Can the Capabilities Approach Avoid Normalizing Functionings?

Disability, Inclusion, and the Problem of Assimilation

PES 2013
Ashley Taylor
Syracuse University

Proponents of the Capabilities Approach (CA) argue that it establishes the theoretical

grounds for a framework of educational equality for all children and provides appealing answers

to complicated questions regarding the educational entitlements of children with disabilities

specifically (Hedge and MacKenzie, 2012; Nussbaum, 2010; Nussbaum, 2006; Terzi, 2008).

Because CA is concerned with the extent to which an individual has access to the tools she needs

to pursue the life goals and activities she has reason to value, the arena of education broadly as

well as K-12 schooling specifically, becomes of central importance in terms of the role it plays in

establishing the enabling conditions of future opportunity and well-being. Just educational

arrangements and the equitable distribution of resources are integral to ensuring children’s

equality in access to basic capabilities and therefore schools must provide the conditions

necessary for children to access “transformational resources” that would enable their

development of their own conceptions of the good life and the functionings necessary to exercise

adult capabilities. Further, CA can guide our thinking about how to address children’s physical,

mental, and social differences and offers us a way to evaluate our educational practices,

structures, curricula and even pedagogies in terms of their role in enabling the development of

capabilities in children and young adults (see Walker, 2003).

Lorella Terzi (2008) argues that, as a “social minimum” approach, CA conceives of

educational entitlements in terms of the capabilities necessary for effective participation in

society, set at a threshold or “access level” for what is required to ensure that such participation is

possible for all children, including those with disabilities. As such, CA founds the need for

affirmative measures that would guarantee that each child experiences no education-related

disadvantages as they prepare to enter adult social and political life (Nussbaum, 2010, 85). The

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establishment of a threshold consistent with equal opportunity for social and political

participation, coupled with the injunction against education-related disadvantages informs a view

of education that is manifestly egalitarian and, it seems, inclusive.

Even so, this promising framework leaves open and underexplored a number of

significant questions and ambiguities pertaining to the substantive educational and societal

inclusion of individuals with disabilities. In this paper, I aim to explore this ambiguity and to

establish a clearer understanding of what is entailed by this defence against education-related

disadvantages as it relates to the development of threshold capabilities within educational

contexts. To do so, I consider the following questions: What modes of functionings – ways of

being and doing – are supported by this conception of a threshold based on the capabilities for

effective participation in social frameworks? How does CA address potential conflicts between

children’s educationally beneficial but atypical functionings and those that would more

adequately prepare them for participation in dominant social and political environments? Finally,

can CA retain a notion of “normal” or “typical” functionings without undermining students’ with

disabilities feelings of self-worth or their full inclusion in the classroom and beyond? Responding

to these questions is crucial if we are to move forward with applying the Capability Approach to

education and if we are truly committed to ensuring that CA avoids the historical privileging of

able-bodied students in educational contexts.

CA’s defence against education-related disadvantages is founded on the understanding

that education is an area crucial to citizenship and civic belonging and therefore any equitable

scheme of education would not tolerate inequalities in access to such participation, at least not

below a threshold of basic educational capabilities (Nussbaum, 2010, 83). Further, because of this

vital connection between educational opportunities and individuals’ abilities to participate as

equals in social and political arenas, CA supports an educational emphasis on the development of

capabilities required for equal citizenship (see Terzi, 2010, 168). Thus, although schools cannot

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promote children’s development of all capabilities that may be valuable to them, schools should

emphasize the capabilities for effective civic and social participation because these enable

individuals to reflect on and make decisions about social institutions, policies, and cultural

practices that affect them. Says Terzi, “The capability approach suggests a conception of

fundamental educational entitlement in terms of the equal opportunities and access to levels of

educational functionings necessary to function and participate effectively in society” (2008, 155).

These functionings would likely include basic skills such as reading and writing, more complex

skills like critical thinking, forms of argumentation and discussion, the development of feelings of

self respect and respect for others, and so on.

