Where's the Line?

This is one of those blogs that is going to get somebody's knickers in a twist.

Every term there are students in my classes who have documentation from Disability Services that they need special accommodations. Most of the time, their disabilities are firmly in the "mild" category. They have ADHD and need more time on tests. They have anxiety disorders and cannot present in front of the class -- or, sometimes they claim, they cannot even talk in class. They have auditory processing disorders and want to tape record the lecture so that they can listen to it over and over again. They have a seizure disorder and need to tell me what to do in the event that they have a seizure. They have a processing disorder and need a notetaker.

None of these accommodations bother me in the least, though I find it ironic that it is these kinds of modest "disabilities" that end up receiving a relatively large portion of my attention. The student in the wheelchair is doing fine. The temporarily disabled student recovering from a serious football injury and hobbling all year long on crutches is too. So is the student who wears hearing aids and so is the one who is obviously pretty seriously visually impaired. They all have found ways to meet the requirements of my course -- they may not all be getting an "A," but somehow they are taking notes, reading the material, completing assignments, contacting me the questions. In other words, they are easily fulfilling their duties as "student".

This week I had a student claim that part of his disability accommodations includes being allowed to have access to professors' notes. This is the first time I've been presented with documentation that basically says I have to pony up MY lecture notes to a student.

I politely told the student "no." Later, after having consulted with several colleagues, I recontacted the student to tell him that all of us found this request highly unusual. Giving a student one's notes puts that student -- even with a disability -- at an incredible advantage over all other students. No WAY am I doing that.

I said I'd contact his disability advisor to discuss. I also told him that if he has trouble taking notes (believable, given his disability), he needs to have an assigned notetaker.

Mind you, it's past midterms. This should have been taken care of WEEKS ago. (He has since found a notetaker.)

My conversation with the disability advisor was telling. She told me that, indeed, he had permission to get professors' notes directly from them. She also told me that "universities have been designed by people who are successful in them; in order to open them up to more people, we have to change the way they work. Not all students can process oral or aural information." She went on to say that there's an "emerging trend at the University" for professors to give their notes to ALL students.

NO way. No F-ing WAY!

OK -- so here's the rub. Historically, universities have been horribly elite places. I agree. I also think that, given the economic pressures to have a BA, more and more people are in college who maybe don't really belong there. (And it's not so clear that pushing more and more people through college actually always gives them a leg up in the job market, but that's a topic for another blog. Basically, if everybody is "enhanced," then nobody is enhanced.)

I also agree that those who find school "easy" are those who design classes and have historically established the system that we all recognize as education. I can also accept that not everyone is equally gifted with words, or with processing what they hear, or with taking notes.

But holy hell! THAT, my friends, is part of what education is all about. The reason we grade students is to distinguish between those of more average ability and those with more of the "gifts" that go along with being scholarly. If you can't take notes or if you can't write what you hear, then by all means bring a tape recorder to class or hire a notetaker.

I don't want to deny an education to those who are less academically gifted. I don't want to be a one-woman crusade against grade inflation or a one-woman crusade against the tide of making everybody go to college. But by God, I'm not giving my notes to a student.

I'm also seriously questioning where this slippery slope is leading: are colleges now just service institutions? Are we just providing a service to those who demand it? Are we still hoping to differentiate the smarter and (sometimes) harder-working from others? Is college for everybody? Or are we here to teach and work with people who have, hopefully by the age of 18, done "enough" to stand out a little bit?

And by "little bit," I mean being able to: read, take notes, ask questions, write a minimally competent essay (correct grammar, correct spelling), and synthesize information in new ways.

The disability rights movements has done great things, has made people aware of how we are all differently abled, how we are all disabled in different ways, how we learn differently, how often disability is due to the structure of the environment and not inherent in the person. How often relatively mild accommodations can mean the difference between failure and success.

HOWEVER...the twin pressures of a) "needing" a degree and b) having to accommodate nearly everybody has arguably led to an explosion in diagnoses of mild "disabilities" and is changing -- perhaps NOT for the better -- the nature of professor-student relationships, as well as the role of higher education in society. Not to mention making some students seek out a label in order to make things easier for themselves.

