Explaining Educability: an investigation of political support for the Children with Learning Disabilities Act of 1969

Abstract

Of the various officially recognised models which explain differences in educational outcomes, only intelligence has been investigated by sociologists of education. This paper introduces a model currently used in American education, brain dysfunction (learning disability, dyslexia) and discusses the different ways it was interpreted and advocated by those urging federal legislative recognition of it. This reveals conflicts between the different interpretations, which in turn suggests that the reconstruction of an unambiguous account of such models and the purposes they serve may be more problematic than some historical reconstructions of the category of intelligence suggest. Finally, though it does appear that, like intelligence, brain dysfunction serves the interests of the dominant classes, the ways it does so are neither immediately obvious nor discoverable solely from the contents of the category.