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The Stigmatization of the other in the Processes of Inclusion of Students with Disabilities

 

Author: Carlos Augusto Awais Rumbos

Universidad Politécnica Territorial Andrés Eloy Blanco, UPTAEB

awais_carlos@hotmail.com

Lara, Venezuela

 

Abstract

The objective of this analysis is to try to approach the issue of how the stigmatization of the other influences the inclusion processes of students with disabilities in the university sector. This work is framed in the essay modality and is supported by a reflexive and critical field research. As a main contribution, there is the fact of allowing readers to reflect on how harmful it is for an educational institution to share the physical space and not the social space when stigmatization is allowed to play a preponderant role in our interpersonal relationships.

 

             Keywords: disabilities; universities; interpersonal relations.

 

 

 

La Estigmatización del otro en los Procesos de Inclusión de Estudiantes con Discapacidad

 

Resumen

El objetivo de este análisis es intentar una aproximación al tema de cómo la estigmatización del otro influye en los procesos de inclusión de los estudiantes con discapacidad en el sector universitario. Este trabajo está enmarcado en la modalidad de ensayo y está apoyado en una investigación de campo de carácter reflexivo y crítico. Como aporte principal, está el hecho de permitir a los lectores reflexionar sobre lo perjudicial que es para una institución educativa compartir el espacio físico y no el social cuando se deja que la estigmatización tenga un rol preponderante en nuestras relaciones interpersonales.

 

Palabras clave: incapacidad; universidad; relaciones interpersonales.

 

 

 

1.    Introduction

             The Andrés Eloy Blanco Territorial Polytechnic University (UPTAEB) has been characterized, not only for trying to be an inclusive university, but also for promoting and materializing training processes to try to develop superior values ​​and essential purposes. With this orientation, its essential characteristic has been to try to achieve humanistic training as an aspect of vital importance in the integral educational process of our professional future.

 

In this order of ideas, sketch a series of questions as a result of the entrance of students with disabilities to our institution. Are students with disabilities perceived as subjects of rights? Are they perceived to be included within the relevant processes of the institution? These concerns led me to conduct research on the Inclusion of Students with Disabilities in the University Sector, where stigmatization emerged as a relevant element that defined the reality that I wanted to address.

 

It is for this reason that through this work I have allowed myself to reflect on how stigmatization affects interpersonal relationships in any space that is shared in our lives, but especially I wanted to understand how it affects us in the institution of university studies. which I belong, basing my reflections on the subject, mainly, in excerpts from the interviews I made to the participants of the research and in some theoretical references.

 

As a main purpose, what is wanted is to sow in the reader the seed of what it means to share a physical space, but with great difficulty the social space. This seems not to be achieved because we establish invisible dividing lines that we do not allow to be crossed by others and that we generate them mainly by imprinting on our minds negative attributes, which in most cases we imagine them from others, and that in the end what they achieve is hinder interpersonal relationships.

 

2.    Development

           Society has shown signs of settling in and out of chaotic historical moments that human beings deliberately favor to establish themselves as dominant over others and to shape an apparent world order. The central problem of this order is that it is supported by institutions that want to maintain it in order to respond to a dominant ideology and not to the real needs of the people who make up the community.

 

           Sánchez, Hernández, and Pérez, (2007a), affirm that:

Within the complexity of our current situation and in the sphere of violence, there is a violence that operates blindly, that perverts the human condition and the scope of the interrelation between men, it is a form of social decadence that until now is It has given the category of threatening, but it is also an indigence of the human heart that has become a hostility and sharp indifference in front of other men ... (p.8).

         

             The authors state that; "This violence has its name: discrimination, which is above all a social phenomenon, a situation of exclusion, of non-recognition, but also, it is the result of moral indifference towards the other ..." (Sánchez, Hernández, and Pérez, 2007b: p.9).

 

Now, in this discrimination that society does, we must pay special attention to those that arise when a member of the community is assigned a negative attribute, because it is oriented to establish, as something normal, a classification that they intend to assign to these individuals a lower value and group them in a category to pretend to keep them outside the rights that as citizens correspond to them.

