So says Sue Bott, who is the deputy chief executive of Disability Rights UK. Bott was fortunate in that she
had parents who fought so she could attend the only special school for visually impaired kids where pupils
could take exams and aim at university. Even then, she says, it was assumed they would take longer to
achieve than able-bodied children and they had little interaction with the able-bodied world or with disabled
adults.
When she made it to university, she met a student who had gone to the able-bodied school next door. He
confessed that he and his mates “used to move as far away as they could if they saw us going into town on
the bus”. It’s a horrible story, but probably not an unusual one from a time when people openly talked of
“cripples”, called people “spaz” without admonishment and were able to victimise disabled kids without any
real consequences.
But things are better today right? Today we have special educational need & disability co-ordinators
(Sendcos) and schools love to bandy about the word “inclusion”. Even a regressive, backward-looking
government occasionally uses it.
Trouble is, it’s just a word.
Disability Rights UK and LKMco, an education and youth think tank, conducted a series of focus groups
with young people, both with and without special educational needs and disabilities (Send) with the aim of
shining a light on young people’s attitudes.
What it found was that despite the regular use of that word (and other cuddly sounding terms), and policies
touting schools’ commitment to diversity, negative attitudes towards disability and special needs still
predominate. Most pupils viewed themselves as different from disabled people, and defined disability with
reference to the use of aids, particularly wheelchairs. Send pupils generally spoke of experiencing bullying
and isolation from social groups.
Should this come as any surprise given the way adults behave? I write amid a mounting furore over
comments made by Australian columnist Andrew Bolt, who writes for Rupert Murdoch’s Herald Sun and
appears on Sky News Australia.
In his latest missive, he took aim at climate activist Greta Thurnberg, who like my son, is autistic. Not only
did he seek to deny the scientific reality of climate change, he also indulged in a disgusting and deeply
personal attack on her. Thurnberg was described as “deeply disturbed”, “freakishly influential” and
“strange” by an adult indulging in schoolyard insults.
Most pupils viewed themselves as different from disabled people, and
defined disability with reference to the use of aids, particularly wheelchairs
To me it looked rather like a case of projection. Bolt’s words suggest that it is in fact him who is “deeply
disturbed” and “strange”. Courtesy of the platform given to him by Murdoch, he’s also “freakishly
influential”. More’s the pity. Bolt might be a right-wing troll, but such trolling has an impact. It is seen and
it is heard and in the process it informs attitudes and reinforces prejudices.
Thurnberg has faced similar ugliness from columnists in Britain. There is a connection between the casual
ableism they deploy in their hatchet jobs, the suggestion that disabled people are “freakish” or “strange”,
and the attitudes of the pupils spoken to in the process of compiling the report.
We need to do better.