A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Etheses - Queen Margaret ...

Low expectations
85
Once you‟re there you‟re not expected to do anything particularly, or have any
aspiration to anything… (l.1.63f.)
Lola is not alone in remembering how little was expected of children attending special
schools. Kevin, who, because he had asthma, was sent at the age of eleven from London to
attend a boarding school near Guildford in rural Surrey, recalls that:
their main priority in the school was not education… they deemed that too much
education was too stressful for us deli… we were classed as „delicate boys‟… you
went into this special school, where they said “No, Kevin… your learning‟s not very
important, we‟ve got to focus on your exercise…” (l.1.105ff.)
That emphasis on exercises was regarded as having priority over learning is echoed by Sarah
who describes how, in terms of her own experience thirty years after Kevin, little seemed to
have changed:
I wasn‟t pushed, I was just bored… my mum and dad saw special school as, like, a
place to get physio… I mean, I did get lessons, but it wasn‟t anything challenging…
(l.1.254ff.)
Sarah expresses frustration at the mixed messages she received between home and school.
While her parents‟ intentions were that within the family as far as possible she and her older
brother would be treated with the same expectations, at special school she received a
different message:
You know, my mum and dad would treat me normal… and then I‟d go into this
school and it was like “Oh no, you don‟t need to eat with cutlery, we‟ll give you this
special bowl and a special…” ...so it‟s like you‟re really confused, and I was
really… you know, as a young kid you‟re wondering “Where am I? Where do I fit
in?”… you know, you‟re telling me one thing and my mum and dad are telling me to
be another… (l.1.315ff.)
The fact that little focus appears to have been placed on the formal education of disabled
children suggests that little is expected of them beyond school life. Having received little
opportunity for academic learning while at school, many young disabled people emerge ill-
qualified for employment. In a 2005 report for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Tania
Burchardt shows that, in spite of sharing the same aspirations as their non-disabled peers for