CHAPTER 7
RACE AND SPECIAL EDUCATION
Race and ethnicity have always been crucial to understanding the development of
special education. The chapter below is taken from (ed.) Ware, L. (2004) Ideology
and the Politics of (In)Exclusion. New York. Peter Lang. pp. 76–88.
In all countries that have developed special education subsystems to their
mainstream education and also have racial, ethnic, or immigrant minorities,1
these minorities have always been overrepresented in the special sector. On
occasion, special education has been the only form of education offered to a
substantial number of minority and migrant children. This has usually become
a matter of great concern to minority parents and communities, often to the
point of litigation. Those in charge of education have accepted or promulgated
the situation as natural or inevitable, explained by unfortunate minority
deficiencies or inabilities complicated by difficulties of assessment. Thus, in the
United States Terman could suggest in 1916 that black, Spanish, Indian, and
Mexican children exhibited ‘racial dullness’ and inherited low intelligence
(Terman, 1916), which required special education. In 1923 Brigham produced,
in his Study of American Intelligence (1923), a ‘race hypothesis’ to explain his
findings that Nordic immigrants to the United States had ‘genuine intellectual
superiority’ and in 1994 Herrnstein and Murray could present elaborate evidence
to demonstrate racial and ethnic difference in cognitive ability (1994). In the
United Kingdom Eysenck suggested in 1971 that black Americans and Irish
people are genetically intellectually inferior due to ‘crimes committed against
their ancestors’ (Eysenck, 1971, p. 142), and in 1992 Lynn, himself a professor
in Northern Ireland, offered a theory for the evolution of racial differences in
intelligence (Lynn, 1992). Lynn also theorised that as black Africans in Africa
scored lower on Western IQ tests, black minority groups in other countries
could not claim that racial disadvantage caused their educational problems.
Racial and ethnic minority and migrant groups in the United Kingdom,
United States, and most European countries have always been concentrated at
the lower-achieving end of mainstream education, and have been overrepresented
in special education. A study of seven European countries carried out in 1987
noted that 6 per cent of immigrant children were in special education, as opposed
to 2.8 per cent of ‘nationals’ (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development [OECD], 1987), and a report for the European Community in
1992 concluded that: ‘In all European Community member states, almost
always ethnic minority groups do least well in education. They leave schools
earlier, drop out altogether, obtain lower examination qualifications, and are
overrepresented in special education (Teunisson, 1992).
88 Race and special education
In the United States the referral, testing, and overplacement of black,
minority, and migrant children in special education provoked some bitter
legislative battles (Sigmon, 1990). In the United Kingdom children from
colonial or former colonial countries had scarcely had time to settle in education
before being labelled as potential low achievers and disproportionately relegated
to special education (Coard, 1970; Tomlinson, 1981). In 1996 a review of the
educational achievement of minority young people indicated yet again that
black children have not shared in increasing rates of achievement (Gillborn and
Gipps, 1996) and that a disproportionate number of black students are excluded
from school, relegated to pupil referral units, or placed in schools for the
emotionally and behaviourally disturbed.
This chapter briefly reviews the situation in the United Kingdom beginning
with the 1960s, during which period black children of African-Caribbean origin
have been overplaced in stigmatised2 forms of statutory and nonstatutory forms
of special education such as schools for the ‘educationally subnormal’ (ESN-M)
and for the maladjusted. Until these categories were discontinued and relabelled
in 1981 as schools for the emotionally and behaviourally disturbed (EDB),
behavioural and pupil referral units (PRUs) and straight exclusion from school
were and continue to be ways in which African-Caribbean children have been
removed from mainstream education. The chapter raises the question as to why
children perceived as racially different should continue to be regarded as
candidates for removal from mainstream education. It suggests that one answer
may lie in the nineteenth-century post-Darwinian racial thinking, which was
structured around assumptions of biological inferiority and cultural deficiency
of ‘other races,’ particularly those from slave ancestry or those who were living
in colonised countries. By the end of the nineteenth century these assumptions
were also applied to same-race (lower-class) white ‘degenerates’ within the
country. This thinking was bolstered by the development of mental testing in
the early twentieth century, creators and standardisers of mental tests such as
Terman in the United States and Burt in the United Kingdom being particularly
influential via their negative views of other races and lower classes (Burt, 1937;
Terman, 1916). It is important to discuss the persistence of the assumptions and
views behind the perpetuation of placements in the stigmatised forms of special
education of racial and migrant minorities, since their situation, at the beginning
of the twenty-first century, does not appear to be changing significantly.
