Fervour education

The schools that activists now condemn may have been the very places that gave birth to the disability movement they now belong to. Paul Carter asks three leading activists about the role of special schools

One issue that still has the ability to polarise opinion among many disabled people is the education of disabled children. It remains a hot potato, as is clearly shown by recent concern over the government’s decision to reserve on the issue of specials schools in ratifying the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities.

Despite the many fervent arguments put forward by both camps, one only has to take a cursory glance at the leading figures in the disability movement to see that many, if not all of them, came from a special school background.

As the former chair of the Disability Rights Commission (DRC), and now the government’s “commissioner for the compact”, Bert Massie (pictured, left) has been at the forefront of disability campaigning for many years.

He attended Hereward College, based in Coventry in Warwickshire. What is his opinion of the idea that segregated education breeds campaigners by fostering a sense of community and identity among young disabled people?

“It’s an interesting thesis, isn’t it?” he says. “The thing is, we don’t actually know what makes a campaigner. You can’t say it is just because of special schools, because I know lots of people who went to special schools who would have nothing to do with campaigning or activism.”

Actress and disability rights campaigner Julie Fernandez attended Treloar School and College, which she describes as an “amazing school” that “fostered a huge amount of confidence and awareness in each of us as a disabled person”.

But she says she saw little evidence of this identity directly steering people into the disability rights movement.

“We didn’t really think about campaigning or activism,” she says. “You concentrated on your education, and then you went off to do what you wanted, whether that was university or employment or whatever.”

Despite this, she believes that the special school education she received helped, if indirectly, to further the disability agenda.

She says: “Treloar’s confidence in me and my confidence in them, along with them pushing me to go out and achieve, has allowed me to go out and be what I am and do what I have done and achieved in my career.”

Tara Flood (pictured, left), director of the Alliance for Inclusive Education (Allfie), is a self-proclaimed “survivor” of the special school system. She says that a sense of activism and campaigning was fostered in spite of a segregated education rather than because of it.

“I think there is a direct connection but I don’t think it’s about the identity and awareness issue: I think that it’s people’s later reaction to it.

“It’s often later on in life when people realise what is happening. Where the change in identity and awareness happens is when you hear about the social model [of disability], which is what gives you a context for why you feel the way you did. That’s certainly why I can say I feel the way I feel.

“Also it’s generational,” she says. “A lot of people who are campaigners now were at school when the default position for disabled people was special schools.”

Does she think that this will mean there will be fewer “up and coming” young disabled activists as inclusive education becomes more commonplace?

“I don’t think that’s likely,” she says. “However, disabled people who have been included in mainstream life as young people often get angry about wider equality issues.”

Sir Bert Massie agrees that it was factors outside the education system that fired people’s activism.

“When I got involved in the 60s, it was because we as disabled people were angry,” he explains.

“We couldn’t get into cinemas, we couldn’t get into shops and we couldn’t get into Wimpy bars, all because of ‘fire risks’. There was no accessible transport, you couldn’t get on buses and on trains you had to travel in a freezing cold guard’s van. We struggled to get into employment and wherever we went there were barriers – really overt, aggressive barriers. We wanted to get rid of that and that’s why we’re in the world we’re in today.”

He does feel that some “would-be” campaigners are less motivated because of the great strides already made by those who came through the special school system before them.

“It could be that some disabled people are now getting jobs, they’re getting married, and when they get home, they want to do what everyone else does, and flop in front of EastEnders.”

Some feel that the decline in special schools may mean that grass-roots activism arises from new and alternative areas, such as the increasingly influential disability arts scene.

Others point to the fact that people are now campaigning on wider issues, while many impairment groups such as those with learning difficulties, or from the Deaf community, now have a much greater collective voice.

“In my day you joined an organisation and you fought through that,” says Massie. “You progressed through their committee structure and made your name that way. Now, we do see a new generation of activists coming through and doing things differently. Take Rowen [Jade] for example, the new chair of Disability 2025. There’s also the disability arts scene and all the umbrella organisations.

“However, I am concerned – it does worry me. I’m on committees and I still see people who I’ve known for 30 years now.”

One area of consensus on where all schools, inclusive and non-inclusive, could do more to cultivate activism and raise awareness is through the teaching of disability history and culture to young people.

Flood says: “Young people today are angered by a lot of mainstream issues now. What we need to do is make sure disabled people know about what has happened before. This is a massive opportunity to get our history onto the curriculum for all young people, not just disabled people.”

Fernandez says: “I think that with the increase in mainstreaming, the educational establishment should ensure that all schools teach the history of the disability equality and rights movement, in the same way they do in terms of Emily Pankhurst and women’s rights and Martin Luther King and the black civil rights movement.”

However all agree that whatever educational background disabled children come from in the future, the disability movement will always need people who can influence parliamentary legislation and are knowledgeable of the issues affecting disabled people.

“There is nothing there forever, so what you need is a body of organisations who can monitor and bring in new laws for new circumstances,” says Massie.

“Many of the special schools I was talking about no longer exist. The danger is saying that everything has moved on and we don’t need to do any more. And the biggest danger is the attitude of those that think it’s over. We’ve still got a long battle ahead. And in that battle, we’re going to need troops.”