Over on Medical Motherhood, Shasta Kearns Moore posted “Medical parenthood bonds members of congress; the dimensions of ableism; $5M to study pregnancy’s impact on disabled children.” Her post for 7 January 2023 provided snippets for
These are interesting topics and I think many readers of Special Education Today will find exploring them to be valuable. Thanks to Ms. Moore for putting them in the conversation.
While I’m expressing appreciation to Ms. Kearns for this post, I want to return to an earlier post from Medical Motherhood: “‘Normal’ sucked for people like us. Let’s not go back, let’s go forward: As COVID restrictions finally ease, I hope people remember what they experienced” (published 6 May 2022). In the post, Ms. Kearns presented comments from Ed Yong about the pandemic’s effects in people (including those with disabilities), especially on how they live once it has lessened or abated. She also noted the story of an un-named friend and of Klara Cramer, whose experiences were captured by Cathy Browne of CBC (used to be “Canadian Broadcasting Corporation”) in “Desperate families of kids with complex needs consider surrendering their children to the province: Minister of Children and Family Development acknowledges system isn’t working, advocates call for change.” One take-away from these stories is that for people with disabilities, an end to the pandemic may not mean a return to an idyllic environment of normalcy. That pre-pandemic environment may not represent such a happy, peaceful, and wonderful environment.
Few of us who do not live with disability day in and day out understand the strain and difficulty posed by having a disability. I don’t know, but I’ve been told that it’s hard to run when you’re using crutches. Other times I’ve head it said that it’s hard to learn when cannot read. What’s normal to a normie may be pretty aversive for someone with a disability.
I see this point as relevant to special education. As I developed in an earlier post from 6 May 2022, “Inclusion may not always be good: Could the ‘normal’ environment be a problem?” Maybe what we call “normal” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I remember when I was teaching children with disabilities that I would sometimes rationalize my efforts by explaining that we were hoping to return the students to the mainstream. Now I sometimes question whether the mainstream—with what seems, at least in some situations, to be poorly conceptualized and ill-implemented core curricula—is a desirable normal.
What do you, dear readers, think?
Footnotes
#Disability #ableism #inclusion #normal #environments
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