Trapped in limbo: effects of a medical perspective on the education of children with disabilities

Abstract

This chapter explores the practices of inclusive education of children with disabilities in the mainstream school system in the City of Buenos Aires. It provides a fine-grained and contextual analysis of a judicial case that involved a person with Down Syndrome who was refused his secondary school official diploma. In this research, inclusive education unfolds as a field of ambivalent practices and tensions among the actors due to different understandings, narratives and perspectives about the relationship between disability and inclusion that converge in this field. Remarkably, these contradictions reveal the influence of an enduring medical/rehabilitation approach to disability within the school system, as well as in the state bureaucracies of education and health care. Ultimately, the analysis of the larger context of this case brings to light a domain of rules, practices and interactions that keep disabled children’s equal education opportunities as a site of uncertainty, ambiguity and even secrecy.