Gross Insensitivity

               Miles Ambridge's parents are angry after seeing their son separated from his classmates in a class photo. (Facebook)

He is a little boy with a handicap. It is a physical handicap that has left him immobile, reliant on a wheelchair to get around. There is nothing handicapped about his intellectual awareness, his social spirit, his wish to be included with his Grade 2 peers at school. His is an anxiously obliging, smiling face, despite the unbelievable snub the child received from unaware and seemingly uncaring adults. That would include his classroom teacher, and the professional photographer who took the class photo that demonstrates the physical separation between Miles Ambridge and his classmates.

Granted, the other children sit on a bench. Little Miles sits upon and within his wheelchair. The bench upon which the children sit obtrudes on either side; there is clearly room enough for one or two other children to share the bench. Miles' wheelchair is situated as close to the bench as can be managed. That space between Miles and the other children obviously wasn't noticed when the photograph was taken. Had it been, had either the teacher or the photographer been sensitive to the space, they would have urged the children to move over on the row, to diminish the space. As it is, the photograph is flawed because of the space.

And that flawed photograph is what upsets Miles' parents. The three rows of children sitting neatly together on the tiered bench must of necessity exclude Miles. Yet a simple accommodation would have made that separation less visible, far less obvious, and far more inclusive of the child with his classmates. This was a clear oversight, obviously not intended to exclude Miles. "I'm not on a warpath. I just want to bring awareness that this was not acceptable", said seven-year-old Miles' mother, Anne Belanger.

The photograph was placed online, and it drew a lot of attention. Along with public criticism of the oversight, of the fact that one child out of 23 is clearly odd-one-out. And he is out of the collegial collective because of his handicap. Miles' mother has received messages from sympathetic people all over the world, in a gesture of support for her position, that the empathetic need of her child had been overlooked. Another photograph of the class was taken to replace the offendingly deficient one.

The administration and staff at Herbert Spencer Elementary School in British Columbia has learned a valuable social lesson in inclusion and sensitivity. It will stand them in good stead.