What We Have Here Is Failure to Communicate: A Rejoinder to Ferguson and Ferguson

The Fergusons’ response to our review of the social and affective characteristics of children with mild disabilities was nonresponsive to the purpose and scope of our review of the empirical literature, as well as to the conclusions we drew from it. Their rebuttal on ways of knowing is typical of a constructivist perspective on the field of disabilities, in which personal anecdotes and opinions are on equal footing with empirical evidence drawn from systematically controlled studies. It is unfortunate that the Fergusons chose to interpret our review from the well-worn and tired perspective of The Association for Persons with Severe Handicaps (TASH) on full inclusion, an ideologically driven movement for the severely, not the mildly, disabled. We are concerned that our review provided a pulpit from which constructivists such as the Fergusons could preach their ideological gospel.