For children with disability labels, the affirmative measures necessary to ensure this

meeting of a minimum threshold may and often do involve increased expenditures – in terms of

time spent and materials provided – over what is offered to children assessed as having “normal”

or typical educational needs. These might include the assurance of physical access to schools and

school materials, access to sufficient and potentially variable resources to gain basic skills and

knowledge, and access to the learning supports to achieve the fundamental educational

functionings listed above. Meeting the educational needs of all students – and ensuring that no

disadvantages accrue to them in virtue of their disability – means not only providing extra

resources and support sufficient for their take up, but also providing the means and opportunity

for students to learn in different and perhaps varying ways or using different learning tools. For

example, visually impaired children will require access to Braille or screen-reading technology,

while non-verbal children will need access to typing support and technology or perhaps sign

language instruction.

In her own delineation of the Capabilities Approach as a social minimum framework,

Elizabeth Anderson (1999) argues that possessing the capability to function as an equal in society

entails not only the possession of basic human needs – such as nourishment, adequate housing,

clothing, and so on – as well as education sufficient to develop one’s talents, but also, and

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importantly, “the social conditions of being accepted by others, such as the ability to appear in

public without shame, and not being ascribed outcast status” (317-318). Thus, the social

conditions of respect and inclusion are foregrounded. The focus on the promotion of a threshold

level of capabilities associated with citizenship would therefore also necessitate schools’

provision of the institutional conditions for students’ success, recognizing that the social and

cultural climate of schools has a profound effect on children’s achievement. I suggest, however,

that in meeting these conditions of social acceptance it would not be sufficient for schools to

permit or even promote the development of alternative modes of functioning in children if such

modes were not also acknowledged and supported universally within the school, by teachers and

students alike as well as in educational policies and curricula. A capabilities-informed approach

to education would seem, then, to support educational practices that avoid denigration of the

different functionings and capacities that some children – usually those labelled with disabilities –

express. This might entail affirmative measures aimed at understanding the variant ways in which

human beings function, behave, and express themselves. Schools might do this by incorporating

lessons on bodily difference and diversity, presenting images and histories of people labelled with

disabilities, or allowing children to choose among a variety of available – and neutrally or equally

presented – modes of communication or behaviour. Recognizing that the design of schools and

their values can both hinder and enhance the development of alternative functionings (Terzi,

2008, 111), CA does appear to suggest that we pay attention to how the processes internal to

schools have the potential to foster the full inclusion of children who express alternative

functionings, but can equally permit their patterned exclusion and marginalization.

I contend that if students’ differing ways of being and doing are to be equally accepted

within schools, schools ought to acknowledge rather than ignore bodily difference, offering

students the opportunity to regard different functionings as equally valuable. The view of

disability advanced by the capability approach is not one that regards disability as positive or

negative, but rather as a feature or characteristic of some individuals that arises out of their

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interaction with their environment, including social norms and ability expectations as well as a

lack of “fit” between body and physical world. CA regards disability – or bodily differences – as

one among many forms of human heterogeneity to which we must attend in evaluating well-being

and freedom. An individual’s ability to enjoy material goods depends greatly on her ability to

access these goods and to convert them into advantage, which further depends on her personal

characteristics as well as the social, political, cultural and natural environment in which she lives.

Accordingly, disability is a relational state: “if someone cannot perform certain functionings that,

typically, average people in equivalent circumstances are able to, and if this is connected to an

identifiable impairment, then the person is disabled with respect to that specific functioning”

(Terzi, 2008, 97). This view couples an emphasis on equitable environmental and institutional

designs – such as ramps, closed captioning, beeping pedestrian crossings – with an understanding

of impairment as a biological limitation. Within educational contexts, then, limitations in

functionings amount to disabilities if and when alternative functionings are not available to

students.

It is significant that CA seeks to establish a neutral understanding of disability that

acknowledges the influence of both biology and social environment. And certainly some students

do function more closely to what is considered the average or typical mode for human beings.

However, if schools are to ensure that negative meanings are not attached to differences in bodily

functioning – or that differences in functioning modes are not hierarchized – it would seem that

they need to value alternative functionings equally with the so-called average or typical

functionings that perhaps the majority of children express. Because CA does retain a distinction

between typical and atypical, it is important to consider the ways in which this might bear on

determinations of which capabilities and functionings are to be emphasized within educational

environments, and whether some forms of functionings are stigmatized. Despite assurances that

CA itself pays no attention to natural versus social origin of disability (Terzi, 2008, 165-6), it is

unlikely that differences in functionings will go unnoticed within school settings, and that, absent

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information to the contrary, it is likely that these will be assumed to be characteristics of the

individual alone. Whether students learn to regard these as “normal” will depend on the internal

culture of the school, the pedagogies employed, and the curriculum being advanced.