The 1960s and 1970s: ESN and maladjusted
The arrival of children from the Caribbean and the Asian subcontinent into the
British school system in the 1950s and 1960s coincided with the expansion and
consolidation of special education as an important postwar subsystem of
education. In 1945 ten statutory categories of handicap were created. The
largest group of children up to 1939 – educable defective – were to be merged
with remedial and ‘dull’ (slow-minded) children to become educationally
subnormal. A new category of maladjusted was created for children who
displayed behavioural and emotional problems with which mainstream teachers
could not cope. ESN schooling (called ‘ESN-M’ from 1970 onwards) expanded
Race and special education 89
dramatically taking in children regarded as having both learning and behavioural
problems. The large number of immigrant – particularly black – children
admitted to special schools was first noted by the Inner London Education
Authority (ILEA) in the mid-1960s. In 1967 an ILEA survey of 22 ESN schools
reported that ‘misplacement’ was four times more likely in the case of immigrant
children, and the schools noted that the children were largely admitted for
behavioural reasons rather than low IQ. In 1970 Bernard Coard published a
short book entitled How the West Indian Child Is Made Educationally Sub-Normal
in the British School System (Coard, 1970), and pointed out that the figures from
ILEA in 1968 showed that while 17 per cent of children in London schools
were classed as immigrant, 34 per cent of those in ESN schools were immigrants,
of whom 75 per cent were of West Indian origin. He suggested that teachers’
cultural beliefs and low expectations of black children together with a white
middle-class curriculum lay behind referrals. In the same year the North London
West Indian Parents Association lodged a complaint against overplacement of
black children in ESN schools in Haringey with the Race Relations Board,
which resulted eventually in Department of Education guidance to Local
Education Authorities (Department for Education and Science, 1973). By 1972
children of West Indian origin constituted 1.1 per cent of children in all
maintained schools, but 4.9 per cent of all children in ESN-M schools. An article
by Dhondy in 1974 suggested that the ESN issue had become symbolic of the
failure of the whole school system to incorporate and educate black children
satisfactorily (Dhondy, 1974).
But central and local government, schools, and teachers did not appear to
regard the situation as particularly problematic, although the secretary of state
for education—showing their findings to a House of Commons Select
Committee in 1973, conceded that, ‘We probably have not yet got the right
methods of assessing their abilities, bearing in mind the background from which
they come’ (Select Committee, 1973, vol. 3 p. 647). Earlier, Thatcher had
asserted that this background included badly structured family life. The
Department for Education and Science, showing their findings to the same
committee, noted that in London schools at that time, 20.5 per cent of children
in ESN schools were of West Indian origin and complained that there had been
‘no systematic appraisal of the reasons for this’ but went on to blame language
and dialect difficulties. A further report by a Select Committee in 1976 noted
that black parents and teachers found the overplacement of black children in
ESN schools to be ‘a very bitter area – the West Indian community is disturbed
by the underachievement of its children at school and seriously disturbed by the
high proportion in ESN schools’ (Select Committee, 1976, vol. 1).
