The Representations of Disabled People in Elementary School Textbooks in Post-War Taiwan

Existing literature has primarily investigated the representations of class, gender, ethnicity, and sexuality in textbooks. However, few studies focus on the representation of disability in the education system. This paper uses content analysis to explore the frequencies, categories, naming and portrayal of disabled people in elementary school textbooks in Taiwan, from 1952 to 2003. From a disability studies’ viewpoint, we explore the ableism ideology in the textbooks. First, disabled people are underrepresented in the textbook. The disabled people represented in the textbooks were mostly people with physical disabilities; people with mental illnesses were ignored. Second, the naming of people with disabilities change from “the handicapped” (cán fèi ) to “the disabled people”(zhàng ài zhì). Third, people with disabilities were usually viewed as “the other,” who needed to be helped or who inspired “normal” people. Fourth, disability was defined as an individual problem instead of a social problem. Finally, disabled people represented in textbooks were mostly voiceless. There was no discussion on the world view of disabled people or disability, and there were very few discussions addressing the diversity and multiculturalism of disabled people.