What is being included or excluded in a given school system? Today, searching any different combination of “inclusion”, “exclusion” and “education” on google scholar mostly leads to papers related to “inclusive education”. Most literature reflecting on inclusive education use the term to reflect on including children with special physical and mental needs into the mainstream school system. UNESCO (2009) offers a broader definition. According to UNESCO guideline, inclusive education is a process that “involves the transformation of schools and other centres of learning” to cater for all children regardless of their gender, ethnicity, linguistic differences, social status, and mental and physical health conditions (UNESCO, 2009, p. 4). Transformation of the school and learning system needs a new design of the curriculum, which is a “disciplining technology that directs how the individual is to act, feel, talk, and `see’ the world and `self’” (Popkewitz, 1997, p. 132). Curriculum shapes the student experiences in the educational process. The question that this paper begins with is that whether it is ideally possible to design a curriculum that is able to include every pupil. A curriculum is a product designed and made by some actors who were selected for the job. The notion of selection implies notions of exclusion and inclusion. Among all educators and people with the necessary knowledge of the topic, only a few individual have the chance to be included in the curriculum making or the school planning team. Other opinions are forced to be excluded. This presentation investigates exclusion and inclusion in the level of school reform and curriculum making to see how the exclusion in the world of schooling starts even before reaching the level of practice. The paper takes the context of a specific school math reform in the 1960s and 1970s as an example and a basis to construct a story of exclusion in the world of schooling. This paper is an outcome of a bigger research project, which studied the creation of the so-called “new math” in the United States, its travel to Europe and its adaptation in Western European countries by the help of OEEC/OECD. On the process of the creation of this reform in 1958 in the United States, its dissemination in Europe since late 1958, many math educators criticized the way the reform movements were developing. Some of them wrote letters or even officially suggested an alternative plan, which were not taken into the consideration of the stakeholders. In this paper, the New Math is not the central point to study who was for or against it. This paper aims to study and show different opinions in a given school system, which were excluded from the curriculum. Most of the arguments in this context where related to what kind of math was needed for children to learn, why, and how they could learn better and in a more effective way. This condition exists more or less in any reform process or curriculum making, even in the design process of inclusive education. This paper studies the opposite arguments in the context of the New Math reform in different places to show the exclusion as an aspect of today’s school culture. As Popkewitz (1997) expresses, curricula are historically formed within systems of ideas that inscribe styles of reasoning, standards and conceptual distinctions in school practices and its subjects. Within this view, a curriculum is a cultural practice and as Foucault (2001) describes culture is “a hierarchical organization of values, accessible to everybody, but at the same time the occasion of a mechanism of selection and exclusion” (p. 173).

This paper begins by a question to understand a different aspect of exclusion in the school system and studies the past to form a “history of the present”, a notion introduced by Foucault (1977). Accordingly, Foucault’s archaeological approach is used in writing this paper, which is based on the premise that systems of thought and knowledge are governed by rules, “beyond those of grammar and logic, that operate beneath the consciousness of individual subjects and define a system of conceptual possibilities that determines the boundaries of thought in a given domain and period” (Gary, 2014). The paper moves on analysing a collection of texts from the past to form an understanding of an aspect of exclusion in the school system. This collection includes a group of official or regulative texts produced by those who were included, as well as a group of texts published in a different medium by those who were excluded. The latter group could be found in public, petitions, interviews, or in some cases as an individual book such as Kline (1973). Additionally, the paper is also supported by a review of relevant literature. These texts are analysed individually and in relation to other documents, the time and place to consider the context where they were produced. The two main Geographical points are the United States and Luxembourg. The main body of the research also includes examples from other Western European countries, which a few of them may also be included in the presentation depending the time and the design of the final paper.

This paper tells a story of exclusion outside the border of the physical school, and in the level of curriculum and school design. By this story, it tries to shed light on a different aspect of exclusion in the body of a school system, which cannot be effectless on the practice of schooling. How is it possible to have a curriculum that works for a diverse group of pupil, while in its design many opinions were excluded? This study does not suggest to include every idea in the curriculum design, as it is not possible. The paper intends to reveal these aspects of exclusion, which can enhance our awareness of the meaning of inclusion and exclusion in the practising of schooling.

Foucault M (1977) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Pantheon. Foucault (2001). L'hermeneutique du sujet. Cours au Collège de France, 1981-1982. Paris: Gallimard Seuil. Gary, G. "Michel Foucault", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Winter 2014 Edition. Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Kline, M. (1973). Why Johnny Can't Add: The Failure of the New Math. St. Martin's Press. Popkewitz, T. (1997). The production of reason and power: curriculum history and intellectual traditions, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 29:2, 131 - 164. Popkewitz, T. S. (2011). Curriculum history, schooling and the history of the present. History Of Education, 40(1), 1-19. doi:10.1080/0046760X.2010.507222 UNESCO. (2009). Policy Guidelines on Inclusion in Education. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Paris. France.