During the mid-1970s I carried out a study following a group of children
referred into ESN-M schooling. One aim of the study was to understand the
views and beliefs of head teachers and other professionals as to why black
children were overreferred to and placed in ESN schools. It was noticeable that
black children were placed more speedily in special schools than were white
children – 11 months compared with two years at that time. The criteria used by
head teachers to refer children corresponded closely to their perception of the
‘problems’ of black children that they were likely to be educationally slow,
90 Race and special education
behaviourally troublesome, and from disorganised families and disadvantaged
socioeconomic backgrounds. Several head teachers felt the children had ‘natural’
educational handicaps – ‘they are bound to be slower, it’s their personalities …
they are a representative bunch – slow, docile, low-functioning’ while at the
same time ‘they had the usual problems, hyperactivity and anti-authority’
Tomlinson 1981, p. 160). One doctor interviewed in the study believed that
‘they have ebullient natures, they can go berserk in school’. The professionals
also took account of appearance in the 1970s. One child was described as
‘looking like a minstrel’. Another as a ‘tragedy because she is ugly’ and black
families were generally regarded as deviating from the idealised family norm. I
concluded that the characteristics of black children and their families were
judged against white majority cultural norms, and the children and their families
were judged to be deficient (Tomlinson, 1981, p. 301). I also concluded:
if race was taken into consideration, and the referral process took account of
the position of the black child in a hostile, white society and the belief
systems of the professionals, black children might start out equal in the
assessment process.
(p. 301)
A study into the process of referral and placement for maladjustment was also
carried out in the 1970s by Ford, Mongon, and Whelan (1982). Although fewer
children were referred into this category than for ESN-M, numbers of children
attending schools for the maladjusted increased from zero in 1950 to 13,000 in
1978, with teachers in mainstream education commenting that ‘it was a relief to
get the children out’ (Ford, Mongon and Whelan, 1982, p. 54). This study also
found that there were four times as many black children in these schools than
would be expected (p. 135); boys and working-class pupils were heavily
overrepresented; and the middle and upper classes did not seem to become
maladjusted (p. 136). This study noted the ‘complex and delicate’ questions
raised by overrepresentation of black children and noted that features of
ethnicity, culture clashes, school attitudes, and societal expectations might
contribute, as might the medical model of maladjustment as ‘deviance and
strangeness’.
The 1960s and 1970s also witnessed the development of nonstatutory ways
of excluding children from mainstream schooling. A variety of guidance centres,
nurture groups, sanctuary units, support units, transitional classes, and
intermediate treatment centres came into operations as a response to troublesome
behaviour in schools. The Community Relations Commission noted in 1974
that, in Birmingham, black pupils were overrepresented in these forms of
education (Community Relations Commission [CRC], 1974), which had been
developed primarily to prevent pupils from ‘disrupting the education of others’
(Ford, Mongon and Whelan, 1982, p. 89) – a common theme running through
special education provision from the 1890s to the present day. A further formal
investigation in Birmingham by the Commission for Racial Equality in 1984
found a disproportionate number of black children suspended from school, 10
per cent of the school population being West Indian, but 43 per cent of children
Race and special education 91
in one special guidance unit alone were black. Black pupils tended to be referred
for one offence, white children only after several offences (Commission for
Racial Equality [CRE], 1985).
The introduction of the concept of special educational need, replacing the old
categories of handicap, via the 1981 Education Act, did little to reassure black
parents that their children would not continue to be overrepresented in special
education. A Haringey Black Pressure Group on Education expressed their
anxiety to the then shadow education secretary Neil Kinnock, who met the
group to discuss the situation. (The Times, 1981)
The 1980s and 1990s: EBD and exclusions
During the 1980s and 1990s information on the placement of minority children
in special education could only be obtained by research studies or from individual
Local Education Authorities (LEAs). Collection of information on the ethnic
background of pupils was discontinued in 1972 and the 1989 requirement for
schools to collect background information on pupils entering schools at ages 5
and 11 did not provide adequate data on the backgrounds of pupils moving into
special education. There has been no requirement that the ethnic background of
