Evading the Apparatus: "Equal Opportunity," Learning Outside of School, and Anarchist Geography as Emancipatory Lens

• In Event: 66.057 - Roundtable Session 27
  In Roundtable Session: 66.057-15 - Outside, Under, and Through: Traversing the Landscape of Schooling and Dis/Ability

Abstract

For decades, “equal educational opportunity” for disabled students has been conceptualized as equal access to public schools alongside nondisabled students, with the notion of “inclusive” education as the gold standard against which educational opportunity is judged. This paper offers a theoretical argument outlining the limitations of judging educational opportunity in relation to neoliberal, technocratic conceptualizations of inclusive education, and offers in its stead a broader conceptualization of equal educational opportunity that draws upon the field of Anarchist Cultural Geography in addition to Critical Disability Studies. When “inclusive” spaces are pervaded with the normative violence of the apparatus of the educational industrial complex, it is argued that evading that apparatus may yield greater educational opportunity, liberation, and agency for many.

Author

• Alicia A. Broderick, Montclair State University