I remember years ago working for the Work Foundation, on the Commissioner’s Leadership Programme. I was listening to the gentleman speaking before me talk about trust. He said that trust once broken, was like a dropped plate, once shattered it was fragile and rarely the same again. This troubled me, I’d like to think that over time trust can be rebuilt, and that conversations within relationships can help us feel safe once more.
Roll on a few years, another conference, another speaker, and I hear that trust cannot be demanded. "You can’t send a memo on Friday night asking for more trust on Monday morning.” Indeed, I’d have to say that the words ‘trust me’ tend to solicit an opposite reaction in me. It is up there in the red flag department with ‘I’ve worked with someone like you before’ and ‘we’re inclusive’. The most reflective among us will say ‘I trust you’ rather than ‘trust me’ when seeking to establish safety in an exchange. Invariably it’s not a hiccup, but a big crash when trust breaks down, and things fall apart.
I have been accused by DM of hating men and non-disabled people. Both are untrue as far as I can trust myself, but I do indeed rant against the sexism and ableism I experience. These DMs typically arrive shortly after I have highlighted the fear, pain, and harm caused by ignorance, injustice and disadvantage. More specifically when I’ve called out poor practice. My tone is no doubt angry, as these are situations where I am calling on others to understand the cost of discrimination – the huge emotional labour of fighting for safe space. It’s very easy to say I should trust people to be kind, but without having been able to take it for granted doing so is very difficult. Several times this past year I’ve been treated unfairly. So it’s not that I don’t want to trust the next person, it’s that I did trust the last, and the few before that, and they dropped the plate… they refused to hear what I needed to say to be able to work without fear. Furthermore, in one case I asked for help, reasonable adjustments were agreed but later refused because I was too stupid to understand what inclusion meant. I was left shattered, shamed and humiliated.
So baring scars I’ve asked to be heard, and it’s a game-changer! Starting a new job recently, my now colleague, asked what I needed before work went ahead. After a five minute conversation, we agreed that the difficulties I listed weren’t deal-breakers. I also felt happier, as the probable extra effort to come had been acknowledged. As it happened help wasn’t necessary, but I knew that if problems should occur I would be allowed to speak before they became catastrophic. More importantly, I felt trusted, therefore no longer fearful that I would be penalised for not having voiced my weaknesses. I took this learning to my next job…
Whether you agree with disability equality is not the key here, it’s whether you can work in ways that express it. Without that commitment, I can’t rely on practice that doesn't counter your organisation’s ableism. Therefore I will continue to find it hard to trust without dialogue. I will need a few minutes to hear in your voice or see in your face, that you understand the position I face. Because, without you acknowledging my fears, you will not able to address them.
The point of this bletther is to move away from woe-me. I understand that the current circumstances have put pressure on us all. But I’ve been left ashamed and shattered far more than once this year! To trust again will require dialogue. I am no more vulnerable than anyone else, but fragile I am, from repeatedly being shut down when I needed my fears heard. Fears that have grown over the years, ignored or dismissed, so that now the tiniest of pressures can make me crack. The fissures may not be of your making, but as my new colleagues have shown trust can be rekindled. Thank you Lucy and Kevin for always asking!
Apology, this is a trial. I acknowledge mistakes, imperfections and accessibility issues. I'm learning, with every mole-hour available!
The language of Special in the culture of education
Welcome back to session 2
Ideology
Defined here as institutional norms - ideology is often strengthened by society’s narratives - shaping our professional values, ideas and practice. Some beliefs we might be aware of, having encountered them as barriers in our learning, others may be so deeply buried, we rarely question them.
Storytelling
In conversation, those labelled are often assumed to be less competent learners, a belief that crystallises as an unacknowledged idea that bottom sets require less attention, rather than more thought, time and energy.
Ultimately the grading learners by sets, becomes the unchallenged idea. The hidden assumption being that those labelled should be treated differently.
The language of special
In textual and conversational worlds, the words ’vulnerable’, ‘needy’, ‘special’ and ‘differently abled’ are often used to describe those labelled. So creating the belief, if not the idea, that it’s the learner who has needs, not the educational support that is needed. This reinforces the idea some learners have deficiencies that stop them learning the right way. Its not our thinking, but our language, in is these seemingly inconsequential words, that leads to negative assumptions about labelled learners.
Ableism ?
When written into guidance, policy and strategy, the false assumptions derived from wording become apparent, not as a caricature so much, but as stereotypes in a narrative of typical. Those labelled become a group of outsiders, forgotten altogether outside Special Educational Needs literature. That’s to say most will forget to think of labelled learners as one or two in ten within each classroom – overall a sizeable population entitled to parity. The reaction to which is that the labelled are isolated individuals needing help – or needing to get off their backside – because they do not keep up, or overcome the barriers faced by those who succeed despite the system.
