“Reimagination” is required to create a new vision of education that better serves individuals with disabilities. Imagination is a way of conceiving possibilities and probabilities. The future of special education is imagined within the limits of possibility and probability of “appropriate” education for children with special educational needs and disabilities. Education is reimagined for full inclusion without special education and an alternative reimagination of inclusive special education. Particular attention is given to the administrative structure of public education and to the training of teachers for the imagined approaches to special education. The importance of imagining special and inclusive education being based on science and rationality and the limitations of proposed approaches to including students with disabilities in education are explained.

Over the past decade, ever since the ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (UN-CRPD) in Germany, a morally charged debate has taken place about inclusive and special education. Special schools are under considerable attack and even special education is deemed responsible for the difficulties in implementing full inclusion in schools. The gravest accusation is that special education and special schools are even today a close connection to the Nazi era between 1933 and 1945, when children with disabilities were sterilized and murdered. Special education is seen as a symbol and guarantor of separation and exclusion and therefore incompatible with the idea of inclusion. This article will outline and analyze this claim and present other more compelling reasons why full inclusion has been difficult to implement in Germany. Following the analysis, we will describe a possible way forward for inclusion and special education.

Zusammenfassung: Kaum ein Thema hat in den letzten Jahren so viel Aufmerksamkeit erregt wie die Transidentität und Transsexualität. Das Ende 2024 in Kraft getretene Selbstbestimmungsgesetz ersetzt das alte Transsexuellengesetz, das sich in Teilen als verfassungswidrig erwiesen hat. Das Selbstbestimmungsgesetz enthält eine radikale anthropologische Neuorientierung. Nunmehr lässt sich der Geschlechtseintrag aufgrund eines reinen Sprachakts ändern, bereits von 14-jährigen Kindern, ohne eine fachliche Begutachtung. Ein hochkomplexes bio-psycho-soziales Phänomen wird auf eine einzige Kategorie reduziert, die der Selbstbestimmung. Das Geschlecht wird zu einer Frage der Wahl. Das hat fatale Folgen: Der transaffirmative Weg übergeht elementare wissenschaftliche Erkenntnisse, deshalb wenden sich immer mehr Länder von ihm ab. Vor allem Kinder- und Jugendliche werden in eine Situation gebracht, die sie in aller Regel überfordert. Die Gesellschaft gibt unerlässliche Schutzfunktionen auf.