A central aim, when inclusion was introduced almost thirty years ago, was that the need for additional special education systems should be redundant or at least reduced (Kiupis & Hausstätter, 2014). However, as seen in the general description of this symposium special education systems is still very central in many countries. The outset of this paper is to point to the dependency between special and general education. As partly outlined by Richardson and Powell (2011), the historical and cultural development of both general and special education has led to this dependency and further created a complexity that inclusive education is not able to solve.
A central part of this complex relationship, is that the educational system in essence is not inclusive and special education has played and still play, a central role to support a system that contain the elements of marginalization (Hausstätter & Nordahl, 2013; Hausstätter, 2013). There are elements of special education that is needed both in practice, but also as a legitimation of general education . In order to understand this relationship better this paper will outline this dependency and investigate which what makes special education a necessity? Such areas could be the need for extra resources, the need for specific knowledge about disability, the need for alternative teaching and learning environments and the need to establish alternative learning goals instead of following a national curriculum. However, these areas are all variables of the core argument legitimizing special education: the need for individualization.
The idea of individual oriented education is part of the general focus of education, however it seems that this is more central for the legitimation of special education (Gjessing, 1974; Vygotsky, 1993; Hausstätter, 2023). This focus of individualization will be explored in this paper, and further connected to the dependency described. A second question for analysis is if inclusive education have a solution to this need of individualization?
