Abstract

Leading researchers describe the field of special education as sharply divided between two different theories of disability. In this article Scot Danforth takes as his project addressing that division from the perspective of a Deweyan philosophy of the education of students with intellectual disabilities. In 1922, John Dewey authored two articles in New Republic that criticized the use of intelligence tests as both undemocratic and impractical in meeting the needs of teachers. Drawing from these two articles and a variety of Dewey’s other works, Danforth puts forward a Deweyan educational theory of intellectual disability. This theory is perhaps encapsulated in Dewey’s observation that “The democratic faith in human equality is belief that every human being, independent of the quantity or range of his personal endowment, has the right to equal opportunity with every other person for development of whatever gifts he has.”1.