This book critically examines the long‑standing tension between equalization and maintained minoritization in Guyana’s inclusive education landscape, despite national and regional policy commitments since the Salamanca Statement of 1994. It reveals how vulnerable Guyanese children and adults—particularly those with disabilities, neurodivergence, poverty, displacement, and Indigenous or migrant identities—have not experienced inclusive education as emancipatory or liberating. Instead, systems of surveillance and “stay in your lane” practices often depersonalize support, restrict access and participation, and reproduce intergenerational poverty. Drawing on the voices of educators and excluded children themselves, the book exposes how inclusive education rhetoric collides with lived realities of exclusion. It ultimately interrogates the perceived value of a Guyanese education within structures that deny true belonging, shared power, and educational justice.

Lidon Lashley is Associate Professor in the Department of Foundation and Education Management and former Assistant Dean in the Faculty of Education and Humanities at the University of Guyana.  He is the Director of the University of Guyana Early Childhood Centre of Excellence (UG-ECCE) and the chair of the University's Inclusivity, Diversity and Equity Task Force. He has been working in the field of teaching and teacher education for the past 23 years.