Disabilities and Educational Opportunity: A Deweyan Approach

Although he never wrote about disabilities and education, John Dewey’s philosophy of education and democracy offers insight into our educational responsibilities to the disabled. In this paper I defend an approach to educational opportunity for the disabled grounded in Dewey’s conception of growth. This conception of growth both justifies and explicates the strategy of rich social integration of disabled children in the classroom. The paper demonstrates that consideration of the educational implications of the concept of growth affords insights into the social ideals underlying Dewey’s philosophy, as well as the contribution of that philosophy to important contemporary debates about justice and the disabled.