The Disabled Schoolchild

A Study of Integration in Primary Schools

Anderson Elizabeth M.

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317326502
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Handicaps en sociologie

First published in 1973, this book considers the differences between mainstream schools and special educational needs schools, for children with learning disabilities. It contains a wealth of research data, case history material and reference to existing literature, designed to answer many questions which parents, heads, and schoolteachers have asked. Questions considered include whether children with disabilities do as well in ordinary schools as children without, whether they are as happy and well adjusted, and how they fit into the social structure of the class. The book also looks at whether much teasing occurs and how practical difficulties can be overcome.

II The Children in School

Chapter 4 · Social Relationships in School

`We thought it would be good for him to mix with normal children.' Again and again, as the interviews with parents reported in the previous chapter show, this was the reason given for the parents' eagerness to send their children to ordinary schools. In the main part of this chapter research findings relating to specific aspects of 'mixing with normal children' are discussed. Firstly, through the use of sociometric techniques and through interviews with the class teacher and mother, friendship patterns between handicapped and non-handicapped children are examined. The sorts of questions which the findings throw light on include the following: do handicapped children in ordinary schools have as many friends as their peers? Is there any relationship between type or severity of handicap and a child's chances of making friends? Do handicapped children tend to be rather isolated in school? Are they left out, and why, when children choose their own groups? How much do they see of their friends outside school hours? The other aspect of social relationships in school examined here is the question of the extent and nature of teasing, and of how the children, teachers and parents cope with this, and also of whether curiosity about the handicap on the part of the children's classmates is a problem.

Before coming to these very specific questions, however, it is important to look in a more general way at what is involved in social encounters between handicapped and non-handicapped people, and it is with this more theoretical approach that the introductory part of this chapter is concerned.

Social attitudes to disability

One of the most thoughtprovoking discussions of the effect of a handicap on social encounters is Erving Goffman's book, Stigma (1963). Normally when we encounter a stranger we try (often unconsciously) to assign him to a certain category; we also have certain expectations about the sort of characteristics ('abilities') which a person in that category will possess, and these give him a 'social identity'. We are not really aware of these expectations until we meet someone who possesses an attribute which makes him different from others in the same category: such an attribute Goffman calls a 'stigma'; it could also be called a 'failing', a 'shortcoming' or a 'handicap'. Goffman distinguishes three very different types of stigma: first physical deformities, secondly blemishes of character and thirdly what he calls the 'tribal' stigma of race, nation or religion. In general, he states (Goffman, 1968) that the behaviour of 'normals' towards a person with a stigma is 'to exercise varieties of discrimination through which we effectively, if often unthinkingly, reduce his chances of a happy and successful life'.

It is perhaps worth noting here that the position of a person with a disability is sometimes likened to that of a member of an underprivileged ethnic or religious group, in so far as people have certain expectations about him by virtue of his membership of that group while he may aspire towards a 'normal' pattern of behaviour. There is an important difference, however, in that people born into minority groups learn from the minority culture how to deal with the majority culture; they also spend a considerable portion of their time in social interaction with members of minority groups and have learned appropriate social skills for doing this. A handicapped person is not, however, a member of a subcultural group; his position is not likely to be shared by many others and, unless he restricts his social contacts very severely, most of his social interactions will be with the non-handicapped majority group. In this respect he is in a less strong position to cope with any discrimination he may encounter.

Little work has been done on analysing the ways in which such negative attitudes to disability come into being. In Israel, Chigier and Chigier (1970) have looked at the cultural factors which influence attitude formation. They suggest that the actual significance attached to the presence of a disability stems from a combination of three sources. The first they label 'conditioning', meaning what is learned about disability from parents (in particular), friends, newspapers, jokes and casual remarks. The second source is 'exposure' to the disability: what one sees and feels for oneself on coming into contact with the disabled. The feeling is still sometimes experienced in this country that overt disabilities are unaesthetic and disturbing and that 'normals', especially children, should be shielded from exposure to the handicapped, Chigier and Chigier mention research which suggests that the nature of the initial exposure to the physical handicap (that is, whether this is pleasant or otherwise) is more significant than the amount of exposure or than the provision of verbal information. If this is so, then the first encounter between a severely handicapped child in a school and his new classmates should be much more carefully planned than is generally the case.

In some cases it seems true that exposure can, of itself, lead to a marked increase in the acceptance of different handicaps by the public. Goffman (1963) for instance notes that 'the immediate neighbourhood of mental hospitals may become places with high tolerance for psychotic behaviour; the neighbourhoods around some medical hospitals may develop a capacity for calm treatment of the facially disfigured who are undergoing skin-grafting'. On the other hand, many instances could be cited to show that familiarity, of itself, may do nothing to decrease fears and prejudices. Richardson (1961) found for instance that children attending summer camps where there were handicapped children did not differ in their attitudes to handicap from children who had not been exposed to disabled children in this way.

