DISABILITY, EUGENICS AND THE CURRENT IDEOLOGY OF SEGREGATION - A MODERN MORAL TALE

Recently, an amalgamation of articles have appeared in a wide range of publications linking together community and school inclusion, and fac ilitated communication research as an unholy trinity of anti-empiricis m eroding the disability fields. The authors of these critiques sugges t that there exists a scientific basis for state institutions, segrega ted learning and a non-critical acceptance of traditional interpretati ons of expressive ability on the part of people with disabilities. In this article we expose not science, but an ideology of segregated cont rol behind these claims. This ideology permeates the disability-relate d professions and is cloaked in the language of the natural sciences. We trace this use of the natural sciences to the eugenics movement of the early twentieth century and explore the legacy of the ideology of control as it impacts current understanding of disability.