Character Education for Students with Disabilities

Many schools see it as part of their mission to provide character education or moral education to their students. Yet many students with disabilities are excluded from these curricula, programs, and policies or denied some of their benefits. This essay explores some specific moral problems and obstacles that disabled students face when it comes to developing or exercising virtues of justice or fairness, self-respect, and self-development. For example, students with disabilities face moral questions about whether and how to request accommodations for their disability, whether to exercise special privileges that they suspect are not necessary to accommodate their disability on particular occasions, what to do when teachers do not provide them with accommodations they need, and how to respond to bias and discrimination directed at those with disabilities. This essay also uses John Rawls' theory of moral development to consider some of the ways in which schools are impeding or failing to promote the overall character development of disabled students.