‘statemented’ children3 be noted. Research in the 1980s indicated that, as a
group, black children continued to be regarded as potential low achievers and
were overrepresented in the new forms of special education ESN-M schools, by
then called MLD (mild learning difficulty) schools. However, the numbers of
black children referred into these schools appeared to decline. What was
happening was that black children were being referred instead into the new
nonstatutory category of emotionally and behaviourally disturbed, which
replaced the statutory maladjusted category. Studies began to take note of
gender (Cooper et al., 1991). For black boys, the ESN issue was replaced by the
EBD issue as they became the group most likely to be overreferred to and placed
in EBD schools. Black pupils also continued to be overrepresented in behavioural
units (new PRUs were not developed until the 1990s) and suspended or
excluded from school. Research studies continued to suggest that teachers still
regarded black pupils, particularly boys, as potentially troublesome in mainstream
(Bagley, 1982; Eggleston et al., 1986; Inner London Education Authority
[ILEA] 1990). Bagley used Child Development Study data which showed that
black pupils were six times more likely to be placed in special schools than whites
and more likely to be described by their teachers as ‘delinquent, rebellious,
aggressive and easily-led’ (Bagley 1982, p. 127). Smith and Tomlinson noted in
their study that teachers were more likely to regard black children as having
emotional or behavioural problems (1989), and an ILEA survey in the late
1980s found black pupils twice as likely to be suspended or excluded as Asian or
white pupils (ILEA, 1990). The only large-scale study to date of EBD schools,
carried out by Cooper and his colleagues in 1989, found that black boys were
four times more likely to be overrepresented in these schools, and black girls
were also more likely to be regarded as EBD than white girls (Cooper et al.,
1991). While the researchers gave due weight to social class factors they
suggested that teachers continued to stereotype black pupils, misunderstand
92 Race and special education
cultural attributes, and perceive them as potentially deviant in ways that often
led pupils to adopt deviant identities (p. 90).
In the 1990s research into the placement and experiences of ethnic minority
students in special education continued to be minimal, and studies were mainly
carried out by research students. Vernon (1998) produced the first study in the
United Kingdom on the experience of black, disabled, ethnic minority women.
Reviews of the position of minorities in mainstream education continue to
report that African-Caribbean pupils, especially boys, have not shared in the
general increase in educational achievements and ‘there is a growing gap between
Afro-Caribbean pupils and their peers’ (Gillborn and Gipps, 1996; Gillborn and
Mirza, 2000; Office for Standards in Education [OFSTED], 1999). The 1996
Gillborn and Gipps review noted again that black pupils were between three and
six times more likely to be excluded from school than white pupils, and Gillborn
has noted elsewhere that ‘exclusions from school operate in a racist manner: they
deny a disproportionate number of black students access to mainstream
education’ (Gillborn, 1995). A study carried out for the Commission for Racial
Equality in the mid-1990s introduced the notion of ‘replacement’ education
(Commission for Racial Equality [CRE], 1996). This was replacement in
referral units or home tuition. Parsons and his colleagues at the CRE estimated
that the cost of replacement education was twice as much as mainstream
education but offered only 10 per cent of the education offered in mainstream
schools. This study referred to ‘a major crisis in the education of black males, in
which exclusion plays a part’and ‘until racial inequality in exclusions is eliminated
it will contribute to the development of an uneducated, unemployed and
unemployable cohort of young adults’ (p. 4).
The inequitable treatment of young black students continued to be researched
and documented in the twenty-first century. Maud Blair, researching the
teaching and learning of minority group students for the Department of
Education, demonstrated yet again that teachers’ ideological orientation towards
the young people affected their effectiveness as teachers, but they were often
unwilling to take responsibility and continued to blame the students for low
achievements. Blair reported that:
Black students felt particularly angered by the stereotypes which they felt
shaped teachers’ negative judgements about them.… There was nothing
biologically or culturally distinctive about black students that made them a
particular problem for schools. The problem was that teachers perceived a
collective difference and constructed it as a problem. This created an
environment which effectively set black students up to fail, in both
behavioural and academic terms, in ways which do not arise for white
students.
