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I Hate SNOW's picture

Institutionalization of Disabilities in American Education

McDermott raises the idea that culture has the power to disable, and that disability is defined as an incapacity to navigate adversity. The groups who put themselves in power are problematic because they "are arrogant to think [they] know better than people in other cultures... and foolish to not appreciate...others in their own terms." These groups' views on culture boil down to the instinct and insight observed by them as outsiders, but what is often misunderstood is that culture is just a "particular version of coherence" crafted by a community of individuals. McDermott notes in this article that disability does not relate to intellectual or physical impairments but to the points of separations in cultures from aspects like "race, gender, or beauty." The greatest issue with this separation is how it has been institutionalized in American Education. I found his argument about the impact on children's experiences dualistic: "there are only two ways for a person to be." To put it more clearly, there is a factory line approach to issues-- Students are categorized, and if anything is seen as 'wrong' then they are made 'disabled.'This method can be seen back when immigrants were being inculcated with American values in public schools back in the turn of the twentieth century, but it continues with today's focus on diagnosing and more importantly medicating students with learning disabilities, like ADHD, to normalize their behavior.

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