Unit 9: Social Model of Disability

Grades

• 9-10
• 11-12

Subjects

• Civics
• History
• Social Studies

Overview of Lesson Plan

Standards

• 1. Analyze and explain the ways groups, societies, and cultures address human needs and concerns.
  2. Predict how experiences may be interpreted by people from diverse perspectives and frames of reference.
  3. Compare and evaluate the impact of stereotyping, acts of altruism, and other behaviors on individuals and groups.
  4. Analyze the extent to which groups and institutions meet individual needs and promote the common good in contemporary and historical settings.
  5. Evaluate multiple points of view about selected public issues.

Objectives

• 1. To define benevolence as understood from multiple perspectives (e.g., organizations providing benevolence, people who receive benevolence from organizations).
  2. To understand how benevolent behavior can be both helpful and harmful.
  3. To examine how a charity model of disability (portraying people with disabilities as pitiful and needy) was used to help disability-related organizations reach their goals (e.g., support for programs, fundraising).
  4. To understand relationships between disability and beliefs systems (e.g., religion) and the relationships between models of disability (e.g., charity model) and responses to disability (e.g., charity campaigns, benevolence).
  

Questions to Consider

• 1. How does the meaning of benevolence change when viewed from different frames of reference?
• 2. What are the relationships between belief systems or assumptions about disability and the ways in which people respond to people with disabilities?
• 3. In what ways have benevolent organizations like the Rotary Club influence American views on disability?

Resources and Materials

• 1. Because a Father Cared (McDonald, 1956). The Rotarian.
  2. The Spirit of Rotary (Elyria Rotary Club, 1973). Care of the Crippled Child.
  3. Paula Kluth, Toward a Social Model of Disability.
  

Eras

• 1866-1920
• 1980-Present

Disability

• Intellectual Disabilities
• Physical Disabilities

Topics

• Benevolence & Benevolent Organizations
• Charity Model of Disability
• Social Model of Disability

Copyright

• (c) 2006 Syracuse University. All rights reserved.

Author(s)

• Paula Kluth, Ph.D.

Evaluate this lesson

Lesson for printing

Lesson as PDF