Generare percorsi culturali nella comunità. Verso la fine della pedagogia “speciale”

(Generating Cultural Paths Within the Community: Toward the End of “Special” Pedagogy)

Abstract

When one must educate, one always finds oneself in the position of having to develop an educational theory and interpret one’s object while operating some theoretical choices. This is even more the case within the context of so-called special education insofar as special education is born and develops out of a certain theoretical interpretation of the one who needs to be educated specially, namely, the individual with disabilities. What does it mean that the goal of special education is inclusion?
Does it mean that the goal of special education is to render disabled individuals sufficiently competent, adequate, and normal so that they can be included? Or does it mean that the goal of special education is to render the communities open enough and the networks strong enough that they become truly inclusive?
One should note how, when one shifts this conceptual cursor, everything changes—theoretical models of reference, practices, organizational structures, power hierarchies among disciplines.
The very notion of inclusion should be constantly problematized so that it does not turn into simply a terminological upgrade of the word “integration” (as it has occurred in the case of handicap and disability). If we admit a model of fragility understood as contingent condition (all transitoriness aside), we can then think that the goal is a community capable of welcoming everyone’s contributions, capable of placing everyone in the condition to contribute.