Biomedical Approaches to Literacy: Two Curriculum Teachers Challenge the Treatment of Dis/Ability in Contemporary Early Literacy Education

Abstract

This paper is a critical examination of the state of Canadian literacy education and research and its effects on young children. Its purpose is to appraise the ways in which disability is currently being produced and practiced in early school curricula and to argue for a theoretically rich curricula which begins from children’s strengths. To accomplish these goals, this paper commences with a brief appraisal of curriculum studies’ lack of attention to issues of dis/ability, considers major movements in literacy curricula, then contends that an innovation in literacy curricula the authors term, “the biomedical approach”, is pathologizing entire school populations and inflicting upon them reductionistic literacy curricula. This paper illustrates the biomedical approach through a narrative of a public school and the experiences of its early years staff and students.

Dissing learning disabilities

“…Further, it derogates the student's self-esteem due to explicit categorization of students where they begin to recognize their status within the classroom, becoming aware of where the system has placed them (Wotherspoon, 1998). Heydon and Iannacci (2006) determine that there are limited spaces in the education sector to question the meaning of being abled or disabled in the school system, and to question the curricula for students with disabilities. The combination of the biomedical approach and educational policies disables the entire school populations, while consequently it imposes a reductionist literacy curriculum for the students (Heydon and Iannacci, 2006).…”

Reading dis/ability: interrogating paradigms in a prism of power

“…The focus is to elucidate how the comparison of a child's approach to learning to read against dominant paradigms (Gill & Smith, 2005) operates as a third locus or point in a prism of power; where, in addition to those children not achieving at the rate of their peers (Cremin & Thomas, 2005) and children not achieving to the standards of the day (Graham, 2006a;Grieshaber, 1997), children who fail to approach learning in the "proper" ways (Popkewitz, 2004) can also come to be described as learning disabled. In such cases, theories of reading and learning disability posit neurobiological deficit as the root of the educational problem leading to an alleged cognitive "inability" which comes to be recognised as a disability (Heydon & Iannicci, 2002). A prism is used for three purposes: to refract light, to reflect it and to break light into the colours of the rainbow.…”

The de-pathologization of childhood, disability and aging in an intergenerational art class

“…3 In this approach disability and potential disability are seen as physical problems (usually related to brain development) that should be worked our by 'scientists' (often medical doctors) (Heydon and Iannacci, 2005). The Early Years Study exemplifies this instrumental, or rather what my colleague and I term the 'biomedical', approach (Heydon and Iannacci, 2005). Stooke's (2003) analysis of Early Years Study, for instance, demonstrates that the report uses science as a trope for convincing the public that controlling and predicting the kinds of adults a society will produce is what is needed and that focusing on children's brains and brain development is the way to do this.…”

“…learning disabilities) and then control the environment so as to reduce or eliminate disability. 3 In this approach disability and potential disability are seen as physical problems (usually related to brain development) that should be worked our by 'scientists' (often medical doctors) (Heydon and Iannacci, 2005). The Early Years Study exemplifies this instrumental, or rather what my colleague and I term the 'biomedical', approach (Heydon and Iannacci, 2005).…”

“…Thus, all children are seen as potentially disabled and through the involvement of medical doctors, as potentially pathological. In reading the potentially disabled child, one can learn about society's values, and through this, discern the normate; one can see that in the dominant discourse, a brain that 'works' is a brain that functions to propel the economy, and one can learn that diversity is not valued for it is 'most desirable to be physically, psychologically, and cognitively the "same" as the majority of the population' (Heydon and Iannacci, 2005) (i.e. to have the form of brain that is advocated for by the government).…”