Abstract
Many disabled children are not attending schools in South Africa, despite policies that promote inclusive education. Quite often, online news articles (re)visit this topic. Using a critical literacy approach, and informed by critical disability studies, this chapter analyses online news articles, showing that certain tropes are rehearsed. These are an emphasis on the large numbers of disabled children out of school, individual stories of educational neglect, and critiques of teachers, schools and the government. These tropes have the effect of casting the education of disabled children in South Africa as a problem, rather than a right. The problem is presented as so overwhelming that it is ultimately unsolvable. Disabled children and their families are portrayed as the pitiable victims of unfortunate circumstances with detailed stories that emphasize their ‘otherness.’ We argue that instead of promoting affirming disability awareness and advocacy, and locating the experiences of disabled children and young people within a context of systemic discrimination and oppression, the articles do little more than evoke shock and pity. We call for news articles to portray disability in more complex and nuanced way, which allows individual agency, without resorting to stereotypes, to challenge ableist views of disability as deficit.
Highlights
As we start to write this chapter, a group of South African people with disabilities and disability rights activists is making a submission to the United Nations (UN) Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in Geneva
Our initial awareness of online news articles addressing the issue of the education of children with disabilities in South Africa came from our work in the field
Our contribution is to use the tools of critical literacy and concepts from critical disability studies to expose ways in which the news media in South Africa represent the education of children with disabilities
Summary
As we start to write this chapter, a group of South African people with disabilities and disability rights activists is making a submission to the United Nations (UN) Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in Geneva. 5. Methodology Our initial awareness of online news articles addressing the issue of the education of children with disabilities in South Africa came from our work in the field. We chose to limit the date of publication to the five years prior to 31 January 2018 to ensure that the analysis could be regarded as reasonably current and represents a time period in which inclusive education policy was well into the implementation stage This search yielded twenty-eight articles from online news sites. This involved a first level of coding of the content of the texts, finding patterns of repetition, and clustering the codes into categories Through this process, we identified four major concerns regarding the education of children with disabilities which are repeated across the articles. In the section that follows, we outline what the online media reports about schooling for children and young people with disabilities in South Africa
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