Description:The title of this book is deceptively simple and conceals the fact that the reader is about to encounter voices that will speak of the relationship between disabled children and their parents.
The first voice is Micheline’s. Disabled person and parent of a disabled child - this is the voice of the disability rights activist, hero of the education inclusion movement and poet. Of all the books written for parents of disabled children (many penned by non disabled parents, others by ‘experts’ in the field) – there is not one that is quite like this one. Micheline is beautifully placed to offer the wise counsel and urgent warnings for parents that this book contains. In essence this book is about helping parents learn how to navigate around and away from the medical model of disability and bring the social model of disability home for them and their children (and if you aren’t familiar with the concept of a medical and a social model of disability then you really must read this book, if you are familiar with these ideas, then this book will deepen your understanding of the impact of both these ways of thinking on the lives of disabled children and their families)
The second voice to speak comes from the survivors of special education - those who eked out an education and searched for love within their segregated settings - all through the 20th century and into the 21st. Within these testimonies darker currents are flowing quite close to the surface and “Dear Parents” does not flinch from listening to their unanswered questions and unresolved pain of separation. Many childhood memories come to the surface in a kind of composite open letter to their parents in a testimony that runs throughout the book skilfully orchestrated by Micheline’s part autobiographical connecting themes. This voice relates the unwritten (and untaught) social history of disability and its present day legacies. Parents of today’s young disabled children need to listen hard to what this voice has to tell them.
This voice also talks of death and how even that event can be claimed by the medical model. As Liz Crow (1994) said; “I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that the social model has saved lives” – it isn’t and this book will tell you why and how. |