 

In this sense, it is vital to ask ourselves who are the harmed ones because the answer seems to be evident, the weakest of whom we can form prejudices that in many cases are negative. However, society does not act in spite of discrimination in groups by specifically responding to one. In the social fabric all the groups interact and it is these relationships that really define the amalgamated character of a society.

 

Baron and Byrne (2005a), in their book Social Psychology, reveal that:

A person with prejudices towards a particular social group will evaluate its members in a particular way (usually negative), simply because of belonging to this group. Individual traits or behaviors play a trivial role; the members of this social group dislike (or please, very rarely) because they belong to a specific group. On the other hand, discrimination refers to negative actions towards groups that are victims of prejudice (p.217).

 

             A healthy society, necessarily seeks a balance of the relationships that must occur in and between the different groups that are generated. However, many times these relationships are not sincere or are not committed to the pursuit of common goals, but are oriented towards the pursuit of the satisfaction of individual interests sacrificing the common good for the entire society. The author defines as: "any good that turns out to be a genuine perfection of our common human nature is a common good". (Audi, 2004: p.108).

 

On the other hand, many of the personal relationships that share the same physical space, are not healthy, because they do not share the same social space and are significantly marked by the moral form, not imposed by ethical codes, but by the understanding that one has about the subjective ambivalence of what is called good and bad, beautiful and ugly. Also, special attention must be paid to an innumerable number of attributes that normal beings establish to accept or reject the other and to achieve to live the we in the best way.

 

Incredibly, people have an ability to discriminate against others by their way of speaking, moving, dressing, thinking, believing, origin, skin color, physical defects, disability or any other attribute, to the point that we come to consider to others as strangers despite living in the same physical space. This particular way of seeing others generates what is known as stigma, a term that refers, according to the author, to "a profoundly discrediting attribute" (Goffman, 2006: page 13), but which is used to confirm the normality of the other.

 

The stigmatization is perhaps one of the cruelest of human actions, because it allows you to form a distorted image of the other, which generates harm, not because of what you think but because of how you act, which can even lead you to think and feel outside a space that by right should be shared and yet it is not, because it is delimited by imaginary lines of self-rejection that inflicts psychological damage that in many cases is difficult to reverse.

 

Within this order of ideas, it is important to highlight that stigmatization occurs in all strata of a community and is not exclusive in assigning negative attributes, for the case that I wish to argue, to university students with disabilities. In a university institution is evidenced by managers, teachers, administrators, workers and students without disabilities and it is precisely not reflect on this fact which hinders the achievement of assertive relationships that benefit the entire community.

 

Seen in this way, what is meant is that relationships within a community can not be impregnated with prior stigmatization because they are established under a blanket of doubt because they consider the other incapable of responding to the personal or common problems of the community. what they share Relationships should be open and always under a climate of respect towards the other.

 

Now, what are the dangers of considering stigmatization as commonplace within human actions? So much so that in all areas of society exists and educational institutions do not escape this reality; that is why my interest in arguing, through an essay, how it can affect the inclusion of students with disabilities the fact of making them feel different within a university campus whose premise is governed by principles of social justice and equity.

 

It is important to highlight the unintentional nature of the actions to reject students with disabilities, what happens is that at the university where I worked there was a total opening that took the community by surprise because they did not know how to handle this new reality. Also, this new reality took the university by surprise because it is at this time that it is preparing to take on this challenge that was noticed more than it was a guideline of educational policy that a deep reflection to accommodate these people to whom their possibilities of to achieve university studies they were practically denied.

 

To have an idea about the above, I bring you an extract of the interviews of an investigation that I am carrying out where it is appreciated how people with disabilities are perceived by others and by themselves; converting stigma as common in the interaction of human beings and evidence the difficulty of achieving objectives that must be common to all individuals in a community.

 

They also do not know how to treat a person with disabilities, they are afraid, they were afraid then, it was little by little, a job on both sides and it cost me a lot. I'm not going to put cold pads on the situation because it was really very difficult I stopped studying for a long time precisely because I could not adapt, because this said my God could not find the way because people did not give me the room, they treated me as if I were an outcast and that was an effort that I had to do to show that I was not a pariah but that I have the same needs as any conventional one, only that I get them in another way.