Thirdly, the Chigiers note the contribution positive teaching about disability and the 'correct' attitude to adopt towards it can make. They point out that it is still too often the case that attempts to educate the public are either very emotive (being sentimental, conscience-arousing, shockprovoking or evangelistic) or 'dully informative' and that too seldom are the public offered constructive alternative ways of looking at the disability. A great deal more could be done in this country using television as an educational device for this purpose, and books written for children, such as Camilla Jessel's informative story about a boy with spina bifida (1975) may also be helpful.

While the non-handicapped thus regard the handicapped person as 'different' it is essential to recognize the handicapped or 'stigmatized' individual's point of view. In Goffman's words 'his deepest feelings about what he is may be his sense of being a "normal person", a human being like anyone else . . . who deserves a fair chance ... So the central feature of his situation is what is often, if vaguely, called acceptance.'

Difficulties in social encounters

What are the specific difficulties or barriers which people with physical disabilities encounter in establishing social relationships with others? In social encounters we categorize others by using a large number of 'cues' both verbal and non-verbal. Of the latter, appearance is of particular importance: a handicap such as a facial disfigurement, absence or deformity of a limb, clumsy gait or unusual uncontrolled movements often obtrudes itself upon the stranger's attention at the expense of the person's other 'normal' attributes, since it disturbs our unconscious expectations. A handicap may also have a 'halo effect' in that a wide range of imperfections of character may mistakenly be associated with a single physical difference. Davis (1961) summarizes very well the way in which a handicap may dominate a social encounter:

whether it is overtly responded to as such ... or whether no explicit reference is made to it, the underlying condition of heightened, narrowed awareness causes the (social) interaction to be articulated too exclusively in terms of it. This is usually accompanied by one or more of the familiar signs of discomfort and uneasiness: the guarded references, the common everyday words suddenly made taboo, the fixed stare elsewhere, the artificial levity, the compulsive loquaciousness, the awkward solemnity.

An experimental study carried out with American teenagers (Kleck et al., 1966) showed that for these reasons the handicapped person does not receive normal and accurate feedback about his behaviour from his peers. It is difficult for him to know what others really think about him and so to develop the normal range of social skills. The authors also found that their subjects showed more emotional arousal (measured by the psychogalvanic skin response) when interacting with a handicapped person, as well as behaving in a more formal and inhibited way. Barker (1948) has suggested that stigmatized persons live on a 'social-psychological frontier', constantly facing new social situations in which they are uncertain what their status will be: this is aggravated by the unnatural behaviour discussed above.

In another American study Shears and Jensema (1969) tried to pinpoint the main factors underlying the acceptability of disabled or 'anomalous' people by getting ninety-four adults to state which of ten people with different 'anomalies' they would have as friends. The order in which these people were ranked was as follows (with the percentage of those willing to have them as friends in brackets). First, an amputee (80 per cent), next a wheelchair case (79 per cent), a blind person (77 per cent), someone with a harelip (69 per cent), a stutterer (55 per cent), a deaf mute (53 per cent), a cerebral-palsied person (38 per cent), someone mentally ill (28 per cent), someone retarded (24 per cent) and a homosexual (17 per cent). The authors concluded that the following six dimensions probably combined and interacted in producing stereotypes of anomalous persons: visibility of the affliction; interference with the communication process; amount of social stigma associated with the disability; the extent to which the person could be 'cured'; the degree of incapacity; and the difficulty in daily living the anomaly imposed. The last three dimensions were found to be particularly important at closer levels of intimacy.

Studies of a rather similar kind have been carried out with children by Richardson and his colleagues (1961). The subject is shown six drawings of a child of the same sex as himself: the only difference between the drawings is the presence or absence of a visible physical disability and the type of disability. The pictures are all laid in random order in front of the child and he is told to look at each picture carefully. He is then asked 'Which boy (or girl) do you like best?' After making his choice, the chosen picture is removed and he is asked again 'Now which boy do you like best?', the procedure being repeated until only one picture remains. In this way a rank ordering of each child's preferences is obtained. 640 American children aged 9-11 years old took part in the first study; later studies have been carried out in the United Kingdom, Germany, Israel and Mexico.

Richardson's main finding was that the children showed a remarkable degree of agreement' in their preference order for the different handicaps, the order from most to least liked being (a) the child without a visi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Contents
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• FOREWORD
• AUTHOR'S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• I DELIMITING THE PROBLEM
• II THE CHILDREN IN SCHOOL
• III MAKING ORDINARY SCHOOLS SPECIAL
• APPENDICES
• Author Index
• General Index