Reflections

Alice: A Different Understanding

Alice was born in 1957 in Buckinghamshire. She went to mainstream primary schools and moved to a residential special school with her sister for her secondary education.

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Alice

Here Alice talks about the difference in young people’s understanding of disability now.

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https://howwasschool.allfie.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/different-understanding.mp3

Transcript

Disability was still quite unusual in those days, in the mainstream. I think a lot of people were either by then, were either educated in special schools or, actually more to the point, not educated, or maybe home schooled or whatever. So I was quite unusual in being a wheelchair user in a mainstream school and TV and, I mean there was no internet or anything like that and so, ten-year-olds' experience of the world and their understanding of disability would have been radically different from ten-year-olds now, they wouldn't have been half as worldly-wise, and I would have been just different and I'm not sure that they would have come with some of the stereotypes that kids probably come with now.

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