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Copyright © 1997, Louis Schmier and Atwood Publishing.
Date: Sun, 14 Dec 1997 13:45:55 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Random Thought: No accommodation with Documentation
Hell's been apoppin' on the internet all last week on the issue of
ADA. On one discussion list I am embroiled in a heated exchange dealing
the extent to which a teacher/professor must or should accommodate to the
needs of students who are afflicted with LD or any disability for that
matter. As the fates would have it, on three other discussion lists the
same subject popped up. They were calm compared to the first until on one
a professor proclaimed in a tone of no uncertain defiance, "No
accommodation without documentation!" Gee, you'd think he was about to
dump some tea into a bay. That pronouncement let loose a series "here,
heres" that formed like a dark cloud of soul-devouring locusts ravaging
fields of the spirit:
"I should decide what is reasonable and unreasonable adjustment in my
classes. But, instead someone without a Ph.D. or expertise in my
subject injects herself into MY class and tells me what I can
or cannot do;
"we should immeidately ask if such students belong in college level
classes;"
"these students are trying to get off easy;"
"we just have enough funds to make these accommodations the students
demand;"
"the demands being made by some of our students just are not reasonable;"
"if I didn't have to worry about being sued, I'd treat them just like
I do any other student. If they didn't like that, they could enroll
in someone else's class;"
what the law says we must do and just do what is required;"
"I fail to see why I have to change my approach in the classroom for one
or two students;"
"the testing system for these students is not beyond reproach. Until it
is, I fail to see why I must be forced to give some students special
consideration;"
"It's my opinion that most of these students are merely unprepared and
undiscipline and not dedicated;"
"I made all the accomodations asked of me and the student still only
received a C. I don't see where it was worth the effort;"
"I've read that there are questions of whether all these LD
conditions really exist;"
"we're lowering the standards of our institutions. We just can't
everyone in;"
"I believe these requests disturb other students;"
"I resent a staff person telling a member of the faculty how to teach
his class;"
"it isn't fair to other students to give some extra consideration;"
"it truly is inconvenient and time consuming to make up different tests or
offer different types of exams;
"these students just aren't as dedicated as they used to be;"
"the cost of hiring personnel and adding to the bureaucracy that is increasingly
burdening our institution is by no means justified by the supposed
the benefits to these so very few students;"
"I shouldn't have to take time out of my busy schedule to give additional
exams just to accommodate a student who is in school only because
they're letting anyone in;
"It's a hard world out there and they're got to learn how to be hardened."
"what did these students do before we had to cater to them?"
"I have to spend extra time I don't have to cater to these students."
After reading these message day after day after day--I lurked on
this list--I almost got the feeling that some of these supposed educators
would prefer if we kidnapped, gaged, blindfolded, bound, and threw these
intrusive students afflicted with LD and other disabilities off a bridge
like the unwanted runts of a litter. Maybe that's being too harsh, but on
the subject of accommodation to LD I'm not about pretend that I can step
back or can be objective, distant, disengaged, clinical, detached,
abstract, theoretical, philosophical with a spectator mentality or a
passer-by uninvolvement or an onlooker consciousness. I don't want to be
cold and sterile and removed. As a human being, a teacher, and a father
the images of my ADHD afflicted son being drained of his energy, having
his self-confidence sucked out of him, having his humanity diminished,
having his pleading hands cut off, all burn pass my retina so deeply into
my soul that scars can't form to hide them.
You know, I read these cavalier but faceless abstracts, nameless
theories, impersonal generalities, defenses, rationalizations, excuses,
explanations, half-truths (which are disguised forms of half-lies) and
hair-splitting legalities that so many academic find so easy to slip into;
I see how easy they find it to forget that they are talking about very
real people--someone's son or daugher--and I wonder who has the real
disability. They are so worried about legal protections for themselves,
so concerned about their precious and so often unexamined "that's the way
we've always done it" curricula and pedagogical stuff, so afraid that
academic armageddon is at hand, so defensive about an invasion of their
classroom sanctuary, so quick to jump and hide behind self-serving "I told
you sos" that so many tend to forget about offering more than verbal
support and encouragement of the sideline pom-pom waving, "rah-rah"
variety to some very special, and precious people who refuse to be
disabled and wish simply to be contributing and independent human beings.
