Abstract

Imagine that in city “U” there is a one-hour drive from the west side to the east side. Ten sixth-grade students live around a certain park on the west side of “U”. The nearest public primary school “V” is across the street from the park. Admittance to the nearest public primary school “V” is not based on achievement. Students do not have to repeat a subject and they are not expelled from the school if they fail subjects. Several of the sixth-grade students who live around the park are failing some of their subjects for some reason or other. Several will not qualify for admittance to high school. Among the students who are failing subjects, one is diagnosed with a mild intellectual disability. That student is reassigned on the basis of the diagnosis to special school “C” on the east of town. That student (and that student only) loses the right to attend their nearest public primary school “V”. In PART ONE of my paper, I introduce the notion of “demeaning institution” in relation to an argument made by the philosopher Sophia Isako Wong. Wong argues that aborting fetuses on the basis of a diagnosis of Down syndrome in an ableist society is analogous to aborting fetuses on the basis of a diagnosis of female in a very sexist society. Wong argues that in both cases (1) difference from a norm and (2) the effects of social barriers to participation are (mistakenly) presumed by medical doctors to indicate inferiority. I do not argue for or against Wong’s argument that it is impermissible to abort fetuses on the basis of a diagnosis of Down syndrome. I am interested in a related, but different, notion: that it is impermissible for institutions (like the medical profession and the public primary school) to demean. In PART TWO of my paper, I argue that denying students with mild intellectual disability the right to attend their nearest public primary school is analogous to racial school segregation in the U.S. South prior to the enforcement of Brown v,. Board of Education (1954). If attendance at the nearest public primary school is not based on achievement (i.e. there is no achievement test for admittance, and students that fail subjects do not lose their place in the class), it is demeaning when the school denies a place in the regular class to students because of mild intellectual disability. In that case, I argue, the school is a “demeaning institution”.