Artifact 3: Reflection

Looking back on my time in the course “Perspectives on Special Education,” which I took during my second semester in the Education Department, I knew immediately that my artifact would be the reading “Culture as Disability,” by Ray McDermott and Hervé Varenne, because of how profoundly impactful this text has become to both my perception of the educational system and of social institutions on the whole. The article, which posits that the very concept of “disability” and the resulting dichotomous process of labeling individuals as “abled or disabled” is a notion which has been continually created in various, occasionally contradictory ways by different cultures across both time and space, forcefully rejects the often invisible assumption that “disability” is a natural phenomenon. As such, readers are called upon to simultaneously interrogate the ways in which “disability” and “ability” are perpetuated through cultural practices and ideas, to recognize the arbitrary nature of such categorizations, and to implicate culture’s ability to fabricate ability rather than continuing to follow ideas and practices that further entrench the concept of “disability.”

While, at first, the potential behind this notion is evidently transformative and revolutionary when applied to the practices and attitudes currently alive within the educational system, soon after reading the text I found that the true power in the piece lies in its capacity to implicate culture on the whole, rather than just one cultural institution. This piece allows readers to understand the ways in which “disability” and “ability” are perpetuated within the school system (as well as the consequences of this action) before then opening up and inviting readers to question how and why culture insists upon fabricating the body in such a manner; when I began to question the societal implications of the piece, it became evident that the practices at play within special education are simply extensions and replications of more widespread prejudices.

What I have ultimately taken from this text, then, is not only a transformed understanding of the notions of “ability,” “disability,” and their arbitrary definitions but also a heightened ability to see how destructive, unseen biases and preconceptions are able to insidiously insert themselves into the pedagogy of a culture’s system of education. Such lessons can, evidently, be taken from other sources, such as examining the ways in which arbitrary racist or classist notions impact schools and the educations that students receive. However, the often unquestioned label of “disabled” seems particularly resistant to such analyses due to its seemingly “natural” state; again, before this piece, I had never thought to question society’s role in creating notions of “ability” and “disability.” Because of this article, however, I have found myself much more likely to question my own preconceived notions of concepts which may originally seem “natural,” and which, after consideration, are deeply constructed and rendered hidden by continual recreation.