In our first ever #BeBoldHistory GUEST BLOG, @bennewmark writes about the history of learning disability and the @Idhistoryuk (AllTogether Project) he has been working on with Shaun Webster MBE.
A great frustration of studying history is how the lives of
the most privileged and powerful people speak so much louder than those with less
privilege and less power.
Popular history often leans into this – which is why we see
books, films and TV series on the Tudors and the Nazis made time and time
again.
These periods are – of course – interesting and a piece of
work examining something familiar in a different way is very satisfying. It is
also heartening to see the range of what schools and society are interested in
expanding and voices that have always been in the sources speak louder in
recent years.
But there are many people and groups that continue to be
underrepresented.
Most people who have ever lived have not been rich or
powerful or had much geopolitical influence and it is frustrating to feel
locked out of the lives and experiences of billions and billions of people.
Arguably the quietest group of all are those with what we
would call today learning disabilities – a group historian and author of Those
They Call Idiots, Simon Jarrett has described as “the outgroup of all
outgroups.”
Those who struggle to learn as fast as others have had a
very hard time in the last 200 or so years.
A perceived lack of intelligence in the narrowest sense has
been equated with a lack of worth and this has resulted in cultural
marginalisation and physical separation. Many every day insults have their
origins in descriptions of people with learning disability and we’ve normalised
them.
People with learning disability are too often at best
figures of fun and at worst beings to revile, despise and avoid.
When I learned my own daughter had a condition causing
learning disability I became aware of and hurt by this and decided I wanted to
do something to honour the lives of a group who has existed as long as there
have been humans on earth.
I began by doing a lot of reading. I did so with great
apprehension. I expected to find very little and expected to find traumatic
stories of horror and abuse but was ready for this because a tragic life is
still a life with a story that deserves to be told.
I was delighted to find I was wrong. It turned out there
were lots of sources containing the voices of those with learning disability
ranging from the palaeolithic right through the present day. It wasn’t all
pleasant but there were many uplifting stories about fully conceptualised,
complete humans - part of and contributing to the societies they lived in.
I followed the breadcrumbs in the footnotes and sources and
found myself in fascinating conversations with many who’d been working in this
area for many years. It turned out there were rich voices and rich scholarship
there all the time waiting to be found.
My role as a history teacher made it make sense to turn what
I’d learned into a curriculum for children. I produced a booklet and sent it to
a friend of mine Shaun Webster MBE who is an expert in accessibility who helped
me make it clearer and more focused. Together we turned this into a podcast too
– the more accessible booklet read by people with learning disability all paid
for their work.
I also reached out to the always generous history teaching
community who helped me refine and revise what we’d made to make it simple to
use in the classroom.
You can find all of it– the booklets, podcast, teacher
guides and some media appearances – on the www.learningdisabiltiyhistory.org website.
We’ve been overwhelmed by the response and are so grateful
this curriculum is now being taught in more and more schools across England and
internationally.
We know we can’t change society’s attitude towards those who
finding learning hard overnight but we’re proud that in a small way we are
honouring the contributions and lives of people who deserve their place in
society and in history just as much as anyone else does.
It was a real honour to speak to the @BeBoldHistory network and we
hope you find what we have to say interesting. We’re always ready and
enthusiastic about answering questions and talking more so please do get in
touch.
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