Here is an interesting article about a stuttering student those professor refused to call on him. Being hearing impaired with speech impediments, this hits very close to home. I really wished the professor hadn't declined to discuss the matter. I would like to know the whole story.
Adam
Wow. It sounds like this brave young man had a lot to contribute to the class and his peers seemed to valued his questions and comments. I wonder if it was more of an issue of the instructor being uncomfortable rather than this student really disrupting the class. That doesn't make what she did excusable- I think she could have handled it a lot differently and could have engaged this student as a member of the class rather than ostracizing him and refusing to talk about it.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this Adam. Aside from the obvious discrimination by the teacher, I was most struck by the "age-old pedagogical - and social - theme". Balancing the needs/concerns of individuals with the progress of the collective is a fundamental aspect of social life that I have often contemplated. This is clearly a dicey issue, both in the classroom and in society, and I've certainly flip-flopped my outlook on it throughout my life. I remember in high school thinking that we shouldn't have to "waste" so many resources making accommodations for wheelchairs in all our buildings, and although I've become more understanding, the concept of how much one individual should affect the greater society is a broad ethical issue.
ReplyDeleteThis article brings to mind our class talk about identity markers for diversity. We hit on all the easy ones, but didn't do much to consider the less physical markers. I've seen people that stutter, people with tourettes, and even type 1 diabetics discriminated against because of a condition they had no control over. I find it interesting, in my experience anyway, that children seem to be more accepting of these issues than adults. And I think it comes out of a curiosity about why a person behaves a certain way in an effort to understand the world. So it stands to reason that if one is educated about a condition that may, for lack of a better word, disrupt the status quo, does that individual become more tolerant of it? And then does that act become less of a disruption?
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