Abstract

I will ground this talk in a formative story from my family, in which I characterise Cable Street as a stream that feeds the river of my life and the tree house as a metaphor handed to me by a young nephew standing for deception and how to go beyond it, for the idea that things are always more than they seem. I will trace my concern that inclusion should involve putting particular values into action in education and society, and how these can shape the detail of our practice. I will argue that at the same time, inclusion involves grappling with the realities of exclusionary pressures, of learning how with others we can negate, discrimination, oppression and the denial of rights. I will show how a consideration of values allows an alliance to be made with many principled interventions in education in order to produce a singular approach to development. I will foreground a concern with environmental sustainability, connected to an understanding of profound exclusionary forces, and examine the implications of linking sustainability and other values for what as well as how we teach and learn.