How might we maintain a neutral stance on disability? Or, put differently, how might we

maintain a neutral stance on functionings as they are expressed within educational contexts?

Anita Silvers (2003) argues that taking a neutral stance on disability first demands a conceptual

shift from our tendency to regard functioning differences or limitations as intrinsically bad and,

correspondingly, their reduction or elimination as undeniably good (Silvers, 2003, 475). Scholars

of disability have long sought to dislocate the assumed connection between limitations in bodily

functioning and social disadvantage. They argue that bodily differences are normal variations that

become abnormal through social and cultural processes, such as within medical and educational

institutions, policy and law, and popular culture. In short, the maintenance of the boundary

between normal and abnormal and the hierarchizing of human bodily variation is something that

we learn to do in our everyday lives (Davis, 2006), and certainly within school settings.

The assumption that disability equates with disadvantage is not simply an error in

understanding, but rather the result of an active and pervasive prejudice towards perceived bodily

abnormality. This “ableism” consists, at least in part, in the privileging of average functionings,

or those considered “species typical,” over those considered non-average or “sub species typical”

(Wolbring, 2008). The notion of an average or normal human body, Lennard Davis (2006)

argues, is a relatively new construct, emerging in the nineteenth century and applied as both a

descriptive and normative concept. The norm establishes and is equated with what is good and

that to which we all should aspire. Efforts to normalize or standardize bodies – whether through

exercise, cosmetic surgery, eugenics, and even education – are regarded as positive forms of

human enhancement, the pursuit of them as more acceptable – and reasonable – than accepting

one’s bodily differences (Wolbring, 2008). Conflation of average with “normal,” with all of its

normative attachments, means that those who fail to measure up to this statistical measurement

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fall into a position of subordination with the choice to either conform, or if that is impossible, to

accept their subordinate position. However, Silvers argues that “Were abnormality, or species-

atypicality, equivalent to disability, the numbers of the disabled would vastly expand. Species-

atypicality, understood neutrally, thus underdetermines disability” (2003, 484). This is because

some deviations from the norm are considered advantages – such as very high IQ – rather than

disadvantages. Other deviations – such as shortness in stature – can be advantageous in some

contexts while disadvantageous in others. And much of this depends not only on cultural, social,

physical, political context, but equally in the internalized prejudices and unquestioned

assumptions about disability that we all have. Certainly we all have varying degrees of ability, but

determining where disability begins will depend on the degree of accepted deviation. Assessing

when something crosses the line from “needing glasses” to “vision impairment,” for example, is

going to require determinations made within practices that are highly socially influenced. Further,

continuing advancements in medical science and technology push the boundaries of human

enhancement, extending and expanding what is considered species-typical or average in the first

place (Wolbring, 2008). Given this fluidity and variability in assessing typicality and normalcy,

how do we determine at what point a functioning becomes species atypical? Do we follow

cultural and social enhancement trends in understanding average functionings in education? And,

moreover, can we truly profess to maintain neutrality with respect to disability when we maintain

a notion of average or normal functioning?

Because the application of CA to education has retained an understanding of species

typicality or average human functioning as a measure against which other functionings are to be

understood, CA does maintain a notion of normalcy, albeit intended to be understood as neutral

(see Baylies, 2002). As I have suggested, though, social environments include patterns and

meanings about ability and normalcy that influence the way that bodily differences are perceived,

categorized, and understood. If so, how can we be sure that measures of average or typical are not

themselves products of these ideological patterns? Does this maintenance of the distinction

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between species typicality and species-atypicality within CA actually serve to perpetuate non-

neutrality in describing disability? And under what conditions might schools privilege apparently

average functionings? There remains, to my mind, a significant amount of ambiguity surrounding

what exactly is meant by disability and what is its relationship to species-typicality and

atypicality within CA.

