Soft Disability in Schools: Assisting or Confining At Risk Children and Youth?

Abstract

The aim in this article is to examine the institutional construction of soft or mild disability by special education as a process of pre-incarceration in schools. Soft disability includes the categories of specific learning disabilities (LD), speech and language impairments (SLI), emotional and behavioural disorders (EBD), and mild mental retardation (MMR). Based on Foucault's (1975/1977) view of the link between prison and delinquency and Skrtic's (1995) critical-pragmatic perspective of disability and special education , I argue that labels of soft disability reflect a process of suspending the educational and citizenship participation of disadvantaged students. Similarly to what Foucault described as the production of delinquency by the prison, special education, by applying inconsistent identification criteria, increases the occurrence of soft disability. Variation and inquiry are outlined as alternative concepts whose implementation may r e verse the negative school dynamic between soft dis ability and (p r e) incarceration.