Learning disability history: A guide to method for the prospective researcher

Abstract

Background: Here, I examine the status of ‘learning disability’ as a basic concept. This kind of questioning may be thought a task for philosophy, or at least for ‘theory’ or ‘disability studies’. Materials and methods: I identify history instead as a discipline well placed to reveal the category errors that surround the concept. Results: These begin with the word ‘disability’ itself, which subliminally identifies learning disability as a natural impairment like physical and sensory impairment, rather than as the creation (unlike these latter) of human beings ourselves over the long historical term. The error of dealing with learning disability as if it were a natural kind is reinforced, in conventional histories, by trying to diagnose it retrospectively. I illustrate these points by taking certain major items of the psychologist's vocabulary—‘the mind’, logical reasoning, abstraction, development, normal intelligence and autism—and show briefly how such things do not exist in nature but, in both a conceptual and a material sense, have emerged from the long course of historical contingencies. Conclusions: My examples demonstrate the need for and validity of a historical method specific to learning disability, which can radically expand the horizons for researchers and busy practitioners, and contribute to the liberation of people carrying learning disability labels.