Children of a lesser school : An interdisciplinary study on disability in the Greek educational reality

Abstract:

ABSTRACT What is the situation for disabled children in the Greek educational system today, in the aftermath of the deep-seated socio-economic crisis? The present study is going to give an insight in children disability and how this is handled by the Greek educational system. To specify and illustrate the need for a qualitative perspective, it is necessary to take into consideration not only the exact numbers of disabled students and schools existing for them, along with the usefulness and functionality of their facilities, but also different qualitative aspects and intersecting parameters determining the attitude towards those children, such as gender, sexuality, age and bodily ability; all of them contributing to a specific collective mind-set that has arisen from a nexus of economical, educational, European and local structures, and their upheaval. This is such a study, providing a limited, but qualitative picture of the situation from an intersectional Gender Studies perspective onto legislative documents, the experiences of a few current educational practitioners (herein interviewed), and onto the state of the art of existing research on the topic which is mostly quantitative and statistics-based.  The over-arching question, guiding this investigation, is how the educational rights and well-fare of children with special educational needs, are practiced, cared for and discussed in the present Greek educational system with regard to intersectional gender concerns of inclusion and/or integration. This study hopes thus to provide an interdisciplinary snap-shot of the educational situation for disabled children in a disabled societal context.