(Blair, 2001, p. 136)
Markets and education
By the 1990s, a competitive schools market had become established in the
United Kingdom, adding a further dimension to the needs of schools to
Race and special education 93
exclude pupils they regarded as troublesome and function unimpeded in the
scramble to be regarded as good schools, high up in league tables of examination
results. Competition between schools has been encouraged via the annual
publication of raw scores of public examination results, and schools are
rewarded by a funding formula for the number of pupils they attract. ‘Choice’
allows schools to become more selective and to choose their pupils. In the
schools marketplace, some students are regarded as ‘desirable customers’,
others as ‘troublesome customers’, and unsurprisingly, social class, race and
ethnicity, special educational needs, and behaviour problems have become
filters through which the desirability or undesirability of particular pupils is
understood. Pupils who are valued above others are those with a high measured
ability, who are well-motivated and have supportive parents (Ball et al., 1996).
There are various ways in which schools choose their desirable customers and
discourage the undesirable, and exclude the latter if they demonstrate
troublesome traits. Schools can overtly select pupils by testing for ability or
aptitude, they can covertly select by interviewing parents, and they can
discourage parents by suggesting their children will be better off in other
schools. Once the pupils are in school, they can be excluded on the grounds
that they have special educational needs or are behaviourally troublesome.
It is not accidental that as the marketisation of education has become more
firmly established, rates of referral to EBD schools and the use of exclusion
have risen. In market situations where desirable customers are wanted, quicker
ways of removing the undesirables are needed. The irony of the situation is
that the effects of the market lead to a concentration of children who had been
rejected by some schools, in other schools that will accept them. Far from this
situation being acknowledged and extra assistance offered to these schools,
they are likely to be targeted as failing schools in need of ‘special measures’
(Department for Education [DfE], 1993). An extreme example of this was
Hackney Downs School, closed on the advice of an Educational Association in
1995, at a time when its school population included 80 per cent minority
pupils, 70 per cent of them second-language speakers, 50 per cent from
households with no employment, a high proportion of boys expelled from
other schools, and almost two-thirds regarded as having some form of special
educational need (O’Connor et al., 1999). Evidence so far indicates that
African-Caribbean students are faring particularly badly in the education
market (Gillborn and Youdell, 2000; Tomlinson, 1997).
Nonpolicy
There has always been disinclination on the part of central and local policymakers to link special education policy to any policies that took account of race
and ethnicity, despite the constant presentation of evidence over the years of
racial overrepresentation, and overexclusion in the various forms of special
education. Troyna and Vincent (1996) have pointed to the persistence of
‘ideologies of expertism’, benevolent humanitarianism and individualism in
Special Educational Needs (SEN) policy-making, which contrasted with the
assertive collective voice in the creation of antiracist policies, and noted that only
94 Race and special education
recently had white parents begun to challenge the categorisation of their
children. Daniels and his colleagues, studying special schools in two LEAs, also
noted: ‘The practices of SEN seem to have been insulated from the gaze and
voice of equal opportunity initiatives’ (Daniels et al., 1998). In their study
schools, there was an overrepresentation of boys, in particular African-Caribbean
boys. They suggested that causation models of individual deficiencies may
preclude the kind of social explanations that drive equal opportunity policies.
The Labour government appointed a National Advisory Group on SEN and
produced two papers on policies and a programme for action in 1997 and 1998
(Department for Education and Employment [DfEE], 1997; 1998). The
government was attempting to grapple with the contradictions of an education
market that encouraged schools to exclude children who were difficult to teach,
and with the resulting enormous cost of special education, especially as increasing
numbers of parents were claiming resources for their statemented children
(Tomlinson, 2001). While the policies were more open and pragmatic than
previous policies, race was once again a nonissue and the treatment of minority
young people not a policy topic.
What is going on?
It is fair to ask what is going on? The use of a special subsystem, via either
statutory or nonstatutory provision, to remove black children in
disproportionate numbers from mainstream education must be questioned.
