Small Group Discussion Questions for The Cloak of ...



Small Group Discussion Questions for The Cloak of Competence, selection 1 and Reflections of Erin, selection 1.

Use these questions to guide your discussion of today’s selection from The Cloak of Competence and the selection you read in Reflections of Erin last week.

• The edition of The Cloak of Competence you are reading was published in 1993. Using what you now know about the current and historical definitions of intellectual disability, identify ways in which you can see the influence of older definitions and classifications systems on Edgerton’s comments about and views toward the individuals he studied, particularly in chapters 1 and 2. Next, contrast this with the way in which Erin’s mother discusses her intellectual disability and her school program in Reflections of Erin.

Today’s reading selection contained “portraits” of some of the individuals included in Edgerton’s study.

• What were some of the reasons these individuals had initially been placed in an institution?

• At what ages did they go into the institution?

• What kind of education and supports did they receive while institutionalized? In your opinion, did they receive the training and education within the institution they needed to be successful “on the outside”?

• What kind of supports, natural and service-based, were these individuals receiving while living in the community?

• Would Erin have been placed in an institution if she had been born in the mid 1900s? What was different when she was born (in terms of society’s conceptualization of disability, political and economic factors, etc) than when the individuals Edgerton describes were born? Maybe more importantly, what was the same?

What in either selection (C of C or Refl of Erin) surprised or challenged your beliefs about individuals with a label of intellectual disability? Why?

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