It's Time to Change How We Talk About Disability in Education

It's Time to Change How We Talk About Disability in Education The managing director of Berklees newly renamed Institute for Accessible Arts Education makes the case for why our language surrounding disability matters.

By

John Mirisola

October 13, 2022

Image by Kelly Davidson

Language is powerful, and the language that we use communicates values, attitudes, and power differentials, says Rhoda Bernard, managing director of Berklee's recently renamed Institute for Accessible Arts Education. That's why, as she looked at how the language around disability has shifted in recent years, and as she responded to feedback from disability advocates, Bernard knew that the time had come to update the name of the institute, formerly known as the Berklee Institute for Arts Education and Special Needs.

Rhoda Bernard

Changing the name of the institute, which offers arts education programming for disabled individuals of all ages and provides training in accessible arts education to students and professionals, also presents a valuable opportunity to explore how and why the way we talk about disability has evolved-both in professional and personal settings. So we asked Bernard to share a bit of background on the institute, explain the reasons for the updated name, and discuss the profound effects that changes in language can have on the world around us. In this conversation, Bernard makes the case for dropping special needs from our vocabulary surrounding disability, highlights the importance of deferring to the preferred language of people with disabilities, and provides more helpful tips for how to have empathetic and respectful conversations about disability.

This institute first launched at Berklee five years ago, having grown out of a program you headed up at the Conservatory. Could you say a little about how that came about, and about the work the institute does on campus and in the surrounding community? The work of our institute began in 2007 at Boston Conservatory. At the time, I was the chair of the Music Education Department there. As part of that work, I established partnerships with a range of organizations so that our graduate students could gain hands-on experience teaching music to people of all ages. One of the partnerships was with a nearby school for children with disabilities that had no music program. My students went to the school one day per week and taught music classes to all of the students. The classes were incredibly well received by the students and the school, and the music education students found their time at the school particularly rewarding and beneficial to their learning.

Not long after that I established a small-scale, private lessons program at Boston Conservatory for just one disability population-people with autism. The program was known as the Boston Conservatory Program for Students on the Autism Spectrum. On Saturdays, autistic people came to the Conservatory to take private instrument lessons taught by graduate music education students. I developed training and support systems for my students to help them better teach their students with autism. That program was very successful, and I soon began raising funds to expand the work to include arts education programs other than private lessons, a range of professional development opportunities, graduate programs, and more.

A Contemporary Approach to Graduate Music Education

Learn more about what makes Berklees three graduate programs in music education distinct in the field.

When the merger [of Berklee College of Music and Boston Conservatory] took place in 2016, we created the institute, at the time called the Berklee Institute for Arts Education and Special Needs, with me as its managing director. We spent the 2016-2017 academic year preparing and planning, and we launched the institute in September 2017. Creating the institute has led to a great deal of exciting growth for our work. We now serve 300 individuals, ages 3 to 93, in a wide range of disability populations, every week, in person and online, in our direct service arts education programs. These programs include 13 music programs, a theater program, and two adaptive dance programs. Our first-of-their-kind graduate programs in music education and autism bring together arts educators on a mission to reach every student to study with world-class experts in the field. And our professional development programs, which include an annual conference, an annual symposium, study groups, workshops, consultations, mini-courses, and more, engage educators, arts educators, and administrators from all over the world.

How did you and your colleagues arrive at the decision to update the name to the Institute for Accessible Arts Education? When we first created the institute, I surveyed our various constituencies for input on its name. I heard from parents and families that they did not want the word disability in the name. I heard from educators that they wanted the phrase special needs in the name, so that their principals could understand the nature of our professional development activities. Based on that input, we named the institute the Berklee Institute for Arts Education and Special Needs.

Language related to disability is continually changing. About three years ago, I first started hearing quiet pushback from disability advocates about the phrase special needs in our institutes name.

The phrase special needs is an outdated phrase that many in the disability community find offensive for a number of reasons:

Special needs can sound euphemistic, as though the person using it is uncomfortable saying disability.

The phrase suggests that disabled people have needs and rights that are categorically different from what every human being needs.

The disability community did not choose this phrase. It was created by nondisabled people.

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LINK:	https://www.berklee.edu/berklee-now/news/it-s-time-to-change-how-we-ta...
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