Reinforced by specialist disciplines, a cycle of rejection and ignorance, institutionalises testimonial injustice in research evidence, the very knowledge that informs professionalism. Thus misrepresented, labelled learners are silence by privileged writers in the storytelling of education, the telling of school practice, and the history of education. These remain devoid of the voices of those refused participation within the institution.
Organisational & institutional discrimination
While prejudice leads to bias at the individual level, systemic discrimination needs a definition of its own. One that fully articulates the specific characteristics of those labelled as a specifically marginalised as a disadvantaged group.
While Schools need to be a safe space to explore and theorise what it means to be ‘othered’ and ‘different’ in an environment which is usually seen as privileged. yet where many feel they can’t express their needs… Within academia, where perfectionism, productivity and excellence are accepted and therefore individuals may not necessarily be able to question these ideas.
Oppression
Recognising different levels of ableism in classrooms, schools, and education.
Prejudice, victimisation or disability hate crime: atypical behaviour extended towards those labelled. The negative feelings, attitudes or behaviour, often fuelling a prejudice that is based on unchallenged assumption, or unconscious bias, belief that the ‘other’ is less deserving of respect;
Systemic or institutional discrimination: the unfair disadvantage created by ways of working and/or internal barriers that lead to on-going hindrance or restricted opportunity for those labelled;
Social inequality: globe - local culture, affecting organisational narratives where the representation those labelled feed the belief mentioned previously. These are generally so widespread in society they escape direct notice as ableist.
Inclusion
Chosen by disabled people, activists within groups including Disability Studies, the word inclusion was specifically chosen to articulate belonging, unlike integration and mainstreaming which imply the need of those labelled to fit in. To be included in the fullest sense, education, not school practice, needs to change to enable the fullest participation of every possible learner. This articulation also disrupts a belief in a them and us continuum, by proposing an opposition to the implied acceptance of conditionality in existing vocabularies. Disabled activist saw these options as different forms of institutionalisation, entrenched by the language of disciplines describing learners as special.
Viewed as an alternative inclusion is a possible North Star, a vision, not a reality. Therefore while inclusive practice exists, inclusion is not a currently available option, because current alternatives only offer the unsatisfactory limitations imposed by existing classroom and school variation. Which means learners and their families cannot opt for a local school free of prejudice, discrimination and inequality. Because no school space is free of ableism, sexism, racism, classism, homophobia, religious intolerance, and expectation in terms of family choices.
Able privilege
Not the luxury of one identity, but the advantage of not having to stand against the expected norm. In school culture, where variation is an anomaly rather than a difference that is planned for. Belonging therefore is always jeopardised by culture.
In critical disability studies, able-privilege was first referred to as hearing privilege, not to describe being deaf, but to highlight the privilege of those not facing audism. The privilege of not being disadvantage in a hearing society, a world that denies sign - BSL - as a language. Now think of the impact of Rose’s presence on Strictly, with the 488% rise in searches for learning Sign Language on google.
The notion of ‘able’ as a norm, not other, defines the disadvantage the group faces not their identity. As a concept, it is the privilege that is unearned, as it is afforded to those who not need to prove their humanity repeatedly.
Able-privilege, relative to non-disabled people, is not having to face ableism by reason of difference. A learner, therefore, need not identify for others to articulate the characteristic discrimination, ableism, many are subject to. The discrimination and inequality imposed on the labelled school population more widely, it is equivalent to the sexism women experience, a disadvantage that impacts on them negatively, as a characteristic myriad of set-backs. In gender terms, there's a difference between ‘misogyny’ and ‘patriarchy’ in the language of feminism, that writers on matters of disability equality have yet to name. Currently there is a dearth of disability specific terminology to describe with nuance in identity, prejudice, impairment, discrimination and inequality.
Misrepresentation
People trust their personal experience rather than attempting to address their assumptions with research evidence or working wisdom… their own voices louder than the alternatives offered by disabled people, but the ideas imposed by society more widely.
Ableism is written into organisational accounts, in documents such as research, reviews, and text books, as many writers fail to name the negative impact of schooling on the labelled population. Our textual world fails to articulate an opposition to the institutional discrimination within education or inequality in society more widely.
The very phrase ‘special educational needs’ creates a space in which we can cast out those we find ourselves unwilling to teach. Ironically, the phrase was introduced to get away from diagnosis, by putting emphasis on the support being special not the learner. Like so many disciplines, education has sidelined ‘disability’ as a separate body of knowledge.
Labelling learners ‘SEN' allows us to speak of them as outsiders in a narrative about attainment, achievement and success, where those not percieved as 'entitled' to support become those who threaten higher outcomes. Think of ‘levelling up’ currently.
Questions for research
What are the stereotypes of labelled learners?
How do these impact on learning?
How do these impact on teachers?
What emotions and reaction do they cause?
How does this cycle of stereotype/feeling/reaction impact on classroom practice, school organisation, leadership team conversation and the meaning in policy documents?
