An Essay on Reimagining Special Education: from negative dependency to positive individuality

Abstract

This Essay is concerned with two topics in the use of special education in general educational settings. The first focus to be discussed is the claim that there is a dependency between the development of general education and the use of special education. The historical development and practice of general education is highly dependent on a system of homogenisation and special education has played a crucial role to support this development – creating a dependency between the two fields. Historically education was offered a few, and marginalization and exclusion from education was not a problem – on the contrary, it has been an important task for education. However, with the rise of mass-education more and more people should be able to succeed at school. In this essay I claim that mass-education are seen as successful if 80% of the students succeeds. In an environment of education for all, the remaining rest (20%) could be supported by for example special education. The second focus of this essay is the development of special education. It is a potential in the individualistic approach seen in special education to offer good education, however this potential has diminished due to the use of categories based on the deficit model within this field. The historical tradition based on this equation: a person’s skills - society's demands = (diss) ability has created knowledge within the field of special education that clearly leads to marginalization and exclusion. When raising the challenge of reimagining special education this essential part of special education must be questioned. In this essay I draw on the theoretical framework of Vygotsky and his understanding of the fundamentals of defectology in order to establish an alternative to the traditional negative approach in special education. The most important contribution in this approach is the emphasise on the social element of learning. Learning takes place in a social context and humans need to find strategies for coping with the challenge for social participation. Vygotsky describes this strategy as compensation - that is individual strategies that a person use to find solutions to solve social demands.  These individual strategies should be the starting point for reimagine special education and to establish a positive individuality in education to support inclusion.