The article analyzes the terms of normality-deviance, which are the basis for the identification of the person with special educational needs. The concept of normality is closely related to the values and norms of a culture and to the social-political ideas of the respective historical epoch, having a specific and relative significance. Defining itself in comparison with the state of normality, which represents the physiological, psychological and social balance, the abnormality is the state of imbalance on several levels: individual psychophysiological, disagreement in interpersonal relations, non-conformity with the value system of the socio-cultural environment, confrontation with social and legal normativity, hostility towards peers, the group or social institutions. People with special educational needs are people with deficiencies, in most cases of a physical, psycho-physiological, but also psychosocial nature, which have difficulties in responding to the demands of the environment in accordance with the generally accepted and validated socio-cultural model. In general, a child or adolescent is considered to have a specific deficiency when an anatomical structure is affected or lost and its physiological or psychological functioning is limited. Deficiency is considered a biopsy of the person, associated with certain physical, sensory, cognitive (mental or intellectual), affective, and behavioral disabilities. When the child with certain deficiencies, disabilities, disabilities becomes a schoolboy, he is exposed to the risk of maladaptation more than an average, average child. Disabilities or limitations, resulting from deficiencies, turn into disadvantages, requiring institutional organizations and special education, often social protection. Disability can be eliminated or diminished through educational interventions, meant to compensate for the lack or insufficiency and to allow adaptation to the environment; generically, this is the educational response to the special need. This answer is only possible if the disability is assessed correctly and the environment becomes an appropriate pedagogical one.