 

On the other hand, in other interviews of this study students with disabilities made references to attributes such as "Pity" "Beggar" "Incapable" "Fragile" "Ignorant" "Loose" "He was the only one like that" "You will feel sorry that See you" "You know people worse than you" "I do not have anything in front of him" "The world of a disabled person looks very different" "Difficulty in talking about his disability with women". Attributes that break any attempt to achieve inclusion come or not students who do not have the condition of disability.

 

On the other hand, based on personal experiences in the training units that I teach, I can affirm that students without disabilities find it difficult to accept in their work groups those who do, because they believe that their performance will be affected. and in many opportunities it had to intervene directly to reverse this fact without affecting any of the parties involved.

 

          Jiménez and Huete (2002), in their analysis of the responses received to the questionnaire on Discrimination on the Grounds of Disability promoted by the State CERMI, conclude that:

There is a type of discrimination based on rejection, fear and ignorance, which is present practically in all activities of daily life of people with disabilities. This is a particularly painful discrimination, which humiliates people with disabilities and prevents the advances that are recorded in terms of adaptation of the environment and removal of physical, communication and mental barriers translates into a real improvement of access levels and in an effective equality of rights of people with disabilities (p.80).

 

          It is important to highlight that the reason for this rejection can be attributed to the fact that the majority was not oriented, in their homes, primary or secondary studies, to understand that society is to share it with a great variety of human beings they have very different characteristics and that a disabling condition does not necessarily represent a disadvantage to achieve the stated goals; unless it is a severe cognitive disability or an error in the choice of what one wants to study, which is a common error in the processes of inclusion.

 

However, despite the programs and campaigns aimed at generating inclusion within the university and for which it was not prepared and is not yet in place, and which had to be known in a hasty manner to justify the inclusion of students with disabilities was what initially generated rejections from teachers and is appreciated in expressions such as: "If a student with a disability is included in my list, I ask that they remove it from me" "I do not know how I will treat it if it is a student with a hearing disability".

 

Therefore, and that is where we must reflect deeply, we must persevere in achieving a culture of inclusion that as a value must be lived within the institution to avoid stigmatization by comparison with the "normal" students that we have traditionally received. Otherwise, you will always be looking for an evasive action to not fully admit them into that social space that corresponds to them by right.

 

Based on the above, we must ask ourselves: Where is the problem? And it can be said by sharing in the community for so many years, that the fact is that rejection appears in many ways in the actions of human beings and sometimes we do not even notice that we are discrediting the other and the reason is that a culture that considers stigma as something normal to the point of laughing without even noticing the damage that may be infringing.

 

The foregoing makes us ask another question What motivates us despite sharing the same physical space not to share the social space? or to believe that we are doing it because we form groups that conform in some way to the canons invisibly established by the group. The authors state that: "Stigmatization is often based on irrational assumptions. However, the emotions that are activated can be quite strong and easily transferred to someone else even to a second person who does not share the stigma". (Baron and Byrne, 2005b: p.275).

 

Having made the previous observation, it should be highlighted how counterproductive it is for a community, especially university, to form groups with strong stigmatization features, because it would be practically impossible to reach important common objectives such as the inclusion of students or simply achieve the so longed for equality or equity in the fundamental support of education, knowledge, doing and being.

 

With this I want to draw attention, that the inclusion of students with disabilities as a fundamental institutional project must be addressed from moral principles that force us to deliver all the best of each of us to feel that we share a unique social space and not a plural one in function of group teleological actions that do not commit us to reach the institutional objectives, but personal.

 

In this sense, it seems that within the institution everyone participates in some way in the moral guidelines established to reject stigmatization, but it is not seen as a commitment to generate a significant change that impacts the entire community when it is trying to include students with disabilities. The author states that: "for a life with human dignity, we have a very strong moral motive to promote its flowering and eliminate the obstacles to its development". (Nussbaum, 2007: p.343).

 

As people with human dignity, who are part of a community, we must consider when a young person with a disability enters the university in all the adjustments that he had to make to his life because of the lived experiences related to his condition. On the other hand, reflect on it, and understand how many adjustments he made to his conception of self so as not to feel intimidated when falling and having to get up again to continue on his way towards achieving his goals; It is worthy of admiration and respect.

