The Politics of Race, Class and Special Education

The selected works of Sally Tomlinson

Sally Tomlinson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138014145
• eBook ISBN: 9781317745549
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

In the World Library of Educationalists series, international experts themselves compile career-long collections of what they judge to be their finest pieces – extracts from books, key articles, salient research findings, major theoretical and practical contributions – so the world can read them in a single manageable volume. Readers will be able to follow the themes and strands and see how their work contributes to the development of the field.

Professor Sally Tomlinson brings together 12 of her key writings in one place, including chapters from her best-selling books and articles from leading journals.

In this landmark publication she reviews and recounts the history and development of her research and writing over 30 years that is concerned with the politics of education systems, especially special education, and the place of social classes and ethnic and racial minorities in the systems.

Social class, race and gender have historically always been essential markers in deciding who would receive a minimum or inferior education and thus fail to obtain whatever were currently acceptable qualifications. Definitions of the 'less able' or ineducable were based on beliefs in the biological and cultural inferiority of lower social classes, racial and immigrant groups. Professor Tomlinson's aim in her work has always been to introduce sociological, historical and political perspectives into an area dominated by psychological, administrative and technical views and to explain how the individual 'problems' were connected to wider social structures and policies. This unique collection illustrates the development of Professor Tomlinson's thinking over the course of her long and esteemed career.

1 Class Analysis and Colonial Immigrants

DOI: 10.4324/9781315794785-1

This extract is taken from Chapter 1 in Rex, J. and Tomlinson, S. (1979) Colonial Immigrants in a British City: A class analysis. London. Routledge and Kegan Paul. It explains my understanding of ‘class’ as based on the power some groups have to treat weaker groups differentially, and education as part of a struggle for status. The book analyzed the relationship between migrants from the West Indies and from Asia and the class structure of British society in the 1970s.

The most central usage of the term ‘class’ in European sociology at least is that which derives not so much from Marx himself as from orthodox Marxist usage. According to this usage social class derives from men’s relationship to the means of production. On the one hand this leads to an economic analysis based upon the creation, expropriation and distribution of surplus value produced by workers who have sold their labour power. On the other hand it leads to an account of the sociological development of social classes as ‘classes-for-themselves’ which eventually become the principal historical agents in the transition from one stage to another.

As a model for the explanation of the development of capitalist economies and as a political model for explaining changes within the structure of these economies, Marxist sociology has only remained tenable through the explicit or implicit introduction of subsidiary hypotheses. Thus what usually passes as Marxist analysis is little more than some sort of class analysis, based upon a recognition of the fact that there are differences of interest arising from differential control of property, and that it is in the pursuit of such differentiated interests that men unite for purposes of political conflict.

This more generalized perspective of a quasi-Marxist sort is the one used in his earlier formulation of the problem of class, status and power by Max Weber. According to this, any differential control of property produces different market situations, and these market situations are what Weber meant when he spoke of class situations. Unlike Marx, Weber believed that although class situations in different markets may become interconnected and merged, they need not necessarily do so, so that, instead of the single all-embracing class struggle in which society becomes divided more and more into two great warring camps, one finds a multiplicity of classes. Moreover, since Weber had rejected the labour theory of value and its attendant theory of capitalist crisis in favour of marginalist economics, he did not see class struggle as a process in which rising classes sought political hegemony in order to establish a new social order. Rather he saw them as relatively permanent conflict groups, whose jockeying for power was in the nature of things. Thus if any work deserves to have written on its title page, ‘All history is the history of class struggles’, it is the section of Economy and Society which deals with the city (Weber, 1968, vol. 3, ch. 16).

Much of the analysis of what is commonly called class differentiation, particularly in Britain, however, does not deal solely or even primarily with market positions, but with status and power. Probably in Britain this is true, primarily, because the revolutions of the seventeenth century were never completed and the society retained strongly aristocratic elements within its new bourgeois structures. In the USA similar approaches can be found, primarily amongst conservative sociologists and those who have been struck by the social and political pre-eminence of the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant upper strata of New England (Warner, 1942).