Making sense of the situation requires a study of the historical and political
context in which racial minorities have been incorporated into education
systems originally designed for white majority pupils. It requires a study of the
belief systems built up from the early nineteenth century in colonialist Europe,
and postslavery in the United States, and it requires an examination of the way
in which, via social Darwinism, the eugenics movement, and the use of IQ
testing, the notion that some races are genetically inferior to others has been
propagated. This historical understanding has become very necessary. It is a
matter of concern that views expressed and accepted by Terman in the United
States in the early part of the twentieth century, concerning racial deficiencies
in intelligence, the need for special school segregation, training for low-skill
employment, and control of reproduction of particular racial groups (Terman,
1916), should still be current, reflected for example in the work of Herrnstein
and Murray (1994; see appendix). Their book is in the tradition of the pseudoscientific research and literature that throughout the twentieth century sought
to demonstrate the supposed inferior intelligence of particular racial groups,
and the social and economic danger these groups supposedly pose for the rest
of society.
Education systems and their special subsystems are not neutral elements.
The decisions that assign black children to special education or otherwise
exclude them from mainstream, and nonpolicies that fail to recognise the links
between race and special forms of education are a product of the residual
historical beliefs that shape the values of policy-makers, professionals, and
practitioners.
Race and special education 95
Conclusion
The purpose of this chapter has been to draw attention to the persistence of
links between race and special education, using the overplacement of black
children in stigmatised categories of special education in Britain as a case
study. On a wider level the chapter also raises the question as to why, for over
a century, children identified by racial, ethnic, or immigrant characteristics
should be regarded as more likely to qualify for special education than their
white or nonimmigrant peers. In developing a model or theory to explain this
there is no doubt that residual historical beliefs structured around Social
Darwinist assumptions of the biological inferiority, natural incapacity, and
cultural deficiencies of racial groups defined on the basis of visible characteristics
still influences many of those responsible for decision making in special
education at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In addition, nineteenthcentury eugenic beliefs in the genetic and cultural inferiority of the lower
classes, which led to a ‘class racism’ (Balibar, 1991), is also still in evidence.
Eugenic anxieties were concerned with promulgating racial and social purity.
These beliefs can also be seen throughout the twentieth century. The enemy
within Britain in the early part of the twentieth century was the poor feebleminded woman who produced degenerate children and who ‘threatened the
racial stock’ (Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feebleminded [RCCCFM], 1908, vol. 1), with the terms ‘race’ and ‘nation’ being
coterminous at that time. Keith Joseph, a candidate for the leadership of the
Conservative Party in England in 1974, was equally concerned with the nation
moving inexorably towards degeneracy due to the high birth rate among ‘dull’
lower-class women (Joseph, 1974). Eysenck, a respected professor at London
University, expressed the complexities of the interplay of race, class, and
gender in deciding who was intellectually inferior in his book Race, Intelligence
and Education (1971), coming to a startling conclusion for one who had
escaped Nazi persecution in the 1930s:
Most of the lumpenproletariat are white, we are not dealing with a problem
that is exclusively one of colour, but rather of social class. Colour comes into
it but through the link between class and IQ on the one hand and race and
IQ on the other. If this is so then there is … no solution exclusively concerned
with coloured people. A solution is only possible in terms of the abolition
of the lumpenproletariat as a whole, both black and white.
(p. 150)
He goes on to note that such an ‘ambitious undertaking’ is a matter for politicians
rather than psychologists. Herrnstein and Murray also worried that an urban
black underclass of low cognitive ability was increasing, but they did not go so
far as Eysenck’s suggestion of ‘abolition’. Their solution was simply to abolish
cash and services for low-income women and low-intelligence women
(Herrnstein and Murray, 1994, p. 548).
Beliefs in biological incapacity, expressed in terms of ‘low intelligence’ and
‘subhuman qualities’, and also of cultural deficiencies, have characterised
theories about other races ‘outside’ the society and a same-race underclass
96 Race and special education
within the society for the whole of the twentieth century. The black immigrant
minorities who arrived in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s from British colonial
countries were thus likely to encounter beliefs about the likely deficiencies of
both lower-class and racial groups. It should not, perhaps, be surprising that
beliefs in the lower abilities and problem behaviour of black children should
lead to their overreferral and placement in the subsystem devised for removing
from education those who are regarded as inferior and troublesome. Popular
assertions of belief in ‘inclusive education’ do not yet include the descendants
of citizens of African-Caribbean origin in Britain, or of many black citizens in
the United States.
