Confounding the needs and confronting the norms: an extension of Ried and Valle’s essay

This article expands the ideas presented in Reid and Valle’s essay by further exploring the construct of normality and its implications for children in schools. It examines the reasons for the nature of current school policy and practice by explicating who benefits and who loses from typical school structures and recent national legislation. Finally, it advocates for a transformation of thinking about the purpose of schools and suggests a radical restructuring that would support social reciprocity and community. Reid and Valle’s essay “The Dis-cursive Practice of LD: Implica-tions for Instruction and Parent– School Relations ” provides an astute and informative grand tour, from a disability studies perspective, of issues that relate to students identified with high-incidence disabilities. Reid and Valle rightfully move learning disabil-ities (LD) from a condition within stu-dents to a discursive practice through which certain children and adults ar