CHAPTER 15: THE SPECIAL PEDAGOGICAL GRAND NARRATIVE
Halgeir Holthe (2000): doctoral dissertation.
Url: http://www.home.powertech.no/halgeirh
Last modified: September 2001.
This chapter contains three subsections:
+ Special education and the grand narrative of pedagogy
+ Identification of a pedagogic dilemma in special education
+ A practical problem of upbringing
+Special education and the grand narrative of pedagogy
Pedagogy as a scientific discipline is essentially linked to upbringing or socialization of children, and I have in the introduction made a principal distinction between the interventional aspects and the didactic contents(1) of special programmes. I use the term didactics in its extended meaning so as to include particular arguments for educational programmes as essential features of them. I take pedagogy to be a scientific discipline with its own distinct questions and answers, and I am aiming at linking pedagogy closely to the task of ensuring a meeting between the newcomers and their local community (but my outline here should not be seen as a methodological statement).
I will use the illustrations "individual stories" and "A Grand Narrative" in order to analyse the relationship between the professional helpers and the special programme user - between educatores and educandus. First of all, this terminology gives an opportunity to distinguish between an essentially pedagogical story and what is basically not a pedagogical narrative. Secondly, this distinction makes it possible to outline the unbalanced tension between the grand narrative and its elements, i.e. between individual life stories and a specific pedagogical context. The essentially pedagogical narrative is primarily interested in the meeting between individual newcomers and their place of living, in other words in upbringing and socialization of children, and in how these youngsters' potential of becoming people best is released. Put otherwise: The Pedagogical Grand Narrative concerns how the knight is constituted as a Subject at her place of living.
Many different stories may be told about each newcomer, and the child's own presentation is only one of them. These stories are all important because they serve as building material in the identity construction of individual children. More specifically, it may at this point be noted that the built-in didactical analysis of special programmes and that of mainstream schooling are not different in principle - although the interventional aspects of special programmes (in contrast to didactic features) in many respects belong to a basically non-pedagogical story. The interventional routines of special programmes concentrate on technical compensation for particular disorders, whereas the didactic feature of the programme concerns how to guide children into their local shoes. There exists an unbalanced tension between the grand narrative and individual biographies, which means that they are mutually constituted by each other, insofar as the grand narrative gives its entities direction even though the elements potentially may take their own paths and thereby are modifyfing the narrative of which they are themselves a part. This dynamic relationship corresponds to the aspects of the socialization process, which on the one hand involves that the child is being told (conf. my description "assignments by others"), but on the other hand it means that the child will have to tell her own story (conf. my description of "self- assignments") in order to relase her potential of becoming people.
Special education is not constituted on one monolithic theory, and the distinction between a grand narrative and its components may serve so as to highlight the dynamic relationship between the grand story and its elementary parts. The components may be said to be constituted by a particular narrative by bringing a large set of individual stories in motion. On the other hand, the grand narrative in itself is constituted by individual stories containing a high degree of concreteness - details which the grand story in its own briefness is omitting. During the last decades, a more context oriented understanding of user difficulties has been established. My illustrations do not only allow for a consideration of the dynamics between history and his-story (not to say her-story), they also allow for a reconsideration of the dynamics between reasoning about socialization and individual narratives of how to facilitate upbringing in the best possible manner.
Special education may appear as distinct from a pedagogical narrative by its close focus on interventional routines and its emphasis on the locked doors and material compensation for the users, while the socialization aspects of teaching/learning seem to be less emphasized. Obviously, children's personal experience from the special educational meeting influences significantly their opportunities of releasing their potential of becoming people. Even though these programmes certainly are implemented with the best of intentions, I will here endeavour to distinguish between favours for the users and what may frankly be called disfavours, and I am about to plausify how disfavours may contribute to the social construction of disablement. The individualization and totalization of user difficulties inherent in the implementation of special programmes are easily taking the attention away from the pedagogical meeting, and users therefore often feel like being left alone to cope with the mainstream.
