Parents, Politics and the Public Purse: Activists in the special education arena in Germany

Abstract

Using a 'social interest' approach, this paper details the advocacy strategies of parents of children with disabilities in the Federal Republic of Germany during the 1980s. Parents developed grass-roots organizations beginning in the 1970s in the former West Germany in response to the stigma and isolation of the well-developed system of Sonderschulen (special schools). Parent groups described here include both those with children already in the Sonderschulen working to ensure its promise of special help for their children and those working to bypass the Sonderschule system by establishing model integration programs in the general schools. The collective actions that led to local successes for both these parent advocate approaches are documented, but so, too, are the obstacles the parents encountered in the broader political arena. Politicians continue to cite limited education budgets, especially following the unification of the two Germanys, and they also raise concerns which some parents share: that significant expansion of special educational support into the general schools could undermine the viability of the Sonderschulen . Thus, one political response to the integration movement has been to find places for some children with disabilities in the general schools, but accompanied by only minimal special education support.