Exploring ableism in Indian schooling through the social model of disability

Abstract

In this piece, I argue that the exclusion of children with disabilities is an outcome of exclusionary practices inherent to schooling. And when exclusion is the norm, it is bound to produce ideological justifications for the systemic problems produced by it. I therefore question whether it is even possible to dismantle ableism in schools without addressing the political economic dimension of schooling under Capitalism. The issue concerning the relationship between exclusion and disablement is particularly pertinent in India today because a far-right party has just been re-elected and a new education policy has been drafted that proposes to provide multiple ‘exit’ options to children, which actually means multiple exclusion options.

Keywords:

• Ableism
• exclusion
• schooling
• neoliberalism

Introduction

As a volunteer teacher of mathematics and other subjects at a study centre for blind children in Mumbai, my interactions with my students forced me to realise the systemic nature of failure and exclusion in relation to their disablement. My work drove me to engage with the social model of disability, which took into account the political economy of Capitalism, and thus helped make sense of the problems the students were facing. I draw from an episode from my field observations and present it in the backdrop of the current political changes in India owing to a far-right political party that has just been re-elected. But first, I articulate the social model of disability by demarcating it from other social perspectives on disability.

Contending perspectives on disability

Disability Studies begins with the rejection of popular explanations of disability as the expected outcome of bodily limitations. However, disability studies includes various contending perspectives on disability even though all stand opposed to what Oliver (1983) termed as, ‘the individual model of disability’. These contending positions can be broadly categorized based on their focal points of analysis. For example, the focal point of ‘individual model of disability’ is the individual. The problems associated with disability are subsequently attributed to the individual having a disability.

The ‘social model of disability’ as conceptualized by The Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS) theorized disability from a Marxist perspective. For Marxists, the entry point into disability studies is the political economy and the class structure of society. As Capitalism reduces ‘ability’ to one’s exploitability as a worker (Jaffee 2016), the oppression of disabled people stems from this economic system that depends on creating a class of ‘disabled bodies’.

A Postmodern perspective shifts focus away from both, the individual as well as the class structure, and towards Culture. The violence faced by disabled people are seen to stem from the dominant culture of disablism (Goodley and Runswick-Cole 2011) or ableism.

Each view on disability takes for granted certain ‘givens’. Consequently a particular perspective determines broadly:

1. How the phenomenon of disability is understood and presented.

2. How other social phenomena that are seemingly unrelated to disability are conceptualized.

3. The nature of research questions raised.

4. The solutions offered.

5. The limits of those solutions.

The limits of the solutions subsequently feed back into the perspective on disability and reinforces those limits as indubitable features of disablement. To elicit this point, I share an incident from my field experience.

The research site

My research was conducted at a study centre for blind children in Mumbai, India. Supported by the National Association for the Blind (NAB), India, the centre caters to partially/blind students most of who attend mainstream schools. Driven by curiosity of having a study centre in our vicinity, in 2013, along with three of my friends we visited the centre. Since I’m a musician we got a two-hour slot on Saturday mornings to engage the students with music and recreational and educational activities. Although over 50 students are registered with the centre, around ten students visit regularly on Saturday mornings.

Motivation

Once while teaching, a student Rina (pseudonym) narrated her experiences of being discriminated against in the school in which she had just shifted. While it did not come across as unusual that a visually challenged girl was discriminated against in a private school, she contrasted her experience with that in her previous (government) school in which she claimed to not face such discrimination. Both schools were ‘normal’ schools (with blackboards, teachers without knowledge of Braille or Sign language, etc.). Rina was in her 9th standard. Since her exams were on, I volunteered to read out her textbook with the audio recorder running so she would have an mp3 recording of the lesson. In the process, her narrative was also recorded which with her permission, I share below.

Rina’s narrative

Rina began sharing her perspective on how society treats blind people:

Rina: Society has not, [yet] accepted blind people. … they show that “Yes, we help them” but from the inside, their thoughts, mindset is not there, to help. … I don’t play with them, (They think that) “this will happen to her, that will happen to her”. That’s why I’m made to sit separately. … I have received (sports) medals … I showed that in school. Even still they would not know that in her also there is talent. … till now, their thinking hasn’t changed.

Had Rina ended her narrative here, it could have been argued that Rina’s experience of discrimination was an inevitable outcome of being a blind girl. However, Rina pointed out that she was not discriminated in her previous school. And neither was Ravi (pseudonym) who also studies at the centre:

Rina: … my school before this, … was very good. I did not at all feel different. … And even Ravi, they cooperate. … In this school, so much discrimination doesn’t happen.