 

However, it should be added that there are many commitments that must be conceived to receive these young people and achieve levels of organization that make their academic stay more comfortable; It is worth noting: the study plan, the improvement of the facilities to facilitate their mobility, the technological services adapted to their disability, the training of the teachers, the adequacy of the service areas, among others. The author argues that: "the incorporation of the disabled person into their environment allows them to interact with it, activate it, transform it, adapt it to their measure and to the extent of their limitations". (Garcia, 2003a: p.247).

 

Something very interesting and that should always be taken into account is to establish in our university culture a vocabulary or gestures that are accepted by the whole community of students with disabilities so that they feel included and this must be respected in our correspondences, talks, speeches, or other means of communication. On the other hand, I believe that all actions aimed at improving this culture of inclusion should be contrary to the domain that has been established with the culture of normality.

 

Diniz and Dos Santos (2009), consider that:

The social disadvantage experienced by people with disabilities is not a sentence of nature, but the result of a discursive movement of the culture of normality, which describes the deficiencies as impediments to the activities that take place in the public or community sphere (p.74).

 

             However, in a university campus should be under review the stigmatization in the relationships established by students with disabilities or not, many believe that they are superior to others because their disability is less disabling and the difficulty to relate between groups is observed of different conditions. On the other hand, it is widely used in the slang of students with motor disabilities the "conventional" category to refer to a normal person who has nothing extraordinary and the fact that the labeling prevails will not favor generating a culture of inclusion.

 

In this regard, the foregoing can be evidenced in this fragment of one of the interviews made to the participants of the investigation:

My life is very impressive, because you know people in worse conditions than you then you say I have nothing in front of him I always take that as an example, the kids, the kids, who are in a wheelchair all the time I say that if it should be stronger than what happened to me, at least I grab a few sticks and walk way over here I can get a prosthesis then at least I have a hope, but they do not have it.

 

An inclusive university that does not verify criminal records, social conditions, skin color, religion, physical condition or political affiliation of any of the young people who want to enter, as this is the guiding principle, all the staff that make up must know that during the relations with the students in the social space that we must morally share will encounter situations that will not be easy to handle.

 

In this sense, we should not be surprised, if at any time of our teaching practice we appreciate students with some disability, belong to a different race, with different religious practices to the one that practices the majority or have different socio-economic levels. logical to expect that to happen? That for me is an inclusive university, one that sees everyone as human beings who want to improve their knowledge for life and thus improve the way of living with others.

 

Therefore, as an educational community we have a moral responsibility to prevent students with disabilities from feeling as if they do not belong to the space that is shared and this can be achieved as they perceive that our actions are aimed at including them in all processes that define us, and giving them all the resources available to make their goals come true.

 

What should I do as a member of an educational community to avoid stigmatization being reduced, at least to a level where those who try to objectify it feel shame for it? The answer to this question is very simple, do not become an accomplice of the stigmatization and comb it, not only for the fact of hurting our students with disabilities, but also you do it to the entire university community, because the negative attributes that many times we assign other people they do not even exist; they are errors of perception and destroy the foundations on which morality is sustained.

 

If stigmatization is allowed to be part of our daily work, we will never be able to grow as a social group, which is expected to have a significant impact on the values ​​we must live in society. The greatness of our university will be measured by the level of maturity of our internal relations and this means knowing how to recognize in time everything that may affect the guiding moral principle that guides us, only in this way will the long-awaited humanity of all the members that make up to the university community.

 

In this sense, Becerra (2016): affirms in his article Leadership of the Manager to Improve the Interpersonal Relations in the Staff of Educational Organizations that:

Educational organizations invite the commitment of managers to improve relationships and achieve the goals set, incorporating the team in all activities inside and outside the institution, because in humanity the subjects are in mutual dependence and reciprocity. Equitable contact and communication are fundamental, both for individuals and for the group in such a way that, without them, the person would decline and the group would stop functioning (p.24).

 

          As an educational community we must learn together to live together and for this we must make the necessary adjustments in our way of acting that guarantees mutual respect, only in this way we will advance with firm steps towards acceptance of the other and therefore growth as a society.

 

Consequently, it is important to remember that as an educational institution we are part of the society that forms the conscience that can contribute to modify the actions of the men and women that make it up, without distinctions or attributes that take us away from the much desired equity and social justice that far from putting a brake on our growth favors it in the medium and long term. The author states that: "It is necessary to adopt redistributive measures aimed at reducing inequalities and facilitating access to wealth for the excluded, and putting into practice policies that stimulate the participation of everyone in social and economic life" (García, 2003b: p.210).

