The Lives of Others

I spent the last three weeks trying to come back from my "blogging - and blog reading - break" with some huge, seemingly essential, post, but I don't think I needed the pressure. So I return, as schools restart, with a small issue, but one that helps to defeat many students... Sorry for being gone, glad to be back...



A long time ago, in one of my undergraduate university experiences (and there were many attempts before success), I took a Creative Writing course. For the most part the course was wonderful - it put me on the path that led to The Drool Room and more, and I still have friends I met there (hey Joe), but the first day of that course remains fixed in my mind in a special way.



"Everyone come up to the board," the instructor announced, "and write a good title for a short story." I stayed in my seat. I would rather, among people I'm meeting for the first time, be naked than have my handwriting be observed and analysed. And that's not because I'm an exhibitionist.



It's because of the assumptions which people immediately make: "Oh, I have a three-year old brother who writes just like that." "Are you trying to be funny? What language is that?" "What's wrong with you?" "What are you, dyslexic or something?"



That class instructor pointed to me where I sat. "Come on, everybody up," he said. Now I had a choice: sullen weirdo or retard. So I went up to the board, I wrote an "X" (X is a "good letter" - like O) and sat back down. I claimed I wanted to write about someone unknowable. I think I momentarily pulled it off, but I was angry, frustrated, and ready to leave and drop the course.



As this semester began I assigned some brief excerpts as reading for my course in "Special Education Students in the Regular Education Classroom." One of those excerpts was from Learning Disabilities and Life Stories (Pano Rodis, Andrew Garrod, Mary Lynn Boscardin - 2001), and part of that excerpt included this former LD student discussing taking a "high-stakes test":

"It felt like an eternity before I heard the word Stop! What a great relief! I would relax into my chair and start to feel better. As I brought my head up, my red-rimmed eyes met Chrissy Watson's. She sat at her desk, upright and proper, with her hands on her lap, her pencil positioned approximately four inches from the top of her desk. Her test booklet centered on the desk top just two inches below her pencil. Her answers right there in perfect sight, displayed so that the whole class could see. Her little black circles looked as if they had been printed with a laser printer. My test booklet was wrinkled and worn looking, except for the pages that I never got to. Big black smudges streaked my answer sheet and some spots I had erased so much that the print was coming off. I had to turn my booklet over so that no one could see. My pencil was worn to a dull point, and during the test, l had bitten down on the other end to maximize my erasing ability. I would put my head down on my desk pre­tending to be bored so that I could cover my booklet until the teacher collected them. As l lay there trying to give the other kids the impression that the test had simply bored me to death, panic was beginning to build. Who would be collecting the tests? Would it be the teacher or one of her pets? Probably Chrissy."

Consider all the things routinely done in classrooms that threaten students who are less than perfect: "Trading papers" with the student next to you. Passing tests, homework, or in-class assignments "forward." Having one student collect the work of other students. Putting grades on the front of papers. Letting students pick through a pile of graded work to find their own. Required writing on the board. Requiring students to read outloud. Demanding answers from students who are struggling. Is public humiliation a goal? Or is it just that no thought at all has gone into it?



What is funny about this is that the very same teachers who might be extremely sensitive to humiliations in physical education or on the playground ("just because I'm not good at sport shouldn't be a reason to be humiliated by being picked last, or laughed at") seem most oblivious to the everyday humiliations of struggling students in school. But those humiliations push students away from school, away from learning, and away from opportunity - and they are often pushed away long before they reach the age of eight.



So next time you look at the students in your room, and ask for an activity, consider this: Think about being in front of a room full of your peers, people you must see everyday, and being forced to do whatever you are absolutely worst at - singing opera, painting with oils, dancing ballet, doing gymnastics - in front of everyone. Now imagine them all laughing at you, and judging you worthless.



Then re-think your classroom environment. Please.



- Ira Socol

Blocking Access from the Top

When you want to understand an educational institution's attitude toward people with disabilities, it is often helpful to start at the top. When you look at the top you can discover the priorities and attitudes which flow throughout the institutional structure.

This isn't to suggest that there may not be great people who are really trying beneath a disinterested or openly hostile point of executive power, nor to suggest that there may not be disinterested people or active resisters beneath a committed and active center of executive power. Those situations surely exist. But the attitudes at the top will usually be a significant way of measuring the potential for progress.

So I learned something important this week when I walked into the suite of Presidential Offices at my university. I was there for "another issue" but the attitudes toward disability immediately became the dominant thing.

"I would like to find out," I asked, "how I could meet with someone from the President's office, regarding 'x' because I have tried what seems like every other route through the university bureaucracy."

"We have a form you can fill out," the receptionist responded, "and someone will review it and get back with you." She reached into her desk and pulled out a clipboard with a paper form on it.

"Is that form available on-line, or in some accessible form?" I asked. "I have trouble writing."

"access to information and communication is a civil right for people with disabilities"

The receptionist could have responded in a number of ways:

She could have said, "I'm sorry, we do not have that yet, but I'll be happy to fill out the form for you."

Or she could have said, "I'm sorry, we do not have that yet, but I'll be happy to help you fill out the form if you would like."

Or she could have said, "May I get your information and have someone get back to you?"

The apology would have been nice. The suggestion that a flaw in the system might be corrected in the future would have been even nicer. But the essential thing which might have been offered, which should have been offered, was a way around the problem.

But what the receptionist said was this: "The president's schedule is prepared weeks in advance, it wouldn't make any sense to have it online."

A non-answer combined with a refusal to help or even concede that this was anything more than "my problem."

"according to the Office of Civil Rights (OCR), "there is an affirmative duty to develop a comprehensive policy in advance of any request for auxiliary aids or services" (Waddell, pars. 3-5)."

I took the form, scribbled my information as best as I could while muttering about "Section 504" and "federal law." I could tell the receptionist was annoyed. I typed her name onto the memo function on my mobile before leaving the office. I like to remember who I've been talking to.

Small thing? Yes.

Deeply revealing? Of course.

If we notice that the university president's office does not even have the legal and social skills training to deal with a very simple expression of disability concerns it becomes clear why the university's library is inaccessible and why accessibility software is not on university computers and why university faculty has no idea what makes a PDF accessible and why the office for disability services is widely reviled by the students who use it. It even explains why not even the educational program aimed at preparing teachers to work with students with special educational struggles to 'get it.'

I left the office and considered opening up my laptop in the corridor, connecting to the nearest Wi-Fi router, and filing an OCR complaint right from the President's IP address. But I decided to wait. The university president has a PhD in education after all, perhaps, if her staff forwards my concerns, she can learn from this "teachable moment."

And what did I learn? Now I understand much more clearly the lack of concern, the lack of urgency, throughout the university regarding either complying with the law or simply "doing the right thing." When leadership doesn't care, it is difficult to expect those below to be much better.

- Ira Socol

The Drool Room by Ira David Socol, a novel in stories that has - as at least one focus - life within "Special Education in America" - is now available from the River Foyle Press through lulu.com

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