Not a good student? You must have something "wrong" with you. BULLSHIT.

(I take time out here to remind everybody that I parent a kid with one of those disabilities; I don't doubt that these can be impediments to success.)

However, maybe some people just aren't academically inclined -- it doesn't mean they should be slapped with a diagnosis. Similarly, maybe some people with these diagnoses should have other avenues to success OTHER THAN COLLEGE opened up to them.

To expect colleges to stoop so low as to force professors to make all their notes publicly available changes both the definition of "student" and the role of "professor".

If you cannot take notes, should you be in college?

Seriously, is that "too much" to expect of a student?

Symptom Checklists

One of the things I love about blogging is the ability to write down my random thoughts as I do something else -- I'm writing this, for example, as I cook some pasta.

As everyone knows, the watched pot never boils, so writing now is a good use of time.

Today, I took the kid with ADHD to yet another therapist, this time to have some testing done to figure out whether or not he has a non-verbal learning disorder. We explained this to him by saying we needed to know more about how his brain worked. He is SO sick of being tested. I don't blame him at all.

While he was completing various types of mind puzzles with the therapist, I was filling out checklists of symptoms in the waiting room. Any parent with a kid with some sort of behavior problem has completed these. Often the same ones. More than once.

I can't help but be critical of the diagnostic (im)precision in mental health. In part, this is due to my training as a medical sociologist who specializes in mental health. Critiquing the modern medical model of mental health and the DSM is really the field's bread and butter. So, forgive me as I lapse into a semi-sociological discussion of what is wrong with the diagnostic lens.

Some of the questions on the form, presumably already pre-tested on thousands of kids with behavioral problems, seem like typical "problems" for ANY kid. For instance, "does your child never, seldom, or often, leave a trail of his or her things throughout the house?" Are you kidding me? Oh, of course not! My kid tidies up after himself consistently all day long! Or, "does your child never, seldom, or often have a messy closet?" Again, if this is a key diagnostic question, then my whole family is in deep trouble. Another: "does your child never, seldom or often have to be reminded to take a shower or brush his/her teeth?"

If any of you out there with nine-year-old boys NEVER have to remind them to attend to their hygiene, I am in awe of you (and them). Of course, mine is fastidious about clipping his toenails, flossing his teeth, and shampooing twice and conditioning once during each shower. (RIGHT!)

I can show you a LONG line of boys (and not a short line of men!) who need some fairly consistent reminders to shower regularly, change their underwear and wash their hair. I understand that at the extreme end of the continuum, neglect of bodily care is indicative of mental illness. But at the age of nine, it seems more than normal to groan about having to take a shower, or to tell your mother that she's "ridiculous" in her insistence that the underwear be changed daily. It also seems normal to me to lie about having brushed one's teeth, particularly if a favorite TV show is about to come on, or a friend has just arrived at the front door.

So, I obediently completed these forms, all the while contemplating what my answers would indicate. I answered truthfully, though I did provide in the margins some comments as to what I meant by "seldom" or why I might have thought a particular answer to a particular question was truly indicative of NOTHING.

***

Later, I took a few Facebook quizes -- notoriously inaccurate and put together by people who are doing nothing more than having fun. They are not meant, obviously, to be statistically accurate or even informative. According to the quiz, "How gay are you?," I am 65% gay. Fine by me, but apparently my gayness is indicated by my color and fashion preferences, more than anything else. Similarly, I took the quiz, "Who is your celebrity twin?" and got the answer, "Kate Hudson." Hmmm...I think the only thing she and I share in common is small boobs. (Yeah for famous women with 'em; they make the rest of us feel better!)

At the end of the day, while waiting for water to boil (which it is now), I'm left pondering the accuracy of symptom checklists. Obviously two that I took today make no effort to be accurate and have no real influence on my life. But several of the ones I completed for my son *might* have true diagnostic (and therefore treatment) consequences.

I will proceed with caution, for reasons that I hope are already obvious.