A Sociology of Special Education (RLE Edu M)

Sally Tomlinson

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780415506939
• eBook ISBN: 9781136457111
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

At the time of original publication, special education in Britain was permeated by an ideology of benevolent humanitarianism and this is ostensibly the moral framework within which the professionals – teachers, educational psychologists, medical officers – operate. The author widens the debate about special education by introducing sociological perspectives and considering the structural relationships that are produced both within the system and in the wider society when part of a mass education system develops separately, as 'special' rather than normal. She outlines the origin and development of special education, stressing the conflicts involved and the role played by vested interests, and criticizes the current rhetoric of 'special needs'. Among the issues and dilemmas that she identifies, the problems of selection, assessment, integration and the curriculum for special schools are discussed in details, and the position of parents, pupils and teachers within the system is examined. The author gives particular attention in a separate chapter to the problems and position of ethnic minorities.

Chapter One Why a sociology of special education?

In Britain, the way in which children are categorised out of ordinary or mainsteam 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 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.¹ 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 were 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 education 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 limitations of their cultural background as the limitations of ability’ (Gulliford, 1969, p. 15). The assumption here is that teachers are unable to teach lower social class children adequately, because of cultural factors outside their control. Sociological perspectives might help teachers to question the value-assumption in this kind of statement, and change their practice accordingly. Only the teachers themselves are in a position to change what they actually do, but sociology could help them to recognise what they are doing. Sociology can make clear what the value-assumptions are of the people who are able to determine the life-chances of others and question the basis upon which decisions are made about other people. Sociology refuses to take for granted the explanations that people with power offer for their actions, or the official definitions of social situations. Sociological perspectives are important, and they should not go unrecognised or undeveloped any longer in the area of special education.

However, sociological intervention in special education will not necessarily be welcomed, and may even be regarded as unnecessary, or disturbing. An article which was mildly critical of the Warnock Committee on Special Educational Needs (1978) for accepting psychological perspectives rather uncritically and for failing to consider sociological perspectives (Lewis and Vulliamy, 1979) was condemned by a member of the Warnock Committee as ‘hard and callous’ (The Times Educational Supplement, 29 December 1979).

There is the possibility that sociological interventions in special education will be regarded as critical and threatening simply because they question the conventional perspectives, recipe knowledge and vested interests which are currently dominant in the area.

But if sociological perspectives have largely been lacking, sociologists, by their own lack of interests, have only themselves to blame. They were not represented on the Warnock Committee and are not consulted by those responsible for framing and changing the forms of special education. To date, sociologists have shown remarkably little interest in special education. Despite claims of objectivity, sociologists are often as much influenced in their choice of studies by prevailing ideologies as anyone else, and accept the treatment of certain social groups as ‘natural’ and therefore unworthy of study. Thus, over the past thirty years, sociologists have devoted much time and energy to demonstrating the inequities of selection by ‘brightness’ in education while ignoring the progressive removal of more and more children from normal education on the grounds of defect, dullness, handicap or special need.

It should be said that although sociologists can describe, analyse, theorise, clarify and demystify, they cannot do this in an objective way which assumes a value-freedom on their part, as some earlier sociologists had claimed. The debate on facts and values has a long history in sociology (Weber, 1949; Myrdal, 1944) and the consensus produced by the debate was that, while sociologists have no special claim, any more than natural or physical scientists, to impose their value-judgments on their analysis, they must make clear their own value-standpoint. This was articulated quite carefully by Kellman in 1970:

We must recognise that social research, particularly on significant social issues, cannot be value-free, nor is there any reason why it should be. What is important is that we be actively aware of the values we bring to our own research, that we acknowledge them publicly and try in every way possible to take account of them in the formulation and execution of our own research and in the interpretation of our findings. (Kellman, 1970, p. 94)

If sociologists are going to research in, and theorise about, special education, they will have to make their own value-position clear, but equally, they will not be able to impose their judgments on others. For example, in a piece of research carried out in the mid-1970s (Tomlinson, 1981), the value-position taken was that to be categorised as mildly educationally subnormal, was more a legitimation of low social status than the treatment of an educational need. This position questioned the prevalent common-sense assumption that to be mildly mentally or educationally retarded is a prerogative of the lower social classes. It turned back-to-front the literature on ESN-M children which attempts to trace causal explanations for educational subnormality in low social class or cultural disadvantage (see, for example, Stein and Susser, 1960; Gulliford, 1969). It pointed out that categorising children as ESN-M may be more of a solution to a problem of social order than an aid to education. This kind of value-position may very well be unacceptable to some people involved in special education, but it is only by making their own position clear that sociologists will be able to be of any relevance and to join in current debates on change and development in special education.

