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

Mike Oliver, in a discussion of walking and „nearly-walking‟, points out that:
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In terms set by the rehabilitation enterprise, walking is rule-following behaviour. Not
walking is rule-ignoring, rule-flouting or even rule-threatening behaviour (Oliver,
1996:104).
The pressure to keep walking described by Charles, involving the use of adaptive aids and
equipment, exposes another side to the function of special education. „Nearly walking‟
involves compliance with the requirements of normality while also involving an acceptance
of the inferiority of not-walking. Shame and stigma are attached to not-walking, which in
Charles‟ situation is represented as „giving in‟. What is being taught is a rejection of
disability as a valid identity.
As Emile Durkheim has put it:
In each one of us, in differing degrees, is contained the person we were yesterday,
and indeed, in the nature of things it is even true that our past personae predominate
in us, since the present is necessarily insignificant when compared with the long
period of the past because of which we have emerged in the form we have today. It
is just that we don‟t directly feel the influence of these past selves precisely because
they are so deeply rooted within us (quoted in Bourdieu, 1990:56).
The rejection of self absorbed within an imposed regime of „nearly-walking‟ becomes
embedded deeply. The disassociation of self from impairment involves a denial of the value
of one‟s own experience, and is a form of entrapment which can involve disabled people in
more or less constant feelings of either frustrated negativity about themselves or passive
acceptance of imposed limitations.
Charles speaks later of how, encountering non-disabled young people on a regular basis for
the first time, at sixth form college at the age of sixteen, he would downplay the significance
of impairment as part of his sense of self:
What I wasn‟t used to was people asking me about being disabled, because at special
school it wasn‟t something that was talked about… and sort of, how do I, like… to
start off with you just say (laughs) oh, you know, I just get on with it… (laughs)…
that sort of thing… doesn‟t really... it‟s not really part of my life… (l.1.139ff.)
Mary remembers that: