Essentials of disability studies for special education Radical approaches to disability and policy making towards educating disabled people Lecture 3 Moving from interpretivism to radical approaches Mutual challenges: individuals and mainstream society Is it possible to improve society? What is the target: to introduce new norms or assist people to be more resistive to social oppression? What is the mission of education: equalise or provide diversity ? Revolutionary and reflexive approaches Common traits Differencies Changes are required Agents of changes, domains of transformation Mainstream norms are to be limited in which way Child as an actor Within which activity , global or local context Disability as a challenge to mainstream society What are reasonable expectations Education should be transformed Improved or diminished Teachers vs. schools ?! C:\Users\Victoria\Desktop\Stand_and_deliver.jpg C:\Users\Victoria\Desktop\DVD6427.jpg C:\Users\Victoria\Desktop\images.jpg C:\Users\Victoria\Desktop\dangerous_minds_xlg.jpg http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/236x/ed/28/cc/ed28cc4e00b416e2412bf6e7e524d25b.jpg Up to down staircase (1967): the novel by Bel Kaufman http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJ6_-QD6Who •Teachers as adherers of rules vs. teachers as violators of rules •Epistolary genre of the novel: the impact of verbalization •School and professionals as an institution of segregation •Interaction student – lecturer as a symbolic and insulting children •Questions to the fragment: •What are expectations of the teacher and the student? •Could you interpret the follow-up given by the teacher in different approaches? •If you would be a teacher what would be your behaviour? • Stand and deliver (1988) Jaime Escalante, born in Bolivia, taught mathematic, kept at school more than 15 years He worked out the special strategy to teach mathematic as well as lobbied the opportunity for students to take the state exam of mathematic. He considered that he should be in close collaboration with communities and families Questions to the fragment http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MI6y-uRLSiE •How does the teacher build boundaries? •Are these boundaries flexible and sustainable? •Why is he successful in working out discipline? Resources of teachers to provide changes •Identity with students •Deep interest to the subject of teaching •Devotion to the profession •Readiness to share knowledge •Focus on teaching process not formal outputs •Acceptance of existing procedures of gatekeeping •Disobedience to internal rules Main challenges of disobedient teaching •The practice of disobedience among teachers is reproduced over generations of pedagogues as in practice as in mainstream culture. •How do you explain this phenomena? •What are outputs of such alternative practices? Generally, is it efficient strategy? •What are its threats, and who takes risks: students, teacher, community? •How could you evaluate the position of these pedagogues in terms of approaches: which notion of norms and changes do they operate? Politicising educational routine http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR7d5p4PNJ8 1.45 C:\Users\Victoria\Desktop\220px-Great_debaters_post.jpg C:\Users\Victoria\Desktop\debating-team-1935-mb-tolson-center.jpg Melvin Beaunorus Tolson Anybody know who Willie Lynch was? Anybody? Raise your hand. No one? He was a vicious slave owner in the West Indies. The slave-masters in the colony of Virginia were having trouble controlling their slaves, so they sent for Mr. Lynch to teach them his methods. The word "lynching" came from his last name. His methods were very simple, but they were diabolical. Keep the slave physically strong but psychologically weak and dependent on the slave master. Keep the body, take the mind. What has been politicised? •Aims •Methods •The placement of education Deschooling society (1971) by Ivan Illich •I will show that the institutionalization of values leads inevitably to physical pollution, social polarization, and psychological impotence: three dimensions in a process of global degradation and modernized misery. I will explain how this process of degradation is accelerated when nonmaterial needs are transformed into demands for commodities; when health, education, personal mobility, welfare, or psychological healing are defined as the result of services or "treatments." Agree or disagree: •Obligatory schooling inevitably polarizes a society; it also grades the nations of the world according to an international caste system. Countries are rated like castes whose educational dignity is determined by the average years of schooling of its citizens, a rating which is closely related to per capita gross national product, and much more painful. Agree or disagree: •Neither learning nor justice is promoted by schooling because educators insist on packaging instruction with certification. Learning and the assignment of social roles are melted into schooling. Yet to learn means to acquire a new skill or insight, while promotion depends on an opinion which others have formed. Learning frequently is the result of instruction, but selection for a role or category in the job market increasingly depends on mere length of attendance. Is it compatible with the education for disabled? •It should be obvious that even with schools of equal quality a poor child can seldom catch up with a rich one. Even if they attend equal schools and begin at the same age, poor children lack most of the educational opportunities which are casually available to the middle-class child. These advantages range from conversation and books in the home to vacation travel and a different sense of oneself, and apply, for the child who enjoys them, both in and out of school. So the poorer student will generally fall behind so long as he depends on school for advancement or learning. The poor need funds to enable them to learn, not to get certified for the treatment of their alleged disproportionate deficiencies. Home task 3: the deadline 4th of November •What did Ivan Illich offer as an alternative to the institutionalised education? •Do you share his idea regarding networking instead ‘normal’ education? •Is it applicable to the case of disabled students?