These are truly beautiful people; they're hummingbirds, not cockaroaches.
They display more courage in one day than some of us in the ivory tower do
in a life time. They don't want a handout; they simply want a legitimate
shot at life and happiness and success, want a bit of flexibility to allow
them to demonstrate that they got what it takes and what they got, refuse
to be locked up and to be hidden away knitting potholders and fashioning
brooms and putting together idiotic trinket kits and reduced to begging in
airport lounges and on street corners, rightly demand that we cast aside
the chains of our prejudice and see that they have "this ability and that
talent." Is that so much to ask?
But no. They are so quick with the "No, I can'ts" or "No, I
won'ts" and so slow with the "yes, let's see hows." So quick to condemn by
inference or explication or gesture anyone who needs the assistance of an
out-stretched hand, who doesn't keep a stiff upper lip, who can't "grim
and bear it,"and who isn't some mythical, herculean self-made person
damning his own torpedoes and going full speed ahead is weak, a
con-artist, a moocher, is lazy, a free-rider, a loafer, or an abuser.
They are so quick with whipping out the budgets from our holster to show
why we can't afford to be sensitive and understanding while we spend
untold dollars to build or reburbish sports stadiums, so quick with going
through the motions, so quick to resist assuming the responsibility of
someone else's well-being except in the most distant, passive and
convenient of ways. They are so quick to use the same defensive and
offensive language like some chemical insecticide over the recent decades
against women and African-Americans, and students who "aren't the way they
used to be" in defense of keeping our institutions pest-free.
Maybe that's what ADA and accommodation is really all about. It's
not about getting a free ride or a hand-out. It's not about charity. And
it's not just about helping people, going ever so slightly out of our way,
in their struggle to change the way they see themselves and others see
them. It's also about letting them help us to change how we see
ourselves. Maybe, that's what we are really talking about, and it scares
the hell out of a lot of us. It is simply asking each of us to act like a
mensch, to follow the golden rule, to truly care and love, to think about
how we would feel if it is us or it is our son or daughter we are talking
about, to look at ourselves in the mirror and to deal with the
disabilities of our own biases and prejudices.
There are still far too many of our colleagues on our campuses,
who harbor disdainful attitudes and fight or resist in various ways and to
various degrees. And even if they follow the letter of the law, write
statements in their syllabi, sign letters of agreement, do so only under
duress and in their mind under the threat of litigation. They may go
coldly through the motions, but do so without the warming spirit of
compassion. They may comply, but they are not committed. The sceptical,
legalistic, cynicical words leap out that yield a pervading emptiness
rather than a fullness. Such people are so quick at glancing at the
outside when they should be searching for something inside; they're so
long on criticsm and so short on community and passion; they so tightly
embrace disdain and annoyance and weakly hold on to the love; they're so
inclined to turn their backs, and so reluctant to face these students;
and, as a high school teacher said, they find it so easy
to cut off the hand that reaches out for comfort and assistance rather
than firmly and lovingly grasp it and refuse to let go.
As I told an e-mail friend, I think the real mark of whether we
have a commitment for not letting these beautiful people fall through the
cracks without a fight is not whether we make accommodations in accordance
with ADA, but whether we make them without ADA. How many times have we
heard colleagues at conferences, in the hallways, during meetings, at
social gatherings, in coffee clutches talking about the interference of
the special needs office in the inner sanctum of their classroom. How
many times have we heard our colleagues say in a tone of either/and relief
and defiance, or maybe we've said it ourselves,"well, a student told me
that he or she had a learning disability, but isn't enrolled in the
special needs program. So, I don't have to do anything if I don't want
to." That speaks volumes about the extent, depth, and nature of our real
passion for the student and the extent to which they are willing to
accommodate ourselves to the needs of each student.
The question is whether we have to be "forced" to be feign
understanding, sensitive, compassionate, and flexible; whether we
begrudgingly accommodate under the threatening sword of a "must do"; or
whether we are guided by the shining and loving light of "the right thing
to do."
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