Special education in its current version should to a large extent be regarded as a set of working methods established on an ad hoc basis in the practice field, rather than as an entirely distinct discipline. Although many of the professionals in the field prefer to see special education as a confined scientific area, my approach involves that special education should be seen as an integral part of the grand narrative of pedagogy. Many of the professionals I met during my investigation linked special education closely to "children with special needs". But it goes nearly without saying that the users have the same need of becoming people as other children - despite the fact that many of them also have a need of special compensation. Traditionally, the orientation towards disorders and technical means of compensation within special programmes has been of primary interest, underpinned by empirical analytical lines of reasoning(2), notably the medical and psychiatric diagnostic approaches to the user. Although a precise assessment of biological attributes by no means is underestimated here, special education has seemingly come to lack essential analytical tools for a detailed consideration of interventional strategies and a basic understanding of what it is that constitutes disablement as a phenomenon. Within such a frame of reference, presumptions for integration and how the user is constituted as a subject are easily neglected. When social science was incorporated in pedagogy during the late 1950s and early '60s, a more relational approach to user difficulties was adopted also in the field of special education. Parallel to recent developments in education, theories of socialization and marginalization were developed in the fields of anthropology and sociology, although the situation of disabled people seems to have been of only byway interest for social scientists up to quite recently. Hence, special pedagogy has not only suffered from the lack of a nuanced understanding of marginalization and disabling outcomes, its interventions have to a large extent been implemented on a common-sense basis.
It should be possible to formulate special pedagogy in a crosspoint between didactic decision-making and interventional routines focusing on concrete integration barriers for the users. As I have tried to outline in the first section of the monograph, these barriers are not constituted only by relations between personal attributes and an unwieldy terrain, but also by a locked interplay between users and helpers and by deadlocking the users. In order to approach these barriers properly in special programmes, it seems important to establish a theory basis for nuanced didactical decision- making in the crossroads between empiric-analytical lines of reasoning and social science. The positive approach of natural science and medicine is important to ensure the users with adequate technical means of compensation and a smooth meeting with the material surroundings. But it is equally important to consider the hermeneutic lines of reasoning inherent in humaniora in order to establish a firm meeting between the user and her socio-cultural mainstream context. Special education then becomes a distinct discipline within the general discipline of pedagogy.
In his outline of the pedagogical grand narrative, the pedagogical relation, and pedagogical paternalism, Sven Erik Nordenbo points out that all children's need for upbringing and education makes schooling a deed of necessity (NORDENBO 1985). In his analysis, Nordenbo suggests that all socialization involves some degree of adaptation of the newcomers, and his primary interest is what morally qualifies and what disqualifies asymmetrical aspects of educational programmes. The basic feature of the grand narrative of pedagogy is, according to him, that an adult who knows how local tools are competently applied is actioning on behalf of a child who is unfamiliar with the surroundings. Hence, as I have accounted for in some detail, upbringing to some extent means that the children are overrun by their helpers - the master takes control over the tools, and the knight adapts (more or less) to his schemes. The educator acts on behalf of the incompetent so as to ensure a smooth meeting between her and the tools. But one might ask, as Nordenbo does, if every means is legitimate in order to facilitate the encounter. In the context of special programmes, the users' disorders and (alleged) difficulties easily obscure a clear view on the tensions between The Grand Narrative and individual children. 8Not only do the seeming problems of the users (often) serve as legitimation for an extra portion of professional problem- solving: the users' difficulties may qualify the professionals' problem-solving in all situations. It is essential to be aware that concrete integration barriers may prevent the users from operating the tools the way they are applied by self-defined normals, and it seems fair to suggest that the baronet's approach may be counterproductive, since it prevents the knight from acquiring personal experience with how the opportunities are self-sufficiently operated. My primary concern here is not only the moral dilemmas of user indoctrination; I will equally focus on the practical implications of the professionals' approach. It is an integral part of my reasoning that to the extent that the users' difficulties are totalized, learning opportunities are taken away from the users in virtually all meetings. The users do not acquire knowledge of - nor knowledge - of how the tools are competently operated, and hence, as time passes by, they may not be able to negotiate successfully about partaking among peers.
