The Roots of the Deficit Paradigm in Special Education (Video) |

In 2001 I began teaching a course on neurodiversity for the Bridges Graduate School for Cognitive Diversity in Education entitled Introduction to Neurodiversity. As part of the course, I prepared ten You Tube presentations as a means of delivering my lectures. I’m making these videos available now for the benefit of the wider community of individuals who wish to learn more about neurodiversity and its potential impact on special education. Module 1 focuses on how special education in the United States has been dogged by a largely deficit perspective over the past 100 years, with roots in racist thinking, eugenics, the bell curve, and other manifestations of deficit, dysfunction, and disability.