Ableism in Education

I’ll admit: I approached *Ableism in Education* expecting a dry academic lecture. Instead, I got a masterclass in how to make systemic critique feel *personal*. Parekh’s arguments hit differently in audio—hearing her dissect the ‘meritocracy myth’ in schools while stuck in traffic made me audibly groan at memories of my own tracked classes. The narration by Chloe Dolandis is a huge part of why this works. She avoids the pitfall of sounding either too clinical or overly dramatic, letting Parekh’s examples (like the way behavioral ‘deficits’ are racialized) land with quiet devastation. That said, the pacing stumbles slightly in Chapter 3, where a deep dive into policy history risks losing listeners who aren’t already steeped in education theory. I found myself rewinding a few times—not because the ideas were unclear, but because the shift from anecdotes to dense citations felt abrupt. Where the audiobook *shines* is in its refusal to offer easy fixes. Parekh doesn’t just call out ableism; she forces you to sit with the discomfort of realizing how complicit even ‘progressive’ schools can be. The production quality is clean, though I wish there’d been more dynamic emphasis during key moments—some of Parekh’s most biting lines (like her takedown of ‘growth mindset’ rhetoric) could’ve used a touch more vocal punch. Still, this is one of those rare audiobooks that changes how you see the world—not just schools, but how we’ve all internalized hierarchies of ‘smart’ and ‘struggling.’ If you’ve ever rolled your eyes at a ‘one-size-fits-all’ lesson plan or wondered why some kids get labeled ‘lazy’ while others are called ‘gifted,’ this will rattle you. Just maybe not in the way you expect.