Disability & Society

ISSN: 0968-7599 (Print) 1360-0508 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cdso20

Exploring ableism in Indian schooling through the

social model of disability

Rossi D’Souza

To cite this article: Rossi D’Souza (2020) Exploring ableism in Indian schooling
through the social model of disability, Disability & Society, 35:7, 1177-1182, DOI:
10.1080/09687599.2019.1668635

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2019.1668635

Published online: 30 Sep 2019.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 2434

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cdso20
DISABILITY & SOCIETY
2020, VOL. 35, NO. 7, 1177–1182
https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2019.1668635

CURRENT ISSUE

Exploring ableism in Indian schooling through

the social model of disability
Rossi D’Souza
Mathematics Education, Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, India

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

In this piece, I argue that the exclusion of children with dis- Received 27 April 2019
abilities is an outcome of exclusionary practices inherent to Accepted 20 July 2019
schooling. And when exclusion is the norm, it is bound to
KEYWORDS
produce ideological justifications for the systemic problems
Ableism; exclusion;
produced by it. I therefore question whether it is even pos- schooling; neoliberalism
sible to dismantle ableism in schools without addressing
the political economic dimension of schooling under
Capitalism. The issue concerning the relationship between
exclusion and disablement is particularly pertinent in India
today because a far-right party has just been re-elected
and a new education policy has been drafted that proposes
to provide multiple ‘exit’ options to children, which actually
means multiple exclusion options.

Introduction
As a volunteer teacher of mathematics and other subjects at a study centre
for blind children in Mumbai, my interactions with my students forced me to
realise the systemic nature of failure and exclusion in relation to their dis-
ablement. My work drove me to engage with the social model of disability,
which took into account the political economy of Capitalism, and thus
helped make sense of the problems the students were facing. I draw from
an episode from my field observations and present it in the backdrop of the
current political changes in India owing to a far-right political party that has
just been re-elected. But first, I articulate the social model of disability by
demarcating it from other social perspectives on disability.

Contending perspectives on disability

Disability Studies begins with the rejection of popular explanations of disabil-
ity as the expected outcome of bodily limitations. However, disability studies
includes various contending perspectives on disability even though all stand

CONTACT Rossi D’Souza rossi.dsouza@gmail.com

ß 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
1178 R. D’SOUZA

opposed to what Oliver (1983) termed as, ‘the individual model of disability’.
These contending positions can be broadly categorized based on their focal
points of analysis. For example, the focal point of ‘individual model of dis-
ability’ is the individual. The problems associated with disability are subse-
quently attributed to the individual having a disability.
The ‘social model of disability’ as conceptualized by The Union of the
Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS) theorized disability from a
Marxist perspective. For Marxists, the entry point into disability studies is the
political economy and the class structure of society. As Capitalism reduces
‘ability’ to one’s exploitability as a worker (Jaffee 2016), the oppression of
disabled people stems from this economic system that depends on creating
a class of ‘disabled bodies’.
A Postmodern perspective shifts focus away from both, the individual as
well as the class structure, and towards Culture. The violence faced by dis-
abled people are seen to stem from the dominant culture of disablism
(Goodley and Runswick-Cole 2011) or ableism.
Each view on disability takes for granted certain ‘givens’. Consequently a
particular perspective determines broadly:

1. How the phenomenon of disability is understood and presented.

2. How other social phenomena that are seemingly unrelated to disability
are conceptualized.
3. The nature of research questions raised.
4. The solutions offered.
5. The limits of those solutions.

The limits of the solutions subsequently feed back into the perspective on
disability and reinforces those limits as indubitable features of disablement.
To elicit this point, I share an incident from my field experience.

The research site

My research was conducted at a study centre for blind children in Mumbai,
India. Supported by the National Association for the Blind (NAB), India, the
centre caters to partially/blind students most of who attend mainstream
schools. Driven by curiosity of having a study centre in our vicinity, in 2013,
along with three of my friends we visited the centre. Since I’m a musician
we got a two-hour slot on Saturday mornings to engage the students with
music and recreational and educational activities. Although over 50 students
are registered with the centre, around ten students visit regularly on
Saturday mornings.
 DISABILITY & SOCIETY 1179

Motivation
Once while teaching, a student Rina (pseudonym) narrated her experiences of
being discriminated against in the school in which she had just shifted. While it
did not come across as unusual that a visually challenged girl was discriminated
against in a private school, she contrasted her experience with that in her previ-
ous (government) school in which she claimed to not face such discrimination.
Both schools were ‘normal’ schools (with blackboards, teachers without know-
ledge of Braille or Sign language, etc.). Rina was in her 9th standard. Since her
exams were on, I volunteered to read out her textbook with the audio recorder
running so she would have an mp3 recording of the lesson. In the process, her
narrative was also recorded which with her permission, I share below.

Rina’s narrative
Rina began sharing her perspective on how society treats blind people:
Rina: Society has not, [yet] accepted blind people. … they show that “Yes, we help
them” but from the inside, their thoughts, mindset is not there, to help. … I don’t
play with them, (They think that) “this will happen to her, that will happen to her”.
That’s why I’m made to sit separately. … I have received (sports) medals … I
showed that in school. Even still they would not know that in her also there is
talent. … till now, their thinking hasn’t changed.

Had Rina ended her narrative here, it could have been argued that Rina’s
experience of discrimination was an inevitable outcome of being a blind girl.
However, Rina pointed out that she was not discriminated in her previous
school. And neither was Ravi (pseudonym) who also studies at the centre:
Rina: … my school before this, … was very good. I did not at all feel different. … And
even Ravi, they cooperate. … In this school, so much discrimination doesn’t happen.