 

It should be noted, in one of my interviews I asked what was your true need despite being a person with a disability? And the participant replied:

y real need and I think that of many of my colleagues even when they do not express it because maybe they do not know how to say it; but if it is what they feel, I would like to be in a place where I do not have to say please can you download me, please can you upload me, please, this one, you can attend me, I would like to live like this, but never, I have never experienced it.

 

3.    Conclusions

          On the basis of the ideas on stigmatization, it is appreciated that students with disabilities want to feel free and not be a burden to society, but be an integral part of it contributing to its growth; in order to achieve this, social vulnerability must be reduced in the spaces that are shared, and emphasis must be placed, within educational institutions, on preventing students with disabilities from participating and influencing the social exchanges that give the community identity.

 

4.    References

Audi, R. (Ed.). (2004). Diccionario Akal de Filosofía. Madrid, España: Ediciones Akal, S.A., págs. 1-1050.

 

Becerra, C. (2016). Liderazgo del Directivo para Mejorar Relaciones Interpersonales en Personal de Organizaciones Educativas. Revista Scientific, 1(1), 20-35. Recuperado de: https://doi.org/10.29394/scientific.issn.2542-2987.2016.1.1.2.20-35

 

Diniz, D., Barbosa, L., & Dos Santos, W. (2009). Discapacidad, Derechos Humanos y Justicia. Sur, 6(11), 65-77. Recuperado de: http://www.scielo.br/pdf/sur/v6n11/es_04.pdf

 

Baron, R., & Byrne, D. (2005a,b). Psicología Social. 10^a edición. Madrid, España: Pearson Educación, S.A., págs. 1-608.

 

García, R. (2003a,b).  El Futuro de las Personas con Discapacidad en el Mundo. Desarrollo Humano y Discapacidad. Informe al Club de Roma. Fundación ONCE. Madrid, España: Ediciones del Umbral, págs. 1-306. Recuperado de: http://www.cermi.es/sites/default/files/docs/colecciones/FuturoDiscapacidad.pdf

 

Goffman, E. (2006). Estigma: la identidad deteriorada. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Amorrortu editores, págs. 1-84.

 

Jiménez, A., & Huete, A. (2002). La Discriminación por Motivos de Discapacidad. Análisis de las respuestas recibidas al Cuestionario sobre Discriminación por Motivos de Discapacidad promovido por el CERMI Estatal. Madrid, España: CERMI, págs. 1-42. Recuperado de: http://www.ite.educacion.es/formacion/materiales/126/cd/unidad_2/material_M2/sabermas1.pdf

 

Nussbaum, M. (2007). Las Fronteras de la Justicia. Consideraciones sobre la exclusión. Barcelona, España: Ediciones Paidós Ibérica, S.A., págs. 1-450.

 

Sánchez, M., Hernández, L., & Pérez, G. (Eds.). (2007). Un Acercamiento a la Discriminación. De la Teoría a la Realidad en el Estado de México. Toluca, México: Comisión de Derechos Humanos del Estado de México. págs. 1-304. Recuperado de: http://www.codhem.org.mx/localuser/codhem.org/difus/Libros/libro%20discriminacion.pdf

 

 

Carlos Augusto Awais Rumbos

e-mail: awais_carlos@hotmail.com

 

Born in Nirgüa, Yaracuy state, Venezuela. Chemical engineer graduated from the Universidad Nacional Experimental Politécnica Antonio José de Sucre, magister in education, educational research mention and currently attending doctoral courses in the area of university education at UPEL-IPB. I work as an assistant professor assigned to the Department of Occupational Hygiene and Safety at the Universidad Politécnica Territorial Andrés Eloy Blanco. Expert in e-learning at the Fundación para la Actualización Tecnológica en Latinoamérica. I worked in different positions for more than seventeen years in the industrial field before entering the area of university education and I took courses in the area of hygiene and safety in countries such as Mexico, U.S.A., Brazil, among others.

 

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- Original Version in Spanish -

DOI: https://doi.org/10.29394/Scientific.issn.2542-2987.2018.3.8.14.273-289