Curative Education in Dialogue

There are many educational policy issues today – not only in curative education – that need to be discussed. The two authors of the book¹ think so and therefore enter into a dialogue about – not only from their point of view – relevant aspects of (curative) education, of school education in general.

As experts in curative education with a large practical background and a broad theoretical basis, they comment on 33 topics briefly, concisely and grasping the essentials. They refer to each other and, in this way, approach the questions posed from different aspects, in small steps with great professional depth and philosophically – and sometimes playfully humorous.
  The two authors, despite their partly different approaches, find a broad consensus regarding the natural preconditions of children and the necessary framework conditions for successful teaching. This applies to children with special needs as well as to all other children. They find common ground in their assessment of current developments in the institution of schooling, for example with regard to integration, digitalisation, performance measurement and teaching methodology in general.
  Bonfranchi looks at these developments mainly in terms of their effects in everyday education on children with multiple disabilities, physically and mentally. He sees how, under the conditions of “integration”, however well-intentioned, physical and mental impairments are sometimes trivialised and the specific individual support of disabled children is often devastatingly neglected.
  Perret focuses more on the historical and ideological aspect of school development and observes with great concern the paradigm shift from curative education to psychiatric treatment of children, especially since the authoritative diagnostic manuals since the 1980s are increasingly limited to the identification of formal and functional disorders. The social and life-historical context is hardly taken into consideration any more.
  The respective human individual as a social being is in danger of disappearing behind a cluster of symptoms – and with it the genuine pedagogical concern to strive for the possible beyond the obvious. It is precisely in making up for deficits what curative education is all about. The importance of the relationship between the teacher and the teachers always comes up, which is neglected in current developments.
  While a few topics deal with curative education in the narrower sense, the majority of the others deal with changes in education in general, the origins and foundations of which would raise many questions. That is why these chapters are particularly worth reading. If, for example, one is looking for an explanation of how such a paradigm shift in schooling and education could take place without reflection in a liberal democratic society, one cannot avoid an understanding of hypnotic language manipulation techniques in public discussion. Eliane Perret explains this clearly using the term “competence” in the output-oriented Curriculum 21. The school has thus said goodbye to the goal of holistically imparting knowledge and values to the students and thus also to the humanistic-emancipatory concern that the European educational tradition has developed over centuries. After reading her statements, one would like to hope, like Riccardo Bonfranchi, that this aberration will remain a footnote in the history of education.
  Another chapter deals with New Public Management. There, the reader learns more about the background of this anti-democratic policy, which also has an impact on education. In this context, the development of the world trade system since the fall of communism in 1989, when market radicalism became the guiding ideology, must be comprehended. By agreeing to the GATS convention of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the 164 participating countries had decided to open up their basic services – including school education – to a global market. As a result, the school system has been restructured according to the model of business units in the private sector. Decisive changes in our schools would therefore not have a pedagogical but this background reason.
  Both authors agree that in order to realise the right to education for all children, different paths must remain open, taking into account individual needs, and that one should not follow any ideology. And they attach great importance to the pedagogical work with the group and the class community in order to strengthen the social feeling of the children. The rights of people with disabilities are better guaranteed through school education for togetherness than through individualised coexistence in global performance competition. In this context, Perret also discusses the possibilities introduced by the inclusion of Alfred Adler's “individual psychology”, especially for the curative education.
  The book is interesting and stimulating because two practitioners with deep knowledge of disability education look beyond their field to the socio-economic context that has changed throughout the history and shapes education policy today. Despite the complexity of the issues, it is written in an easy-to-read way.
  The book is to be wished a wide circulation so that it can initiate a long overdue public debate about the school reforms of the last decades.  •

¹ Bielefeld ATHENA wbv 2021, ISBN (Print) 978-3-7639-6580-9, ISBN (E-Book) 978-3-7639-6583-0