Chapter 11: Narratives In Social Education: Cultural Empowerment Within Traditional Special Education

This chapter is a self-reflective narrative of the trials and triumphs of surviving and thriving in the world of special education. This chapter examines the lack and inherent need to look at special education from a cultural perspective. Dominated by the clinical and social model, the field of special education and disability studies is often looked at from the clinical lens of rationalized, analyzed, and quantified research. Missing, however, are the voices and experiences of the disabled. Overlooked are the narratives of those living and surviving the world within these bodies. Particular attention will be given to the cultural experience of being disabled while living and surviving a world that seldom allows the disabled to be disabled. Recent movements to create a more humane and just education have swept through the education field; however, this movement has yet to make headways in the special education and disability studies field. As such, this chapter aims to explore the possibility of advancing cultural consciousness in special education.