INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY AND HISTORICAL-CULTURAL THEORY: a rescue of Vygotsky's texts

This article seeks to analyze the set of texts written between the 20s and 30s of the 20th century, in which L. S. Vygotsky (1896-1934) addresses the issue of intellectual disability in an attempt to point out that the theorist inaugurates an interpretation ahead of his historical time and that many of the discussions engendered by it took effect only in the 21st century with the advent of inclusion and accessibility policies. The effort is to demonstrate that all these writings point to the need to reformulate pedagogical and therapeutic attitudes that focus their practices only on biological processes or on what is considered deficient and subject to adjustments. The revolutionary understanding lies in affirming that the laws that govern the development of the social being do not make distinctions between people, they are unique for all individuals, and necessarily depend on the quality of the mediational processes that take place in the exchange between humans. Where other theories postulate the defense of a reduced education, in content and interactions, the Historical-Cultural Theory maintains that the difficulties arising from intellectual disability can be compensated through full social development that takes place in an inclusive and collaborative environment.