In my Honors Thesis research paper, I wrote about how institutional ableism is taught at a young age and then reproduced throughout one’s life mainly due to lack of lived experience and lack of educational experience of disability. I identify this conditioning is because of covert processes, such as messaging in the spatial layout and absence of disability studies in education.
The classroom is a place where the young learn world views. There they develop a sense of self and a support system to succeed in life. It is one of the most impactful spaces for early development and socialization. In school, familiar processes such as interacting only with abled children, are learned and reproduced throughout the rest of the child’s life. Children with (dis)abilities are divided from other students. They are taught separately and socialize separately.
How do power dynamics implicit in built space impact children with and without (dis)abilities?
“An understanding of how disabled people have become marginalized and excluded within society cannot be understood without an appreciation of the sociospatial processes that reproduce social relations (Kitchen, 1998).”
Architecture & Ideology
Due to the fact that ideology cannot be separated from built space and that the structures we create will always be a reflection of the ideology, when buildings are inaccessible that demonstrates that the ideology is exclusionary. I have found that exclusionary ideology is taught at a young age. Built space exemplifies power. But it doesn’t have to, as Dinulovic reminds. When “function of” architecture becomes inclusion, then built space is also a pathway for a transformation. Yet this requires architects to have both lived (secondary is fine) and academic experience of disability.
Power in Built Space: Disability Studies Scholars
Disability Studies scholars like Paul Hunt have identified disability as a result of our ideology, for example the social model that he created with others states that disabling structures segregate the person from participating fully in society and if those structures are changed, people with disabilities can participate more fully. Therefore, the ideology of institutional ableism represented through built space is a disabling factor.
Other scholars focus on that having a condition of some sort is not an ending but a beginning of a new way of living, not a loss but a different way of living (Michalko, 2017).
Other scholars remind us that built structures tell us what's appropriate and what’s not appropriate in terms of how to hold our body (Crowe, 2017).
Or that in building and in the process of design, we make an assumption about what is to be valued and noticed, and what is to be marginalized and forgotten (Boys, 2017).
Classroom
This ideology is learned in the classroom through division into separate classrooms and many times separate school that have no joint activities, as well as different recess times, is reflective of sequestration into institutions. The children learn and socialize in divided spaces.
“An understanding of how disabled people have become marginalized and excluded within society cannot be understood without an appreciation of the sociospatial processes that reproduce social relations (Kitchen, 1998).”
Children of different abilities learn and socialize in a separate space divided from other children.
Scholars have found that a development and emotional intelligence gained by doing things together, abled children develop understanding of diversity, unique abilities, empathy, disabled children develop to a greater degree ( as would any child) when they can socialize with peers.
Interview
The expert interview demonstrates the importance of creating more opportunities that build a lived or educational experience of disability so that architects are not attempting to design something that they only have formal knowledge of, if any at all.
Existing Data
Burke is advocating for playgrounds that use Universal Design, she argues that the division that occurs when children have to use different equipment depending on their ability is the cause of a negative emotion linked to disability.
Burke’s research can be applied to the ideal, typical elementary school classroom by understanding that playing together is more important to children than differences of capabilities. Accessible technology or structures must be coupled with education about the history of disability advocacy. Steps toward inclusion could include playing games that are accessible to everyone during recess, after/before school, or for physical education. Correspondingly, that not being able to play together can create a negative connotation with (dis)abilities (Burke, 2006).
Deleuzoguattarian assemblage analysis takes into account each component of the whole system and does not assign full responsibility to one part but instead looks to improve the relationship between the parts these include discursive conversation of the issue, biological, discursive, technological, and economic.
Built structures send spatial messages about who is in and out of place. When we keep children with (dis)abilities separated it teaches “abled” children that their world functions without people with (dis)abilities. These are covert conditionings that stall the movement toward accessibility.
In this movement, architecture becomes an incredibly powerful tool as both a way to examine the dominant ideology, and also, as an opportunity to shape an ideological shift. When teaching methods and use of space are updated, the classroom becomes a space for transformation.
Due to the beautiful and intricate relationship of architecture and ideology, the elementary school classroom can change the future.
Now in my Master's degree in my program at Columbia University, we’re taught to practice conflict mapping using systems theory. When we place Institutional Ableism at the center of the map, accessibility movements and all the past advocacy inhibit it, while ignorance due to lack of education and experience enable this intractable conflict.
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