From learning difficulty to disability: a new mode of exclusion? On the journeys of three children
Type de matériel :
15
This article offers a critical study of the phenomenon of the medicalization, or even the “disabilization”, of learning difficulties. Indeed, each year there is a considerable increase in the number of children who, after struggling with learning or with becoming students, shift over to the field of disability.The hypotheses supported here are that this numerical inflation reveals failures in the diagnosis and management of learning difficulties and that such failures run the risk of shifting difficulty into disability in an improper manner.After reviewing the anthropological changes that have created fertile ground for such a phenomenon, we examine the various public policies and associated institutions which have brought about this shift from the educational over to the medical and, more specifically, to the neurological. We show how the 2005 law for equality of rights and opportunities has, in this context, been exploited and diverted away from its basic principle, which was to protect and support educators from political and ideological decisions with respect to the treatment of learning difficulties, particularly the weakening of Réseau d’Aides Spécialisées aux Elèves en Difficulté (RASED [Network of Specialist Assistants for Struggling Pupils]).Three clinical situations are studied: they allow us to understand from the inside what unfolds between parents, teachers, educationists, and caregivers in the context of this lack of direction and this rushing towards quick fixes. In spite of an overabundance of checklists and evaluations, the putting together of a disability recognition application file for the Maison Départementale des Personnes Handicapées (MDPH [Departmental Center for Disabled People]) is carried out without there being room for any real work of collective reflection upon the case, particularly in terms of pedagogy, psychopedagogy, and psychopathology.We show how the “educational teams”, which exist prior to the putting together of the files due for the MDPH, struggle to be spaces in which pupils are considered in their broader environment. We also show that, in these contexts, the logic of compensation for individual failings increasingly dominates over that of accessibility of knowledge.
Réseaux sociaux