IP – Blog Post 1: Disability

Rethinking Normalcy in Education

DisCrit: Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory in Education challenges the dominant narratives about what is considered “normal” (Connor, Ferri and Annamma, 2016). It highlights how race, ability, and sex intersect to shape students’ educational experiences. Intersectionality is grounded in intersectionality theory originally coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw (1991) which argues that people experience multiple overlapping systems of oppression not separately, but simultaneously. 

Growing up in Germany and attending university there, I was immersed in a system where the pressure to conform to rigid standards. Teachers, professors, and administrators in Germany must undergo stringent health evaluations before being granted civil servant status and securing a permanent contract. One of the most troubling aspects of this process is that any history of mental health treatment, such as attending therapy or taking antidepressants, can disqualify an individual. The rationale given by the state is that civil servants must be “fit” to work reliably until retirement. But what does that really mean? It feels less about true fitness and more about erasing the human complexities we all carry.

The implications of these exclusionary practices extend beyond individual discrimination. By filtering out those with lived experience of mental health challenges, the educational system loses valuable forms of insight, empathy, and resilience—qualities that could profoundly enrich pedagogy and institutional culture. Policies like these send a message to students as well: that to succeed, to belong, one must hide or suppress any form of difference or vulnerability. It creates, as DisCrit warns, an education system more concerned with managing bodies and behaviours than with nurturing diverse forms of learning, being, and knowing.

As DisCrit teaches us, such standards are far from neutral. They reflect deeply entrenched normative assumptions about ability, health, and value. In doing so, the German system reinforces a rigid ableism that DisCrit argues is central to the operation of educational systems. Yet this ableism does not operate in isolation – it intersects with other systems of oppression, including racism, sexism, and classism. The expectation of emotional neutrality and permanent health privileges a normative ideal often coded as white, middle-class, neurotypical, and masculine. This mirrors DisCrit’s analysis of how institutions reify categories of dis/ability in conjunction with race and other social markers to sort, manage, and exclude people from full participation in public life (Kozleski, 2015). In fact, the likelihood of being labelled or treated as disabled increases significantly when individuals also experience marginalisation based on race, gender, language, or socioeconomic status. Annamma, Connor, and Ferri argue (2016), dis/ability is disproportionately imposed upon those who carry multiple, intersecting identities – making disability not just a medical label but a social and political designation shaped by structures of inequality.

Reflecting on these personal and systemic realities, we must also involve a radical rethinking of who is deemed worthy to teach, to lead, and to represent education itself. Following DisCrit’s call to challenge “common sense” assumptions about ability and normalcy, we must dismantle policies and cultures that treat human complexity as a risk, rather than as a strength.

References:

Connor, D.J., Ferri, B.A. and Annamma, S.A. (eds.) (2016) DisCrit: Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory in Education. New York: Teachers College Press.

Crenshaw, K. (1991) ‘Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color‘, Stanford Law Review.

Kozleski, E.B. (2015) ‘Reifying categories: Measurement in search of understanding’, in Connor, D.J., Ferri, B.A. and Annamma, S.A. (eds.) DisCrit: Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory in Education. New York: Teachers College Press.