What these approaches are concerned with is not so much class, as what Weber distinguished as a separate analytic element, namely status. This concept refers to distinctions made between people who, as a result of these distinctions, live within relatively distinct cultures and societies, between which mobility is restricted. It is sometimes said that these distinct cultures and societies form a graded hierarchy, but such a judgment is usually based upon the perceptions of those groups who think of themselves as upper-class. The actual relations between groups within such a ‘system’ are a complex matter, and each group shows partial resentment of, and partial adjustment to, the system so long as it lasts.

The study of status-systems by sociologists has usually been carried out from the perspectives of those who had some reason to resent the system, most usually by those who have experienced some mobility, but found further opportunities blocked. There has been little in the way of a systematic conservative sociology which states explicitly the social distinctions made between classes and the optimum degree of mobility and of ideological persuasion necessary to ensure the legitimacy of their position, though such a sociology could be envisaged. Equally there could be, and to some extent there actually is, a sociology of the lower status groups, which negates the notion of graduation and that of the desirability of mobility, and simply sets out to make explicit the values and patterns of social relations which characterize the life of such groups. It seems clear, then, that the analysis of the status order of an advanced industrial society, like that in Great Britain, is likely to be many-faceted, even if this analysis is not confused, as it often is, with the questions of class struggle and political conflict. (pp. 2–4)

References

• Warner, William Lloyd (1942) The Status System of a Modern Community New Haven, USA: Yale University Press.
• Weber, Max (1968) Economy and Society (3 vols) New York: Bedminster Press.

2 A Sociology of Special Education

DOI: 10.4324/9781315794785-2

The following extract is the first chapter, ‘Why a sociology of special education’ in Tomlinson, S. (1982 and re-issued in 2012) A Sociology of Special Education. London. Routledge. pp. 5–25. This book aimed to widen debates about special education by asking questions about the social structures and relationships that occur when part of a mass education system develops as ‘special’; about the conflicts between individuals and groups that occur when this happens; and about the beliefs and ideologies used to justify this kind of education. The references for this chapter have been added.

In Britain, the way in which children are categorised out of ordinary or mainstream education and into special education is generally regarded as enlightened and advanced, and an instance of the obligation placed upon civilised society to care for its weaker members. Special education is permeated by an ideology of benevolent humanitarianism, which provides a moral framework within which professionals and practitioners work.

But it is important to recognise that the recognition, classification, provision for, or treatment of, children who have been at various times defined as defective, handicapped or as having special needs, may very well be enlightened and advanced, but it is also a social categorisation of weaker social groups.

All over the world, powerful social groups are in the process of categorising and classifying weaker social groups, and treating them unequally and differentially. The rationalisations and explanations which powerful groups offer for their actions differ from country to country and the ideologies supporting systems of categorisation differ. The notion that a variety of professional groups are solely engaged in ‘doing good’ to the children they refer, assess, place and teach in special education is something of a rationalisation. Professionals and practitioners have vested interests in the expansion and development of special education. They also have very real power to define and affect the lives and futures of the children they deal with. A crucial factor in special education is that, unlike in other parts of the education system, the children concerned cannot speak for themselves, and despite the growth of parental pressure groups, parents still have little influence on special education processes. The clients of special education, children and their parents, have the least say and influence over what happens to them, and are subject to the most pressures, persuasions and coercion, of any group in the education system.

State special education is a sub-system of the wider normal education system. It has developed to cater for children who are categorised out of the ordinary education offered to the majority of children in the society. It is important to stress at the outset that in modern industrial societies, which increasingly demand qualifications and credentials acquired through the education system, to be categorised out of ‘normal’ education represents the ultimate in non-achievement in terms of ordinary educational goals. Occupational success, social mobility, privilege and advancement are currently legitimated by the education system; those who receive a ‘special’ rather than an ordinary education are, by and large, excluded from these things. The rationale for exclusion has been that children are defective, handicapped or, more recently, have special needs. The result of exclusion is that the majority of the children are destined for a ‘special’ career and life-style in terms of employability and self-sufficiency.

