Disabilities and the Politics of Schooling

Education as Control

The historical role of public education has been one of social control. Students are subject to a normative code of behaviors, attitudes, skills, and dispositions through the use of standardized, objective, and scientific evaluations that demand homogeneity from an otherwise heterogeneous student population. According to disability studies, those whose bodies challenge the norm are defined as “unruly bodies” and are subject to punishment, physical segregation, and/or exclusion.

Student populations that are designated as social outcasts of education are as heterogeneous as the identities they embody. Students of color from low-income neighborhoods are segregated on account of presumed academic and behavioral “deficiencies” that differ from White suburban aspirations and lifestyle. Pregnant teens, who may be seen as an embodiment of moral deviance, are often exiled to alternative programs outside the school, presumably because their pregnant condition is seen as socially contagious to other teenage girls. Legislation—for example, California's Proposition 187 passed in 1994 to deny public benefits and therefore public education to the children of “illegal” immigrants—and the debate about the legitimacy of bilingual education programs across the country have made linguistically diverse students cultural outcasts in some public school contexts. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered students are often enshrouded in educational discourses of deviancy, isolation, and silence, even by those policy makers who have attempted to combat the violence the youngsters face in school on a daily basis. And last but not least, notwithstanding the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), many students labeled as disabled continue to be ostracized and warehoused in self-contained classrooms on account of their significant physical/cognitive/behavioral differences.

[Page 251]From the disability-studies perspective, public education has used the concepts of difference, deviance, and disability synonymously to justify the exclusion of certain student populations in an attempt to adhere to demands of normativity, even while claiming that their practices are democratic. Disability therefore plays a critical role in contemporary educational politics.

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