Inclusive education researcher Thomas Hehir has documented the prominent favouring of

the functionings of some children over others in education (see Hehir, 2002; Hehir, 2012). He

argues, “Certainly, in a world that has not been designed with the disabled in mind, being able to

perform in a manner that is similar to that of nondisabled children gives disabled children distinct

advantages. If efficient ambulation is possible, a child who has received the help he needs to walk

is at an advantage in a barrier-filled world. Similarly, a child with a mild hearing loss who has

been given the amplification and speech therapy she needs may have little difficulty functioning

in a regular classroom” (Hehir, 2012, xi). However, when these functionings are privileged, and

children are tacitly or overtly steered towards them, children may be harmed, both academically

and socially (Hehir, 2002). The problem here is two-fold. When schools engage in a process of

privileging students who more closely resemble some average or normalized form of functioning,

thus rewarding students for being more “normal,” they favour modes of functionings that may not

be the most academically efficient – and may even be academically harmful - and they denigrate

those modes of functionings that do not resemble some average or normal form. This may in turn

affect labelled children’s abilities to flourish within political contexts, or may put their feelings of

self-worth at odds with their desire to participate and succeed socially, economically, and

politically.

Nevertheless, the emphasis on a threshold level of capabilities necessary for participation

in the activities of citizenship means that educational institutions have a duty to promote the

capabilities that are central to well-being and to the exercise of freedom (Terzi, 2008, 151). Not

only does this justify schools’ emphasis on particular capabilities – those associated with

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deliberation, for example – it also justifies the need to ensure that children achieve associated

functionings, or those beings and doings necessary for exercising a particular capability. The

enabling conditions for the development of adult capabilities might involve not just the

opportunity to pursue one’s choice of functionings, but the actual achievement of particular

functionings, even if these conflict with what one would choose otherwise (see Terzi, 2008, 154-

5). Terzi expresses this view succinctly: CA “highlights the importance of the prospective

educational achievements in terms of levels of functionings necessary to participate effectively in

society. This implies therefore a threshold level of achieved functionings that educational

institutions should promote and foster, set at the level necessary for effective participation in

dominant social frameworks” (Terzi, 2008, 156; my emphasis). In order to exercise the

capabilities associated with active citizenship later in life, students need to learn functionings that

will be recognized within broader social frameworks. The worry, though, is that in being tasked

to promote the capabilities and achieved functionings associated with dominant social

frameworks, educational institutions may find themselves complicit in existing structures of

oppression and exclusion (see Taylor, 2012). CA might therefore support the establishment of

policies that promote particular normalized functionings at the expense of apparently alternative

functionings and thereby preference non-disabled students over students labelled with disabilities.

As I have suggested, such preferencing can lead to education-related disadvantages in students

labelled with disabilities, in terms of both their academic and cultural development (Hehir, 2002).

Further, the pursuit of education aimed at opportunities to participate in such dominant

social and economic frameworks may actually undermine some students’ abilities to participate in

the shared cultural norms of their group (Brighouse and Unterhalter, 2010, 202). Brighouse and

Unterhalter (2010) have rightfully pointed out that it remains unclear whether CA is fully able to

account for the potential conflicts that may arise between valuable capabilities, such as

capabilities for civic participation and capabilities for cultural expression. I offer the example

here of the potentially conflicting interests of deaf children who may wish to enjoy the cultural

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connection to the Deaf community, and would therefore need to acquire and value sign language,

but who would also benefit from participation in dominant social frameworks that demand the

ability to read lips or in which cultural norms do not support their preferred cultural language.

Brighouse and Unterhalter argue that schools – and teachers, parents, administrators, etc. – must

make choices all the time about which capabilities are valuable and, absent a principled account

of how to index capabilities relative to one another, such decisions may end up being quite unfair

and unjust. The problem of indexing capabilities – and determining their value relative to one

another – has been the subject of much debate, particularly between Sen and Nussbaum (see

DeCesare, 2011). At stake in this debate, among other things, is the extent to which such indexing

will reflect cultural biases and favouritism towards particular ways of life over others not shared

by everyone to whom the index is meant to apply.

