Abstract
This article undertakes a comparative analysis of special education policy through the juxtaposition of two recent Supreme Court actions: Allston v. Lower Merion School District (2015) and Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District (2017). This comparison reveals an ordering of special education policy around questions of race. Specifically, this article argues that special education policy is governed by a racecraft of disability labeling that defines students of color as variously disabled and through a biopolitics of special education that expands disability services for individual students who are within the truth demarcated by scientific-juridical mediations of life. Against such negative inflections of life, this article concludes by turning to John Dewey’s educational and democratic thinking to posit an affirmation of educational life that counters the morbid symptoms that presently define education’s interregnum.
Recommended Citation
Kearl, B.
(2019).
Educational Life in the Interregnum: Race, Dis/ability, and Special Education.
Democracy and Education,
27
(2), Article 2.
Available at:
https://democracyeducationjournal.org/home/vol27/iss2/2
Included in
Disability and Equity in Education Commons, Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education Commons, Special Education and Teaching Commons