Rina claimed to not feel different at all while acknowledging the role of her friends and her teacher for cooperating with her. It was evident to Rina that her ill-treatment was not due to her blindness but rather how society responded to blindness. Referring back to her current school, she narrated an incident that occurred the previous day during her exam in which she and her writer were made to sit outside the classroom on broken benches without a fan on a hot day, since her writer was considered a distraction to the other students:

Rina: But this private school, they [discriminate], very much … keeping me separate. Yesterday … [for] the exam … all the children were inside, where they sit daily for class. … for writing the exam, there was no place there, so the teacher was saying that everyone will be disturbed (because of the writer) so I was made to sit outside. That I would get disturbed, no one considered.

Rina highlighted that the school was a ‘private school’. Unlike her previous school in which she studied till the 8^th standard, here she had to pay fees. Also, since she was in the 9^th standard, the ‘no detention policy’ (which stipulated that no child can be held back till the 8^th standard) as introduced by India’s Right to Education (RTE) Act of 2009 no longer applied. Rina was in fact even denied admission in the private school on the pretext of her blindness. Only after a relentless struggle by the centre teachers was Rina finally admitted.

Disablement through schooling

What we make out of this incident depends significantly on our perspective on disability. My initial reading of Rina’s narrative was merely that people with disabilities face discrimination. On coming across the social model of disability it became evident that disablement was the effect rather than the cause of exclusion and discrimination. Not having engaged deeply enough with the economic dimension of disability as afforded by the social model, I concluded with the suggestion that the education research community needs to change their ideas about the relationship between disability and exclusion. When I came across the concept of ableism and disablism, I described Rina’s experiences as a case of ableist discrimination arising from a disablist culture. I concluded by suggesting that classrooms need to change their cultures and beliefs about dis/ability.

The limitations of cultural explanations were that they focused on beliefs about dis/ability without engaging adequately into material conditions that produce disablement along with ideological justifications for ableist discrimination. To shift the gaze from the disabled individual to a disablist culture does not contribute to any radical social change for the same reason that a disablist culture is also a symptom, an ideological reflection of sociopolitical economic conditions. Also, postmodern perspectives on disability did not engage adequately into the process of schooling where exclusion actively takes place.

Understanding schools from a Dialectical or Marxist perspective afforded by the social mode helps raise an entirely different set of research questions that otherwise appear unrelated to disability. For example, why is it that in India where the government can afford to spend billions of dollars on nuclear warfare, we often find ourselves forced to develop ‘low-cost’ teaching tools for our students who are excluded from schools that cannot ‘afford’ to include them? A dialectical perspective also provides insights into why students with disabilities face exclusion. For example, schools need to produce failures and a student’s grades can hold value only if the school fails or gives lower grades to a large number of students.

Conducting examinations, assessing and failing students is taken for granted as inevitable and even justified. Examinations contribute to serving the economic demands of the market, including the multi-billion dollar Indian coaching industry. It is commonly assumed that the fear of failing gets pupils to study harder and avoid participating in political struggles. In India, qualified teachers need to pass ‘Eligibility’ tests if they wish to practice. Entrance exams thus create divisions among those waiting for an employment, and thus suppresses dissent among those who will not get a job. Failing also plays an ideological role by being considered as a fate reserved for ‘others’ and thereby absolves us of the need to understand concrete issues afflicting those communities from which a disproportionate number of students fail. In India, exclusion is built into our social fabric woven by the Caste system. Caste forbade women from accessing education, and criminalized it with dire consequences for ‘lower’ castes (Shudras) and ‘untouchables’ (dalits) who comprised of a majority of India’s population. Although caste discrimination is officially criminalized, schools continue to provide meritocratic legitimations for casteist practices.

With the entry of Neoliberal policies in Indian education in the early 90s, privatization of schools increased and profits became more internationalised. In June 2019, soon after a far right-wing party was re-elected, a Draft National Policy on Education (DNEP)¹ was released by the Human Resource Ministry that in addition to facilitating increased privatization proposed a new system in which there will be multiple ‘exit points’ after Class VIII, thus facilitating systematic exclusion of (blind) students at various stages. Completely disregarding the sociopolitical dimension of disability (which was sensitively addressed in educational policy documents in the previous regime), the DNEP treats disability as an individual problem, emphasizes ‘mainstreaming’, and suggests offering scholarships to ‘talented and meritorious’ students supposedly to ‘enhance participation of differently-abled children in school education (p. 156)’.

When exclusion is taken for granted, students with disabilities (for example, Rina who is blind and also a dalit girl) will be seen as inevitable victims of an immutable part of social life, and consequently treated as preordained failures. I therefore conclude my argument with a call to take a stand against privatization, and a question to think about: ‘Can ableism in schools be dismantled without abolishing the very concept of failure and competition?’ I think we tend to disavow this question while fooling ourselves into believing that ableism in classrooms can somehow be resolved without addressing certain core features of the schooling process which are disabling and give rise to ableism.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Ref: https://mhrd.gov.in/sites/upload_files/mhrd/files/Draft_NEP_2019_EN_Revised.pdf.