Rina claimed to not feel different at all while acknowledging the role of her
friends and her teacher for cooperating with her. It was evident to Rina that her
ill-treatment was not due to her blindness but rather how society responded to
blindness. Referring back to her current school, she narrated an incident that
occurred the previous day during her exam in which she and her writer were
made to sit outside the classroom on broken benches without a fan on a hot
day, since her writer was considered a distraction to the other students:
Rina: But this private school, they [discriminate], very much … keeping me
separate. Yesterday … [for] the exam … all the children were inside, where they sit
daily for class. … for writing the exam, there was no place there, so the teacher
was saying that everyone will be disturbed (because of the writer) so I was made
to sit outside. That I would get disturbed, no one considered.

Rina highlighted that the school was a ‘private school’. Unlike her previous
school in which she studied till the 8th standard, here she had to pay fees.
1180 R. D’SOUZA

Also, since she was in the 9th standard, the ‘no detention policy’ (which
stipulated that no child can be held back till the 8th standard) as introduced
by India’s Right to Education (RTE) Act of 2009 no longer applied. Rina was
in fact even denied admission in the private school on the pretext of her
blindness. Only after a relentless struggle by the centre teachers was Rina
finally admitted.

Disablement through schooling

What we make out of this incident depends significantly on our perspective
on disability. My initial reading of Rina’s narrative was merely that people
with disabilities face discrimination. On coming across the social model of
disability it became evident that disablement was the effect rather than the
cause of exclusion and discrimination. Not having engaged deeply enough
with the economic dimension of disability as afforded by the social model, I
concluded with the suggestion that the education research community
needs to change their ideas about the relationship between disability and
exclusion. When I came across the concept of ableism and disablism, I
described Rina’s experiences as a case of ableist discrimination arising from a
disablist culture. I concluded by suggesting that classrooms need to change
their cultures and beliefs about dis/ability.
The limitations of cultural explanations were that they focused on beliefs
about dis/ability without engaging adequately into material conditions that
produce disablement along with ideological justifications for ableist discrim-
ination. To shift the gaze from the disabled individual to a disablist culture
does not contribute to any radical social change for the same reason that a
disablist culture is also a symptom, an ideological reflection of sociopolitical
economic conditions. Also, postmodern perspectives on disability did not
engage adequately into the process of schooling where exclusion actively
takes place.
Understanding schools from a Dialectical or Marxist perspective afforded
by the social mode helps raise an entirely different set of research questions
that otherwise appear unrelated to disability. For example, why is it that in
India where the government can afford to spend billions of dollars on
nuclear warfare, we often find ourselves forced to develop ‘low-cost’ teach-
ing tools for our students who are excluded from schools that cannot ‘afford’
to include them? A dialectical perspective also provides insights into why
students with disabilities face exclusion. For example, schools need to pro-
duce failures and a student’s grades can hold value only if the school fails or
gives lower grades to a large number of students.
Conducting examinations, assessing and failing students is taken for
granted as inevitable and even justified. Examinations contribute to serving
 DISABILITY & SOCIETY 1181

the economic demands of the market, including the multi-billion dollar

Indian coaching industry. It is commonly assumed that the fear of failing
gets pupils to study harder and avoid participating in political struggles. In
India, qualified teachers need to pass ‘Eligibility’ tests if they wish to practice.
Entrance exams thus create divisions among those waiting for an employ-
ment, and thus suppresses dissent among those who will not get a job.
Failing also plays an ideological role by being considered as a fate reserved
for ‘others’ and thereby absolves us of the need to understand concrete
issues afflicting those communities from which a disproportionate number of
students fail. In India, exclusion is built into our social fabric woven by the
Caste system. Caste forbade women from accessing education, and criminal-
ized it with dire consequences for ‘lower’ castes (Shudras) and ‘untouchables’
(dalits) who comprised of a majority of India’s population. Although caste
discrimination is officially criminalized, schools continue to provide merito-
cratic legitimations for casteist practices.
With the entry of Neoliberal policies in Indian education in the early 90s,
privatization of schools increased and profits became more internationalised.
In June 2019, soon after a far right-wing party was re-elected, a Draft
National Policy on Education (DNEP)1 was released by the Human Resource
Ministry that in addition to facilitating increased privatization proposed a
new system in which there will be multiple ‘exit points’ after Class VIII, thus
facilitating systematic exclusion of (blind) students at various stages.
Completely disregarding the sociopolitical dimension of disability (which was
sensitively addressed in educational policy documents in the previous
regime), the DNEP treats disability as an individual problem, emphasizes
‘mainstreaming’, and suggests offering scholarships to ‘talented and meritori-
ous’ students supposedly to ‘enhance participation of differently-abled chil-
dren in school education (p. 156)’.
When exclusion is taken for granted, students with disabilities (for
example, Rina who is blind and also a dalit girl) will be seen as inevitable vic-
tims of an immutable part of social life, and consequently treated as preor-
dained failures. I therefore conclude my argument with a call to take a stand
against privatization, and a question to think about: ‘Can ableism in schools
be dismantled without abolishing the very concept of failure and competi-
tion?’ I think we tend to disavow this question while fooling ourselves into
believing that ableism in classrooms can somehow be resolved without
addressing certain core features of the schooling process which are disabling
and give rise to ableism.

Note
1. Ref: https://mhrd.gov.in/sites/upload_files/mhrd/files/Draft_NEP_2019_EN_Revised.pdf.
1182 R. D’SOUZA

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

References
Goodley, D., and K. Runswick-Cole. 2011. “The Violence of Disablism.” Sociology of Health
& Illness 33 (4): 602–617. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9566.2010.01302.x.
Jaffee, L. 2016. “Marxism and Disability Studies.” In Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy
and Theory, edited by L. Jaffee, 1–6. Singapore: Springer.
Oliver, M. 1983. Social Work with Disabled People. London: Macmillan Education.