Dominant perspectives on special education

During the nineteenth century, the medical profession developed and sustained an interest in all kinds of ‘defect’, and it was medical influence which dominated the commissions and committees on defective children in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Egerton Commission, 1889; Committee on Defective and Epileptic Children, 1898; Report of the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded, 1908).

Clinical definitions of various types and grades of defect, and subnormality, became the prerogative of medical men. A medical superintendent at one of the first idiots’ asylums devised a test for feeble-mindedness. It included looking for ‘a v-shaped palate, large coarse outstanding ears, a fixed stare and a curved little finger’ (Pritchard, 1963, p. 137). After the 1870 Elementary Education Act, which ushered in mass education, state educators recognised the more obvious handicaps of blindness and deafness and epilepsy and also began to define a problem of feebleminded children in schools. Gradually, the notion developed that special, rather than ordinary, education should be offered to children who were, by definition, troublesome in the ordinary schools. This meant that educational administrators and the teaching profession developed an interest in defining defective but educable children. Special educators originally had some influence on decision-making for ‘special instruction’ – the head teacher of special schools for educable defective children was originally a member of the team who decided which children were defective, but generally teachers in the sub-system of special education had lower status than other teachers and only recently have they achieved more influence and parity with other teachers.²

The early twentieth century was a period when definitions of defect were consolidated and more special provision made, and this coincided with the development of the ‘science’ of psychology and the rise of the mental testing movement. Gradually, the new profession of psychology came to have a major influence in defining which children should receive a special education.

Esland has pointed out the way in which the cultural and political standpoint of psychologists has always been regarded as unproblematic, which meant that the judgments of psychologists appeared to be only ‘technical diagnosis’ (Esland, 1976, p. 261). In fact, psychologists often make judgments as much on the basis of their own social, cultural and political beliefs as on any objective ‘science’ (Tomlinson, 1981). In addition, both medical and psychological personnel have had vested career interests in special education since its inception, and the development of special education during the twentieth century can be viewed in terms of the vested interests of the professional groups, medical, psychological, educational and administrative, each anxious that their perspectives and influence should predominate, yet recognising a mutual interdependence. From the 1890s, the notion that it should be a ‘team’ decision as to which children should be recognised as candidates for special education has made it difficult to ignore any professional group in the assessment processes. The creation of ancillary professional groups has meant that there are a variety of other influences and perspectives on special education – social workers, psychiatrists, speech therapists, counsellors, careers officers, physiotherapists, education welfare officers, probation officers and health visitors are some of these groups; and all offer their own areas of ‘knowledge’ and have vested interests in the continued expansion of special education.

Technological developments in special education will also bring in more personnel, but they will be linked to existing perspectives. For example, neuro-surgical advance hopes to give simulated vision to the blind by implanting electrical devices:² this kind of development will be linked to medical interests. Practitioners’ interests will be furthered, and new personnel with the requisite skills will be employed to use computers in special teaching programmes. The production of an individual learning programme (ILP) for every handicapped child became a legal requirement in the USA with the passing of Public Law 94–142 (Zettel, 1978), and this kind of provision could only be attempted with computer assistance.

However, the perspectives of disciplines such as medicine and psychology and the action of professionals and practitioners are themselves constrained by the structures of the society. The structure of industrial society has always provided a number of contradictions for those involved in special education to resolve. Until recently, the profit motive in such a society dictated that as many members as possible should be productive and even the defective or handicapped must work if possible. If not, contradictions arise as to how much of the society’s resources should be allocated to the handicapped. Similarly, the preparation of a productive, educated work-force in ordinary schools was seen, after 1870, to be impeded by handicapped or defective children. A contradiction which has still not been resolved after a hundred years is the provision for, and control of, potentially ‘troublesome’ groups of children, while keeping the cost of provision low, but encouraging as many as possible to be eventually productive and self-sufficient.

Existing sociological perspectives on special education

There is, of course, an existing sociological tradition in special education, although many practitioners would not recognise it as such. This is what came to be called the structural-functionalist approach, epitomised by a concern for order, balance and equilibruim in a society (Parsons, 1952). The handicapped, in this approach, and also possibly in the popular consciousness, have become associated with the kind of deviance which Durkheim would have recognised; they are ‘not normal’ because of the definition of ‘normality’ applied by the rest of society (Hargreaves, 1979). The dominant concern within this approach has been the ‘fitting in’ of the handicapped, adults and children, into society. Thus, there has developed a whole literature on the social problems created by defects or handicaps and particularly on the families of handicapped children⁴ and with the place of the handicapped in the com...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Why a sociology of special education?
• 2. The social origins of special education
• 3. Issues and dilemmas in special education
• 4. Professional roles and the assessment process
• 5. Parents, pupils and teachers in special education
• 6. The curriculum in special schools
• 7. Ethnic minority children in special education
• 8. The future of special education
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index