Disability Studies: „Germany is not Yet Ready for That“

You aren´t normal at all! A sentence maybe everybody has already heard or said once . But what does it mean actually? And does the fact not to correspond to the norm automatically imply to be disabled? Inquisitive students now can grapple with these questions.

01/01/2010

Anne Waldschmidt

REHCARE.de spoke to Anne Waldschmidt, professor for Disability Studies at the University of Cologne, about astonished students, teaching topics and stereotyped thinking.

REHACARE.de: Mrs. Waldschmidt, you are teaching at the University of Cologne and you are the first German university professor for Disability Studies since the beginning of 2009. How did that happen?

Anne Waldschmidt: I do research in this field already since the 80s and have a sociology professorship at the University of Cologne already since 2002. In 2007 the university was restructured and the Faculty of Human Sciences was founded. This way I got the chance to rename my research and teaching field in a suitable way. I have requested to call my professorship „Sociology and Politics of the Rehabilitation, Disability Studies“ in future, and in 2008 it was corresponded to this wish.

REHACARE.de: How far is the field accepted?

Waldschmidt: Let me say it this way: It is not really the field which draws the masses. (laughs) The groups are rather easy to grasp, but in return very interested.

REHACARE.de: At the University of Cologne one can only take courses in Disability Studies as a focus of the lectureship Special Education. What is the reason for that?

Waldschmidt: This is due to the fact that my field is assigned to the Remedial Education. The Cologne situation is actually typical: In Germany the discourse about disability is still covered by this topic. Frankly spoken, I would really like to change this, but this is not possible in my position. To pu in more general terms: The perception on disability is always also an expression of a certain awareness culture.

REHACARE.de: What do you mean by that?

Waldschmidt: In Germany disability is just always seen as a stereotype. Therefore, one finds Disability Studies only at few universities beyond the remedial education and special education. I think, Germany is not yet ready to see disability, for example, as an object of the literature and to read common works to the effect how they use the subject disability to quarrel with divergence and otherness. In my tutorials we dothis and the students are often very surprised about that.

Disabled people are often prejudged by society and excluded from day-to-day life; © marganz/SXC

REHACARE.de: Among the rest, tutorials like „Normality and Disability“„Self-Help Organisations and Political Participation“ or „New Thinking of Disability“ are standing on the curriculum. What exactly do you teach the students?

Waldschmidt: The students quarrel with questions such as: What is disability? What is normality? How are the borders drawn? I introduce them to the mostly English research literature. We discuss barrier freedom and disabled person's politics. And we deal with the disabled person's movement.

REHACARE.de: How related to real life is the study of Disability Studies?

Waldschmidt: It is relevant for practice, but not immediately practical. I do not shy away from the practice, but on purpose I do not convey prescription knowledge. I would rather call it orientation knowledge. I would like to encourage the students to have a critical look at the things. So that, later in professional life with this knowledge in the back of their minds, they do not patronise people with disability, but act in their purpose.

REHACARE.de: By now, in the USA and in Great Britain there are special professorships and majors for this field at several universities. Why isn´t there anything comparable in Germany yet?

Waldschmidt: On the one hand there are not enough competent teachers in Germany. And bringing them out is perhaps a generation duty. After all, the academic junior staff does not appear from nowhere. At the same time we certainly need a high-quality research as scaffolding. Writings are necessary so that the results can also be published.

REHACARE.de: Do you think that there is any need for an autonomous major in Germany?

Waldschmidt: Yes, on principle I do, but I am sceptical whether I could mount that at the University of Cologne. The ability and possibility to teach independent modules in Disability Studies is my personal aim. One should not only develop an own major, but in parallel also try to accommodate as many courses as possible in all potential majors. I call this "Mainstreaming" of the Disability Studies. In this manner one could achiebe a constant presence of the subject disability in the different fields and in the long term hopefully also change something in the minds of the people.

REHACARE.de