Comparative Education Bulletin - Faculty of Education - The ...

victims have been blamed for being the cause of the violence. The
saying is that “Girls who are blind easily fall in love”.
Thus the attitudes and prejudices within the community are a
disabling factor, a restriction of capabilities for a group of persons who
are already disadvantaged because of their personal characteristics. As
another, visually impaired, girl, Zufan, states:
“I am afraid of being raped. I am a woman. This often happens….
I do not want to stop my education but if somebody would rape
me I will no more be able to think properly and I will no more
continue my education.”
Hence it is neither her sensory impairment nor a lack of resources
or opportunity to attend school, but the cultural-environmental
obstacles that limit Zufan’s capabilities to continue her education.
These demonstrated individual life situations of disabled persons
in Ethiopia give rise to considering the Capability Approach as a
theoretical framework to rethink education that would address
the individual needs of students. In the Capability Approach, disability
may be analyzed at two different levels, as a deprivation of
capabilities, or as a deprivation of functioning. At the level of personal
characteristics the concept of impairment is preferred to the term
disability, where impairment is defined as a physiological, mental or
anatomical loss. In terms of capabilities and functioning, deprivation
results from the interaction among the resources available to the
person, personal characteristics (e.g. impairment, age, and gender) and
the environment. Furthermore a distinction is made between:
a) Potential disability (capabilities), implying that whether the
individual is actually disabled depends on whether the impairment
places any restriction on the individual’s functioning; and
b) Actual disability (functioning), implying that an individual is
disabled if he or she cannot do or be the things he or she values
doing or being. Such assessment would be substantially subjective.
A person may change the way he or she values functioning and
may well consider himself or herself as disabled right after the
onset of impairment but not five years later, or from a different
perspective.
The causes for disability result from (a) the nature of an
impairment and other personal characteristics (gender, race, etc); (b)
the resources available to the individual; and (c) the environment.
An impairment is a prerequisite to disability, but it is only one of the
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