+ Identification of a pedagogic dilemma in special education
By the term "people" it is possible to address different categories of persons, depending on the aim and the context of the analysis. The term may be taken to mean "the humanity" - or the global population. Of course, all children are belonging to this category, independent on who they are and where they come from. All newcomers are of equal value and should be inviolable by the fact of their status in this respect. As the situation happens to be, some people seem to be more concerned with life after death and the dignity of life before birth. Obviously, it is important to shield prenatal dignity (perhaps especially when seen from the users' point of view, see for instance Solveig Reindal's account(3), but it is not too often emphasized that more concern might be put to the episodes in between birth and eternity. It is these moments which have the focus of my attention in this text.
The shift in focus from eternity to a place here and now, means a shift of attention towards a world which to a large extent is man-made. The descent to a place here and now implies a contextualization of a person in communities of first-hand version. A social process of first degree means that particular, normative definitions are applied to concrete events and personal texts. These events constitute the actors' reality as distinct from their apprehensions and analyses of it. The descent implies the situating of a person in a society of (potentially) conceivable magnitude and in a context where some opportunities are available but where others are out of reach. It means a descent from the level of humanity - where all the actors may be said to be in the same boat, to a concept of children's local surroundings - where all persons are different but meet with the same taken-for-granted normality and the same presumptions about functionality. This is where the newcomers meet the local common sense (as well as nonsense) applied to concrete situations and to specific persons. It is a dilemma that the user's attributes may hamper her opportunities of partaking, but it is equally important to be aware that the low tolerance of alternative tool application surrounding the user also may restrict her partaking. When the equality of all children means that they are taken to be similar, the fact that all children are different from each other may virtually be neglected. In short, the regimentation of the newcomers by socialization may for the user involve that she cannot meet with the presumptions of integration, and hence she is excluded from important opportunites of learning.
I use the expression "to become people" in two distinct meanings. First of all, the place is the birthplace of the child, it is here she becomes people in the biological sense. This implies that the child comes to the world with specific biological traits - or a particular genetic makeup. For some of the newcomers this means that they are born with concrete illness or deficiensies - which here are described as disorders. I do by no means wish to underestimate the impact certain biological attributes may have on children's learning, nor be taken to mean that specific disorders are insignificant for the socialization of children. But it is important to be aware that children are not only born as biological products at local places: it is in her local community that the child will grow up, and hence it is here that the child is potentially familiarized with the way things are as well as with the way things are done locally. It seems clear from my material that children's opportunities of self-formation may be more restricted than their disorders in themselves would suggest. In fact, psycho-social aspects of marginalization may be produced nearly without reference to any diagnosable disorder.
I have tried to emphasize so far that the users' need of releasing their potential of becoming people is not different from that of other children, despite the fact that the users sometimes are marked by their need for technical compensation. However, the stories about technical compensation and about care for the user are different from what may be referred to as a pedagogical narrative, i.e. as a story about how the user is constituted as a subject at her place of living. It is a dilemma that the professionals in the special educational encounter in many cases do not properly distinguish the stories about care from the stories about socialization, and the outcome may be that the user is not adequately familiarized with how the tools are competently applied in concrete situations. Competent tool application is not inborn, so when the newcomers come to the world, they are not equipped with an inherent familiarity of this sort. It should be stated that children do have a genuine need for participation and singlehanded tool application in local mainstream activities in order to become people.
At the borders of dialogue, nursing and care become increasingly important aspects of help provisions. Serious effects of disorders and illness - as well as implications of extreme forms of isolation - may in some cases efficiently block the users' opportunities of releasing their potential of becoming people. It is crucial to be aware that the baronet's manoeuvring in the grey zone between people and alleged barefooted easily becomes self-fulfilling, and as I have suggested, no person may be considered as entirely uneducable. I am trying to restrict my considerations to the educational aspects of the user/helper meeting, although I certainly do not reject some of the users' primary needs of nursing.
