Routledge Education Author of the Month August 2012: Peter Mittler

Now in Overcoming Exclusion: Social Justice Through Education he brings together a collection of seminal works, that, as he says, “enables me to trace my changing perspectives and conceptual frameworks”. It does more than that. These papers are the voice of a movement for change. They speak to inequality and in clear and cogent argument advocate changes and the reasons why change is necessary. In reflecting the evolving discussion over more than 40 years, his work reveals a universal trajectory of concern. He reminds us that human development is complex and cannot be tidily categorized, describing it as a ‘double helix of nature and nurture’.

Peter Mittler has been at the forefront of the re-conceptualisation of disability within a wider global concern with the impact on social cohesion of deep-seated inequalities in life opportunities. He is a leading advocate for the equal access of intellectually disabled people to the social structures of their home community, seeing it as a fundamental issue of human rights and arguing for governments and UN organisations to work alongside self-advocates and parents in a listening partnership for change. Currently he is working with UNICEF and others to see the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities translated into real and lasting policy change throughout the world. His work has been internationally recognized in awards from the United Nations, the Kennedy Foundation, the American Association for Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities and the International Association for the Scientific Study of Intellectual Disability.

It is perhaps his own background as a child forced to flee Nazi persecution in his native Vienna that has enabled him to speak out with such validity against discrimination and oppressive practices that deny the full humanity of others. In a recent book that began as a memoir but became an overview of a movement, he reflects on his own personal interaction of nature and nurture with the important ‘landmark moments’ in the development of his career that led on to wider social change. Thinking Globally Acting Locally: A Personal Journey (2010). Bloomington, Ind. Authorhouse.

In Overcoming Exclusion: Social Justice Through Education, Peter Mittler’s work takes its place amongst that of the other great educators of the twentieth century. As any great educator should, he has pushed back boundaries, challenged pre-conceptions and the received wisdom of the day and led the field in the excitement of new ways of thinking. This important book gives a glimpse of how he achieved it.