Eliminating Ableism in Education & Examined Life Argument

Thomas Hehir's Eliminating Ableism in Education

    In Thomas Hehir's Eliminating Ableism in Education, Hehir presents the argument that disabled people are regularly forced to confront and overcome difficulties in both everyday life and in a classroom setting. This is not because of their disability, but rather because of the way that society treats disabled people as defined by their disability. This argument is supported in Hehir's work by the transcribed accounts of disabled people, such as the account of one mentally disabled student. The student's mother recalls asking her child's teacher what they were learning in science, only to be informed that special education students were not learning science in favor of fine motor skills. Hehir highlights this as indicative of how schools teach students with mental disabilities: it's all centered around that disability. Furthermore, the education of the mentally disabled has been perpetually plagued by low expectations that leads educators to give less effort to disabled students relative to their neurotypical peers, which makes their learning an even greater challenge than it already is under the standardized form of schooling they face. This is supported by studies described in Hehir's work, which note that in schools where mentally disabled students who were given a focused education covering subjects akin to what their neurotypical peers were learning, there was a sharp increase in mentally disabled students that passed state tests. 

    This argument is also seen in the video "Examined Life: Judith Butler and Sanaura Taylor", in which we follow a conversation between Judith Butler and Sunaura Taylor, the latter of which is afflicted with arthrogryposis and uses a wheelchair. Together, they discuss various societal perspectives of able-bodied people versus disabled people, such as the false notion that abled bodied are radically independent and capable and disabled people are completely helpless and how society is designed to make disabled people further disadvantaged. 

    I think the detail that society furthers the disadvantage of disabled people through its lack of consideration for them is a really interesting one, and I’d like to further discuss and flesh out that idea and define some ways that societal expectations of a person’s ability provide further disadvantage to disabled people.

    Attached here is a Hyperlink to an article further discussing how society holds back disabled people: https://epicassist.org/the-biggest-barrier-for-people-with-disability/