It is a presumption for my arguments that people should not be considered only as biological products, but rather, a person should primarily be regarded as a product of social processes. Newcomers become people through the process of (primary) socialization. When the newcomers see the light of the working day, they depend on learning and on acquiring knowledge and skills about their local place in order to be constituted as subjects in their local community. At this point I hurry to underline again that it is quite possible to offer children surroundings which efficiently block their opportunity of partaking. If participation is denied to the child, her opportunity of familiarizing herself with the place is blocked, and hence she may not be able to get into her local shoes. This means that the child lacks a reference point in respect to how things should be done, and therefore she may not be recognized by others, nor be able to see herself as a usable and competent contributor to ongoing activities. Her partaking becomes restricted when compared to that of other children, and as time passes, it may no longer be possible for her to focus her activities towards integration. When this is a matter of fact, disablement has been socially constructed in the sense that the child cannot operate her surroundings as 2expected.
I do not wish to indicate that the professionals intentionally are restricting the users' partaking, nor that the users are deliberately excluded. I rather will point to the potential conflict between a story about care and a pedagogical narrative. The helpers' care for the users may not only involve a one-sided emphasis on nursing and on technical compensation. It may also involve that the helpers are intervening in situations where self-sufficient tool application seems to be too difficult for the users. In essence this means that the users do not learn by experience how the local tools are working, and gradually they grow reliant upon the helpers' problem-solving and compensation. The professonals' intervention on the user's behalf does not only deny her concrete knowledge about how the tools are applied, it also takes away from her the knowing of how the tools may be operated in another context. In this way, when the helpers are confusing stories about care with stories about learning, the outcome may sometimes be that the user's opportunities of identity formation are virtually undermined.
In the context of special programmes the master meets with a seemingly completely incompetent and dysfunctional user, and the risk is that he intervenes on behalf of the user in nearly all situations. The user's apparently total helplessness tends to subdue the moral dilemmas involved in upbringing, and therefore the user's disorders sometimes serve as a firm basis for unrestricted interventions. The risk is that the moral dilemmas of overrunning the user are neglected, but it is equally important to be aware that at the same time a practical problem arises: important learning opportunities are taken away from the knight. Hence, the helper' paternalistic approach to the user may seriously hamper the socialization of the user because it takes away opportunities of learning also in situations where she potentially could have handled the context on her own. On the other hand, to the extent that the helpers apply an anti-paternalistic approach, this may not only involve new opportunities of personal experience for the user. It also may mean that the care and compensation aspects of the special pedagogical meeting are entirely neglected by the professionals. In the worst case this means that necessary technical means of compensation also are taken away from the user, and hence she is left to cope with the mainstream on her own.(4)
In my outline here, I have drawn heavily from three different sources. My interpretative approach to the user/helper relation is framed by the hermeneutic tradition of social science (JOHANNESSEN 1986). Secondly, my consideration of the special pedagogical meeting is based on a distinction between equal and unequal social encounters (see for instance Edmund Edvardsen's account from 1985). Finally, I draw from the paternalism/anti- paternalism debate of analytical philosophy (NORDENBO op.cit). I have stated that the dilemmas of the helpers' approach in the tension-field between care and teaching primarily are concerning the user's opportunity of becoming people in the socio-cultural and psycho-social sense. The individualization, totalization and relativation of user difficulties easily lead to an overemphasis on compensation on behalf of the user, while her need for learning is underestimated - at best. The totalization of the user's incompetence and helplessness means that she is stripped of all other relevant assignments than that of a consumer of the professionals' interventions. There is a risk that the user is constituted as an object for her helpers' provisions rather than becoming a subject at her place of living.
