Medicalization of school failures and educational services. Controversy over therapy methods

Abstract

Medicalization as a process by which nonmedical problems become defined and treated as medical ones, usually in terms of illness and disorders, has been one of the most powerful social phenomenon of the last few decades. The process is still common as various parts of life have become medicalized and medical or quasi-medical remedies are often sought for a numerous range of human diffculties. It turns out that medicalization of different types of life problems is now a common part of our professional, consumer, and market culture. The process of medicalization can also be clearly seen within educational field and using medical or“pseudomedical” terms in the pedagogical field was defined by the theoreticians associated with the New Sociology of Education as “medicalization of school failures”. While the process is undeniably present in everyday school education in the forms of various learning disorders and consequent forms of assessment, teaching and therapy, enabling making profits to some, and causing expenses to others, it rises many controversies and doubts concerning forms of social selection system: applying labels, stigmatization, marking a student.