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Special Education As A Moral Mandate In Catholic Schools, Mary E. Carlson

Dissertations (1934 -)

This study summarizes the level of services offered to students with special educational needs in Catholic schools and finds that children with disabilities are underserved and that research regarding the extent and types of services offered is insufficient. More importantly, the author examines the practice of Catholic schools’ non-admission of students with special needs using: traditional Catholic Social Teaching, especially the doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas; virtue ethics; the hermeneutic of real, lived experience; and liberation theologies and related liberatory disciplines. Viewed through each of these lenses, current Catholic school practice, in the majority of cases, is unjust. To remain …