+ A practical problem of upbringing
I have so far emphasized that the user and her helpers sometimes are seen as entirely separate parts, and that individualization of user difficulties often is an integral part of special educational interventions. Not only is a totally useless and helpless user often defined by the built- in procedures of special programmes, but at the same time a completely competent and self-sufficient professional is emerging. I have tried to underline that the user and her helper primarily should be recognized as two sides of the same coin, and I have also tried to sketch the contours of an ambiguous user who cannot in any meaningful manner be understood only in terms of her (alleged) disorders. Similarly, the helper cannot be understood only as an assistance provider; and I will argue that in order to organize and implement efficient special programmes, the professionals rely heavily upon assistance from the users. Hence, the user cannot be regarded as only a receiver of assistance - she should also be regarded as a helper of the professionals. By the same lines of reasoning the helper cannot be considered as only an assistance provider, he is also a user of the help offered by the knight. It seems reasonable to suggest that the user's own stories - her own personal text, or her tool application in concrete situations, if you prefer - are the essential means which enables the professional to distinguish between a truly pedagogical narrative and stories about nursing, care and technical compensation. As I will account for in some more detail later, the user's own presentations are not only the building materials in her own identity construction, they are also the tools by which the professional can distinguish between the user's need of learning and her need of compensation. However, to the extent that the baronet is overrunning the user, he may be unable to make proper use of the assistance offered by his client, and their meeting may be wrecked by the helper's attempted adaptation of the knight. On the other hand, when the user adopts the baronet's definitions and implementations indiscriminately, she may later be unable to provide the helpers with proper assistance so as to influence the meeting between them. When this is the case, disablement has been constructed, not only in the sense that the user is left in a situation between wind and water: also the helper is left in a scrape, since he is not provided with the assistance necessary for formulating an essentially pedagogical narrative.
The classical special educational meeting is founded on helpers who do not only define the user's difficulties: they also know best how these difficulties should be resolved and compensated for. As I have suggested, the user in this way becomes a client, i.e. a passive receiver of the professionals' provisions. The professionals become the only active part of the encounter - the producers of solutions to the user's problems. The client is prevented from bringing her own story through, because her incompetence is seen as a matter of fact by both parties, and because she is lacking familiarity with how opportunities at hand are actually operated. The professionals' low tolerance for alternative tool application and their interventions on behalf of the user are two sides of the same cause - and potentially this means an indiscriminate adaptation of the user. I do not wish to indicate that the user should be left to the seas and to drowning; I am rather claiming that it is essential for the professionals to keep separate what is a pedagogical story and what is not. Even though the user certainly is entitled to technical compensation for particular disorders, the professionals' 8paternalistic attack often leaves the user with her hands inactivated. By this state of affairs paternalism is constituted, not only as a moral dilemma in special education, but also as a practical problem: How can the user despite her difficulties be assisted to acquaint herself properly with at least some of the tools and, practically speaking, be able to release her potentials? Even though the ethics of the provider/client relation certainly not should be underestimated, the practical difficulty of the encounter lies in its counterproductiveness when the knight is to be constituted as a subject at her place of living.
Although the user sometimes is heavily reliant upon technical compensation, her providers may concentrate one-sidedly on door-opening, while the user's need of releasing her potential of becoming people often is given less priority. However, in order to facilitate a smooth meeting between the user and the local shoes, the providers are also heavily reliant on the user's own version of her encounter with the surroundings: since each newcomer represents a unique example - not to say a particular case, efficient assistance presumes the user's own descriptions and analysis of her personal situation. It is only the user herself who knows the details about her everyday-life difficulties and opportunities, and, in short, the providers cannot do without these experiences in their attempted assistance. On the other hand, the helpers' greater experience, their skills and expertise are important to the user if her own suggestions to problem-solving are to become more than trying and failing. Not only do the helpers through more extensive personal experiences have a better overview of which means are at hand than the user, but they are also fully knowing how the tools are competently applied. But in order to ensure the socialization of the newcomer, she must actually apply the opportunities herself in order to make the tools her own. It should at this stage be noted that not only is the pedagogical meeting a temporary one, but the providers cannot guide the user by her hand in all situations. Put otherwise: the helper cannot participate in everyday-life situations on behalf of the user.