Notes
1 This chapter refers to groups described as racial or ethnic on the basis of
characteristics imputed to them by others (see Rex 1986, Chapter 1).
2 Some forms of special education carry a stigma historically associated with low
ability, low socioeconomic status, and poverty. Other recently developed categories
are used by knowledgeable groups to gain extra resources without a stigma. (For
example, specific learning difficulty and dyslexia.)
3 Following the 1981 Education Act, children in England and Wales assessed by
Local Authority personnel receive a ‘statement’ of their special educational needs.
Appendix
The following quotations, taken from Terman’s 1916 writing, and Herrnstein
and Murray’s 1994 book The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Struggle in
American Life, illustrate the enduring attempts to brand low socioeconomic and
racial groups as being of lower intelligence, likely to be unproductive, and
targets for eugenic policies:
In the near future intelligence tests will bring tens of thousands of highgrade defectives under the surveillance and protection of society. This will
result in the curtailing of the reproduction of feeble-mindedness, and in the
elimination of an enormous amount of crime, pauperism and industrial
inefficiency…. borderline deficiency is very common among SpanishAmerican and Mexican families and also Negroes. Their dullness seems to
be racial… the whole question of racial differences in mental traits will have
to be taken up anew… children of this group should be segregated in special
classes, they cannot master abstractions but can often be made efficient
workers… from a eugenic view they contribute a grave problem because of
their unusually prolific breeding.
(Terman, 1916)
There is such a thing as a factor of cognitive ability on which human beings
differ, cognitive ability is substantially heritable… our thesis is that the
twenty-first century will open on a world in which cognitive ability is the
decisive dividing force.
(Herrnstein and Murray, 1994, pp. 22–25)
Race and special education 97
The dry tinder for the formation of an underclass community is a large number
of births to single women of low intelligence in a concentrated spatial area.
(ibid., p. 520)
The most efficient way to raise the IQ of a society is for smarter women to
have higher birth rates than duller women. Instead, America is going in the
opposite direction.
(ibid., p. 548)
References
Bagley, C. (1982) ‘Achievement, Behavioural Disorder and Social Circumstance in West
Indian Children’ in (eds) Verma, G. K. and Bagley, C. Self-Concept and Multicultural
Education. New York. Macmillan.
Balibar, E. (1991) ‘Is there a Neo-Racism?’ in (eds) Balibar, E. and Wallerstein, L. Race,
Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities. London. Verso.
Ball, S., Bowe, R. and Gewirtz, S. (1996) ‘School Choice, Social Class and the Realisation
of Social Advantage in Education’. Journal of Education Policy Vol. 11, pp. 75–88.
Blair, M. (2001) Why Pick On Me? School Exclusion and Black Youth. Stoke-on-Trent,
UK. Trentham Books.
Brigham, C. C. (1923) Study of American Intelligence. Princeton, NJ, US. Princeton
University Press.
Burt, C. (1937) The Backward Child. London. London University Press.
Coard, B. (1970) How the West Indian Child Is Made ESN in the English School System.
London. New Beacon Books.
Community Relations Commission (CRC) (1974) Education Guidance Centres in
Birmingham. London. Community Relations Commission.
Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) (1985) Birmingham LEA and Schools: Referral
and Suspension of Pupils. London. Commission for Racial Equality.
Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) (1996) Exclusion from School: The Public Cost.
London. Commission for Racial Equality.
Cooper, P., Upton, G. and Smith, C. (1991) ‘Ethnic Minority and Gender Distribution
among Staff and Pupils in Facilities for Pupils with Emotional and Behavioural
Difficulties’. British Journal of Sociology of Education Vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 77–94.
Daniels, H., Hey, V., Leonard, D. and Smith, M. (1998) ‘Differences, Difficulties and
Equity; a Study of Gender, Race and SEN’. Management in Education Vol. 12, no. 1.
Department for Education (DfE). (1993). Schools Requiring Special Measures. Circular
no. 17. London, Department for Education.
Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) (1997) Excellence for All Children:
Meeting Special Educational Needs. London. Department for Education and
Employment.
Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) (1998) Meeting Special Educational
Needs: A Programme for Action. London. Department for Education and Employment.
Department for Education and Science. (1973) (November) Letter to Chief Education
Officers.
Dhondy, F. (1974) (February) ‘The Black Explosion in Schools’. Race Today.
Eggleston, J., Dunn, D., Anjel, M. and Wright, C. (1986) Education for Some. Stoke-onTrent, UK. Trentham Books.
Eysenck, H. (1971) Race, Intelligence and Education. London. Temple-Smith.
Ford, J., Mongon, D. and Whelan, H. (1982) Special Education and Social Control.
London. Routledge.
98 Race and special education
Gillborn, D. (1995) Racism and Anti-Racism in Real Schools. Buckingham, UK. Open
University Press.
Gillborn, D. and Gipps, C. (1996) Recent Research in the Achievements of Ethnic Minority
Pupils. London. Office for Standards in Education.
Gillborn D. and Youdell, D. (2000) Rationing Education: Policy Practice. Reform and
Equity. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press.
Gillborn D. and Mirza, H. (2000) Mapping Educational Inequality: Race, Class and
Gender. London. Office for Standards in Education.
Herrnstein, R. and Murray, C. (1994) The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in
American Life. New York. Free Press.
Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) (1990) Suspensions and Exclusions from School
1987–88. London. Inner London Education Authority.
Joseph, K. (1974) (17 October) Speech to Birmingham Conservative Association.
Birmingham, UK. Times Education Supplement. 3 June 1981.
Lynn, R. (1992) ‘Intelligence, Ethnicity and Culture’ in (eds) Lynch, J., Modgil, C. and
Modgil, S. Cultural Diversity and the School Vol. 1. London. Falmer Press.
O’Connor, M., Hales, E., Davies, J. and Tomlinson, S. (1999) Hackney Downs: The
School that Dared to Fight. London. Cassell.
Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED) (1999) Raising the Attainment of Ethnic
Minority Pupils. London. Office for Standards in Education.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (1987) Immigrant
Children at School. Paris. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Rex, J. (1986) Race and Ethnicity. Buckingham, UK. Open University Press.
Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-minded (RCCCFM) (1908)
Eight volumes. London. HMSO.
Select Committee on Race Relations and Immigration (1973) Education. London. HMSO.
Select Committee on Race Relations and Immigration (1976) The West Indian
Community. London. HMSO.
Sigmon, S. (ed.) (1990) Critical Voices in Special Education. New York. New York
University Press.
Smith, D. and Tomlinson, S. (1989) The School Effect: A Study of Multiracial
Comprehensives. London. Policy Studies Institute.
Terman, L. M. (1916) The Measurement of Intelligence. Boston, US. Houghton Mifflin.
Teunisson, R. (1992) ‘Equality of Opportunity for Children from Ethnic Minority
Communities’ in (eds) Reid, E. and Reich, H. Breaking the Boundaries: Migrant
Workers Children in the EC. Clevedon, UK. Multilingual Matters.
The Times (1981) Editorial ‘Educational Achievement’ Times Education Supplement. 18
June 1981.
Tomlinson, S. (1981) Educational Sub-Normality: A Study in Decision-Making. London.
Routledge.
Tomlinson, S. (1997) ‘Diversity, Choice and Ethnicity: The Effects of Educational
Markets on Ethnic Minorities’. Oxford Review of Education Vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 63–76.
Tomlinson, S. (2001) Education in a Post-Welfare Society. Buckingham, UK. Open
University Press.
Troyna, B. and Vincent, C. (1996) ‘The Ideology of Expertism: The Framing of Special
Education and Racial Equality Policies in the Local State’ in (eds) Christensen, C. and
Rizvi, E. Disability and the Dilemmas of Social Justice. Buckingham, UK. Open
University Press.
Vernon, A. (1998) ‘Understanding Simultaneous Oppression: The Experience of
Disabled Black and Ethnic Minority Women’. Ph.D. dissertation. Sheffield, UK.
University of Sheffield.
AssignmentTutorOnline