More on the social construction of disability

Here are a few of the articles that I have read today, and pieces that I plan to incorporate later into some of the larger themes of this blog, themes of inclusion, education, and access.

First, is this op-ed in Education Week by Rick Hess, a fellow at the conservative American Education Institute.  Mr. Hess is concerned about certain criticisms of charter schools in Washington, D.C., specifically, that critics of these charter schools will not be able to "meet the needs of low-performing, English-language learners and special education students."  Mr. Hess believes that highest achieving students in the D.C. area deserve to have access to better performing private/public charter schools, and that it is unfair for bureaucrats to prevent the upward mobility of these inner-city students because of the needs of low-performing students.  He goes on to say that "the notion that families and students in DC shouldn't have access to a high quality liberal arts curriculum just because many students in DC need something more remedial in scope strikes me as a perverse vision of 'social justice.'"

I disagree.

Second, is this piece from Disabled World on the social construction of disability, a topic that I briefly touched upon yesterday, by Wendy Taormina-Weiss.  Ms. Taormina-Weiss emphasizes the application of new technologies such as email, web conferences, and cell phones, that allow persons with disabilities the ability to access situations in which they do not manifest themselves as disabled.  She says:

The world today still finds many people viewing those who experience forms of disabilities in ways that are incorrect or misconceived. For example, some people still view the experience of a disability as the person’s entire life instead of something that is located within their body or mind and merely a part of who they are. Social constructions identifying people with disabilities with the diagnosis they have received from a physician such as autism, intellectual disability, cognitive disorders, or many other forms of disabilities identified through use of medical terminology are still used to label and somehow construct the entire perceptions of some in association with a person who experiences a disability.

I like what Ms. Taormina-Weiss says about the construction of disability, and I applaud her efforts.  However, a part of me wishes that she would go ... further ...  That she would take a stand that is, maybe, a little more radical.  Specifically, that she would get rid of the notion that a disability is located at all in the body or the mind, that, instead, that it is entirely a social construct.  I think she is right to say that a disability cannot define the totality of what a person is, but she should push this thought further, to the point that a disability exists only in context, is only something that is socially constructed, and that exists only outside of the body and the mind.

On the other hand, this contention may work against another principle that I think is important: that individuals with disabilities ought to take ownership of their abilities, and take responsibility for them.  (This is not a real contradiction, just one that I am entertaining for the moment, in blog form.)