Cultural Diversity, Families, and the Special Education System

by Beth Harry

This work explores the quadruple disadvantage faced by the parents of poor, minority, handicapped children whose first language is not that of the school that they attend. The author's ethnographic study of 12 low-income Puerto Rican American families serves to illustrate how the present structure of the special education system disempowers parents, excluding them from the decision-making processes that categorise their children as handicapped - and...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807731196
• ISBN13: 9780807731192
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: Teachers College Press
• Length: 277 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Essential information

This book is an essential resource for both special education and general education professionals who work with families of children from culturally diverse backgrounds who also have a disability. The book provides an excellent analysis of culture, race and ethnicity and how these constructs may influence a family's response to working with their child with a disability and with the school system. If you think the family you are working with has been cooperative and complacent, you may want to give this book a read. There may be something else going on!