ABSTRACT
This article advances the argument that special education is expanding as part of a restructuring of the education-training system to deal with large numbers of young people who are now defined as unable or unwilling to participate in normal education. The expansion is occurring as attempts are made to change education to fit the perceived needs of a technologically-based society in which a large social group will be partially or permanently unemployed. Evidence for expansion is examined, professional interests in an expanding clientele are noted, and the dilemmas inherent in comprehensive schooling and a disappearing youth labour market are discussed. The concept of special needs is thought to have become an ideological rationalisation which obfuscates the educational, political and economic needs actually served by the expansion.
Special education in Britain, as in other advanced technological societies, is expanding. In changed forms and rationalised by changed ideologies, notably the ideology of special needs, it is becoming a more important mechanism for differentiating between young people and allocating some to a future which, if not as stigmatised as in the past, will be characterised by relative powerlessness and economic dependency. It is expanding primarily as part of a political response to a crucial dilemma facing education systems in late twentieth-century technological societies. This dilemma is centred round restructuring the education-training system to deal with the increasing number of young people who are defined as being unable or unwilling to participate satisfactorily in a system primarily directed towards producing academic and technical elites. Adequate achievements in normal school education or educational training are becoming more important in gaining any sort of employment or income above subsistence level, or exerting any influence on the wider society. The expansion of special education is linked to the question of what sort of education – or preparation for future life-style – can or should be offered to a larger social group who are likely to be partially or permanently non-employed, and thus in traditional industrial-society understandings are not economically profitable or ‘useful’. As special education expands it is likely to provide both a rationale and a justification for the economic and social position of at least a part of this social 34group. Although presented in ideological terms as catering for the ‘needs’ of pupils, the expansion of special education is the result of rational action on the part of those who control and direct education and training, to restructure the education system to fit the perceived needs of a post-industrial, technologically-based society.
This article examines evidence for the claim that special education is expanding and discusses three reasons for the expansion – professional vested interest, comprehensive school dilemmas and the declining youth labour market – and asserts that the ideology of ‘special needs’ directs attention away from the social, economic and political concerns which have led to the expansion.
