of this archive and the Headteacher of Beech Green Nursery School in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire (Papers of Amelia Fysh (Nee Bullen) - Archives Hub,n.d.). This draft was written in 1970 as a draft for a publication on the development of children's drawing, so it can be assumed that the audience after the draft was published was the public or the educational community.

Fysh's draft uses a wealth of examples to demonstrate an inclusive educational environment for children in the kindergartens she teaches, promoting the all-around development of children through creative activities and attention to children with special needs (Amelia Fysh Archive, 1970).

On pages 2 to 3 of the draft, the author states that the admission of the Beech Green Nursery School should be balanced between ordinary children and "problem children, "avoiding the appearance of all children with disabilities or behavioral problems (Amelia Fysh Archive, 1970). The 1944 Education Act expanded access to formal full-time education for children with disabilities (Simon, 1986). Beech Green Nursery School's mix of regular and special-education students reflects this trend.

We can also find out from the draft how the author creates an inclusive educational environment for children with special needs through various outdoor activities and creative games, such as a hearing-impaired boy who spends an afternoon playing outdoors with friends and painting with a large brush. For the authors, creative activities led by painting can promote not only the development of children but also children's chaos and insecurity are often reflected in their paintings (Amelia Fysh Archive, 1970). Especially for disabled children, it is a crucial research method to explore their emotional problems through drawing in their early childhood (Isaacs, 2013). Another study published by the author in 1997 on the longitudinal development of children aged three to five years showed children's development through creative activities in more detail (Amelia Fysh Archive, 1997).

On the last page of the draft, the author expressed her views on the education of special needs children. She believes all children should be valued by the educational community, providing them with an inclusive atmosphere and an environment that encourages their growth, hoping to meet the basic needs of all children and the unique needs of some disabled children (Amelia Fysh Archive, 1970). In the 1960s and '60s, this idea of educational inclusion was very advanced. It was not until 1981 that the Education Act officially recognized the need for special education and provided the resources for children with disabilities to meet those needs (Armstrong, 2007). This is why the author mentions in the draft a child with autism who dropped out of elementary school after one year. From this, we can conclude that at that time, schools did not have a sufficient understanding of special education needs, nor did they have related resources to meet them.

It is unlikely that we can learn from this resource what parents and other kindergartens of the same period thought about inclusive education. However, this resource serves as a publication draft to help us understand and analyze the development of inclusive education and special educational needs in such a pioneering nursery school.

References

Amelia Fysh Archive (1970) draft chapter of ‘More reflections of nursery school teacher’ (UCL-IOE Archives AF/1/1/31)

Amelia Fysh Archive (1997) publications titled 'Discovering Development with the 3-5s. A Longitudinal study 1964-1973' (UCL-IOE Archives AF/3 ) Armstrong, F. (2007). Disability, Education and Social Change in England since 1960. History of Education, 36(4-5),551–568. https://doi.org/10.1080/00467600701496849

Isaacs, S. (2013). Socialdevelopmentinyoungchildren.Routledge.

Papers of Amelia Fysh (nee Bullen) - Archives Hub. (n.d.). Archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk. Retrieved February 20, 2023, from https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/archives/e5a085e7-49a5-3cef-9078-6 caf7534130d

Simon, B. (1986). The 1944 Education Act: A Conservative measure? Historyof Education, 15(1), 31–43. https://doi.org/10.1080/0046760860150104