To become a passive recipient of the professional assistance may prevent the user from bringing her own story through. It is by producing her personal text that the user gets acquainted with her surroundings, and in this way she becomes more aware of her own situation. But her own story is not only an opportunity of exploring her situation here and now, it is also an opportunity of rethinking about the past. Furthermore, her production at present gives her future participation direction, thereby making her prospectives conceivable. It is her personal story that her providers make use of in their attempted assistance provision. Her personal outline is the raw material of help, and it is the essential means which potentially gives the helpers an opportunity to distinguish between upbringing of the user and technical interventions. The user may not be fully aware of where the shoe is pinching; in other words, she may not be familiar with how her own contribution fits into the context -as this is seen from the master's point of view. On the other hand, the helpers may not be fully aware of how the user is thinking of the situation until she has presented her own version of the encounter with the place. In order to facilitate the user's personal contribution to the meeting with her helpers, the two parts should not see themselves only as users of each other's services: they should preferably see themselves as each other's helpers. However, as the user in this way is releasing her potentials she does not necessarily become an autonomous partaker. Her participation offers her opportunities of experience from personal tool application, and it is these acquired operation patterns which are directing her future activities.
I am claiming here that competent tool application and partaking cannot be secured for the user simply by professional intervention on her behalf. The master's control over the tools leaves the user without experience of how the tools are competently applied, and it bereaves her the opportunity of releasing her potential of becoming people. The deadlock involves that the user is left without the necessary knowledge and skills to negotiate successfully for partaking, - and neither is she able to negotiate successfully for adequate compensation for her particular difficulties. Instead, she easily gets totally reliant upon her helpers' services, while the helpers seem unable to assist the knight in helping herself.
From a slightly different angle, the meeting between the users and their professional classroom helpers may be considered in terms of the rights and duties of the involved parties, and it may be said that to the extent that one of them becomes a completely passive reciever of the provisions from the other, the meeting cannot be sustained. This is not a numeric problem arising when more and more people in the welfare state are assuming the receiver position: rather, the producer's implementations loose legitimity when they are not confirmed by the reciever. The line of argumentation here follows the analysis of Erik O. Eriksen in his account.(5) His outline is somewhat different from the analysis of disablement inherent in a welfare perspective: according to the latter perspective, a problem occurs when the number of clients reaches a level which cannot be sustained by the production surplus of the seemingly normal people. Although the economical aspects of special educational provisions are important, a declined legitimity of the producer following from paternalistic approaches does not only threaten encounters at the face-to-face level, it also potentially undermines organizatoric cooperation and the foundation of the nation.
1. Didactics as a scientific concept is closely linked to
particular educational objektives and their underlying arguments, and
is here applied slightly different than the term curriculum which
includes the particular programme content as well as its concrete
classroom implementation.
2. See for instance Willy Guneriussen's account of the modern
scientific project aiming at a neutral, objective and rational
apprehension of reality (GUNERIUSSEN 1996).
3. REINDAL 1995.
4. See for instance Mårten Søder's account of
"antilibelling"strategies (SODER 1991).
5. See Erik Oddvar Eriksen 1993: Den offentlige
dimensjon. Verdier og styring i offentlig sektor.
Edvardsen, Edmund (1985): Å føye sammen det atskilte. Doctoral dissertation. Unuversity of Tromsoe. Tromsoe.
Eriksen, Erik Oddvar (1993): Den offentlige dimensjon. Verdier og styring i offentlig sektor. Tano. Oslo.
Guneriussen, Willy (1996): Aktør, handling og struktur. Grunnlagsproblemer i samfunnsvitenskapen. Tano. Oslo.
Johannessen, Kjell S. (1986): Tradisjoner og skoler i moderne vitenskapsfilosofi. Sigma forlag. Oslo.
Nordenbo, Sven Erik (1985): "Den paedagogiske grundfortaelling, den paedagogiske relation og paedagogisk paternalisme - identifisering af et moralsk problem i paedagogikken." Psyke & Logos. No. 78.
Reindal, Solveig (1995) "Discussing Disability - an Investigation into Theories of Disability." European Journal of Special Needs Education. Vol. 10, no. 1, pp 58-69.
Dr. polit. Halgeir Holthe
Tirilbakken 11, 9100 Kvaløysletta, Norway.
tlf: (47) 776 52174
e-mail: halgeirh@mail.powertech.no