I suggest, then, that the promotion of a threshold and associated capabilities that are

valued in relation to that threshold, may therefore not only drive schools to encourage students’

development of normalized functionings, but it may stigmatize those who fall short of standard

functionings and capabilities (see Silvers and Francis, 2005, 54). The threshold is set at the level

that reflects what students need to be able to do and be in order to effectively engage in social and

political practices. Consequently, the social and political practices will dictate, at least in part, the

skills and abilities that students will need to acquire. Further, by maintaining the emphasis on the

species-norm or species-typicality, CA potentially orients the schooling process towards

normalization and assimilation. This is because acquiring certain capabilities may greatly depend

on one’s ability to perform in ways that are considered normal, good, and, perhaps foremost,

recognizable and intelligible. Silvers and Francis (2005) are quite clear about this problem:

“however benign the intentions, capabilities accounts seem inherently disposed to elevate the

nondisabled over the disabled by assigning resource priority to altering the latter to be more like

the former” (56). Thus, while the prescriptive against education related disadvantages certainly

offers us a guide against which to measure the viability of CA as a substantively inclusive

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educational framework, it is not clear how we are to deal with instances in which the avoidance of

some forms of disadvantage – lack of knowledge or ability to express recognized deliberative

functionings, say – conflict with others – lack of self-respect, perhaps. Perhaps one way to move

forward in addressing these concerns is to look – as I have already suggested that we ought to – at

the ways in which pedagogical practices and curricula aimed at advancing positive attitudes

towards bodily differences may provide the educational foundations for regarding functioning

differences as neutral and comparable. However, doing so would involve clarifying the

relationship between disability and species typicality and acknowledging the problem of

assimilation as one that jeopardizes inclusion and social justice for individuals with disabilities.

References:

Anderson, Elizabeth, “What is the Point of Equality?” Ethics 109, no. 2 (1999), 287-337.

Baylies, Carolyn, “Disability and the Notion of Human Development: questions of rights and
capabilities,” Disability & Society 17, no. 7 (2002), 725-739.

Brighouse, Harry and Elaine Unterhalter, “Education for primary goods or for capabilities?” in
Measuring Justice: Primary Goods and Capabilities, eds. Harry Brighouse and Ingrid Robeyns.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010: 193-214.

Davis, Lennard J., “Constructing Normalcy: The Bell Curve, the Novel, and the Invention of the
Disabled Body in the Nineteenth Century,” in The Disability Studies Reader, 2nd Edition, ed.
Lennard J. Davis. New York: Routledge, 2006.

DeCesare, Anthony, “Two Versions of the Capability Approach and Their Respective
Implications for Democratic Education,” Philosophy of Education 2011 (2011), 226-234.

Hedge, Nicki and Alison MacKenzie, “Putting Nussbaum’s Capability Approach to work: re-
visiting inclusion,” Cambridge Journal of Education 42, no. 3 (2012), 327-344.

Hehir, Thomas, “Eliminating Ableism in Education,” Harvard Educational Review 72, no. 1
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Hehir, Thomas with Lauren Katzman, Effective Inclusive Schools: Designing Successful
Schoolwide Programs. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2012.

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Nussbaum, Martha, Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach. Cambridge, MA:
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Nussbaum, Martha, Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership.

Nussbaum, Martha, “The Capabilities of People with Cognitive Disabilities,” in Cognitive

Sen, Amartya. The Idea of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
2009.

Silvers, Anita, “On the Possibility and Desirability of Constructing a Neutral Conception of
Disability,” Theoretical Medicine 24 (2003), 471-487.

Silvers, Anita and Leslie Francis, “Justice through Trust: Disability and the ‘Outlier Problem’ in
Social Contract Theory,” Ethics 116, no. 1 (2005), 40-76.

Taylor, Ashley, “Addressing Ableism in Schooling and Society? The Capabilities Approach and
Students with Disabilities,” Philosophy of Education 2012 (2012), 113-121.

Terzi, Lorella, Justice and Equality in Education: A Capability Perspective on Disability and
Special Educational Needs. London: Continuum Press, 2008.

Terzi, Lorella, “What metric of justice for disabled people? Capability and disability,” in
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Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010: 15-173.

Walker, Melanie, “Framing Social Justice In Education: What Does the ‘Capabilities’ Approach
Offer?” British Journal of Educational Studies 51, no. 2 (2003), 168-187.

Wolbring, Gregor, “Is There an End to Out-Able? Is There an End to the Rat Race for Abilities?”
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