Hope, disability and inclusive participation in education

This article draws on an important distinction between abstract and concrete forms of utopia advanced by the Marxist philosopher of hope, Ernst Bloch, to examine participation and disability in education. Bloch’s view of concrete hope, attuned to reason, engaged with social reality and inseparable from human responsibility, is drawn upon to produce a critique approaches to and views of disability and participation that inform individualised practices in special education in the UK and the USA. The article goes on to analyse the view of disability and participation presented in World Health Organisation’s International classification of functioning, disability and health in relation to a significant distinction between Not Participating and Not-Yet-Participating. The article advances the conclusion that participation in education, if guided by an educated hope, can build up confidence in all young people that their difference in the world is no deficiency to be fixed but a uniqueness that is becoming. This is a difference they will perpetually realise and renew in accordance with the contributions they to make to the world.