According to Taylor (2016), ableism refers to most recurrently used actions which identity and names prejudice as well as discrimination with the aim of demeaning people with disabilities. Ableism actions can either be intentional or unintentional. In a school setting, ableism is expressed both subtly and overtly at cultural, structural, and personal levels through people's perspectives and attitudes about disability.
Georgia’s Segregation of Students with Disabilities
In the video, Judd and Woodruff discuss that Georgia's act of segregation towards students with disabilities was extremely illegal (“Georgia segregates kids with disabilities, behavior problems | PBS NewsHour,” 2015).). The research conducted by the Department of Justice institutes that Georgia was carrying out programs that saw students with disabilities placed in severely dilapidated buildings of the colonial era.
Georgia’s Rationale for this Practice
According to the video, the rationale for Georgia's practices was to isolate the students with a disability from others through housing them in dilapidated buildings know to have been used by the Jim Crow as all-black schools. Also, it is obvious that racial segregations constitute one of the rationales of Georgia's practice.
Damaging Segregation
The segregation at Georgia had impulsive damages as Judd and Woodruff puts forward. The practice made the students with disabilities to be denied gymnasium, science labs, as well as art classes (La Salle, Roach, " McGrath, 2013). In fact, storing of students in a dilapidated house was the worst and most damaging form of segregation.
How can Georgia Address this Issue?
Nonetheless, Georgia needs to share the science labs, art rooms, and gymnasium with the students living with disabilities (Taylor, 2016). All the buildings and classes should be designed in a way that everyone, including the minority, can access.
Conclusion
To sum up, segregation is a bad art that should not be allowed in the society as it discriminates students living with disabilities, thus worsening their situation. In Georgia, segregation results to far-reaching effects like denying the said student the opportunity to use public facilities like the science lab, gymnasium, among many other effects.
References
“Georgia segregates kids with disabilities, behavior problems | PBS NewsHour.” (2015). PBS.org. Retrieved on April 23, 2018, from https://www.pbs.org/video/georgia-segregates-kids-with-disabilities-behavior-problems-1445556187/
La Salle, T. P., Roach, A. T., " McGrath, D. (2013). The Relationship of IEP Quality to Curricular Access and Academic Achievement for Students with Disabilities. International Journal of Special Education, 28(1), 135-144.
Taylor, A. (2016). Response: On Purposes and Intentions: Doing the Work of Challenging Ableism in Education. Philosophy of Education Archive, 105-108.
