The Unteachables cover art

The Unteachables

Disability Rights and the Invention of Black Special Education

Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

The Unteachables

By: Keith A. Mayes
Narrated by: Terrence Kidd
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

The Unteachables examines the overrepresentation of Black students in special education over the course of the twentieth century. As African American children integrated predominantly white schools, many were disproportionately labeled educable mentally retarded (EMR), learning disabled (LD), and emotionally behavioral disordered (EBD). Keith A. Mayes charts the evolution of disability categories and how these labels kept Black learners segregated in American classrooms.

The civil rights and the educational disability rights movements, Mayes shows, have both collaborated and worked at cross-purposes since the beginning of school desegregation. Although special education ostensibly included children from all racial groups, educational disability rights advocates focused on the needs of white disabled students, while school systems used disability discourses to malign and marginalize Black students.

Excavating the deep-seated racism embedded in both the public school system and public policy, The Unteachables explores the discriminatory labeling of Black students, and how it indelibly contributed to special education disproportionality, to student discipline and push-out practices, and to the school-to-prison pipeline effect.

©2022 The Regents of the University of Minnesota (P)2023 Tantor
Education Racism & Discrimination Social Sciences Special Education & Disabilities Discrimination Social justice Student Civil rights

Listeners also enjoyed...

No Study Without Struggle cover art
Unraveling Bias cover art
On Critical Race Theory cover art
Intersectionality, 2nd Edition cover art
An Inconvenient Minority cover art
Facing Social Class cover art
Ghetto cover art
Bright Not Broken cover art
Classified cover art
Decarcerating Disability cover art
The Plot to Change America cover art
Just Medicine cover art
Learning in Adulthood cover art
Please Stop Helping Us cover art
Intellectuals and Race cover art
Identity Economics cover art
No reviews yet