Special education has been steadily increasing in size and importance over the past hundred years, and it often has appeared to be in a permanently dynamic state of change. But education systems and their parts do not develop spontaneously, they do not mysteriously adapt to social requirements, change without intent, and they do not necessarily develop in order to benefit different groups of children. Education systems, as Archer has pointed out (Archer, 1979), develop their characteristics because of the goals pursued by the people who control them and who have vested interests in their development. They change because of debates, arguments and power struggles. Changes in the form, organisation and provision of special education are not the result of mysterious processes of evolution, nor are they benevolent adaptations to new social requirements. Change happens because certain people want it to happen and can impose their views and goals on others. Thus, changes in the law relating to special education, in statutory categories, in separate or integrated provision, in increased professional involvement, in special curricula, and so on, occur as a result of deliberate decisions by people who have power to make the decisions.

Similarly, special education did not develop because individuals or groups were inspired by benevolent humanitarianism to ‘do good’ to certain children.

The idea that the development of special education was solely a matter of ‘doing good’ and was civilised progress can possibly be traced to eighteenth-century humanism and nineteenth-century Christian reformism. But humanitarianism can itself become an ideology, legitimating principles of social control within a society. For example, A. F. Tredgold, who published an influential textbook on Mental Deficiency in 1908, dedicated his book to ‘all those of sound mind who are interested in the welfare of their less fortunate fellow creatures’. But Tredgold also served on a committee concerned with the sterilisation of defective people, and supported the idea of euthanasia for idiots and imbeciles.

The Charity Organisation Society, who took an interest in the defective and feeble-minded from the 1880s, urged social reform based on Christian principles of ‘love, working through individual and social life’ (Mowat, 1961). But they also urged that the feeble-minded be segregated in institutions and made to perform useful work.

This book attempts to bring sociological perspectives to bear upon those social processes, policies and practices which comprise special education. The processes of special education are very complex, as are most social processes.

Theory and practice in special education are informed by a variety of disciplines and approaches, but, by and large, sociology is not one of them. Medical, psychological, educational, administrative and technical approaches all influence and inform special education, but the sociological input is currently very limited. Sociological perspectives should be able to help all those concerned with special education by making clearer what is happening and why it is happening, particularly the way in which people or groups exercise power and influence, and can shape and change special education.

Tasks and values in sociology

A major task of sociology is to demystify social processes and social situations. John Rex wrote that:

Sociology is a subject whose insights should be made available to the mass of people in order that they should use it to liberate themselves from the mystification of social reality that is continually provided by those in our society who exercise power and influence.

(Rex, 1974, Preface)

Much of what happens in social life is the product of power struggles and vested interest, and special education is no exception. Each of the professional groups involved in referring, assessing, recognising, treating, teaching or administering in special education has its own vested interest, its own sphere of competence and a variety of powers. The people who are involved in special education are in the position to mystify others, particularly as special education is one of the most secret areas of education, in which ‘confidential files’ are the rule rather than the exception.

On a more general level, the task of sociology is to describe, analyse, explain and theorise about social interaction and social relationships. Sociology attempts to show that social reality can be studied from a variety of perspectives, that there are regularities which underlie the social structures and social process which people create and live within, and that there are social groups and movements which seek to account for, or legitimate change in these structures and institutions. Sociology cannot, of course, change social situations. This is the prerogative of the social participants themselves, who exercise practical, political and moral judgments. Special school teachers, for example, continually make judgments about the capabilities of the children they teach, often based on social rather than educational criteria. The ideology of cultural disadvantage is often used to explain ‘slow learners’. ‘The poor achievements of many slow learners are due as much to the limi...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: A sociological perspective
• 1 Class analysis and colonial immigrants
• 2 A sociology of special education
• 3 The expansion of special education
• 4 Conflicts and dilemmas for professionals in special education
• 5 The irresistible rise of the SEN industry
• 6 The radical structuralist view of special education and disability
• 7 Race and special education
• 8 The British national identity
• 9 Educational reforms: Ideologies and visions
• 10 Home-school links
• 11 Education in a post-welfare society
• 12 Low attainers in a global knowledge economy
• 13 Disability in Somaliland
• Index