1. “The
old became groping, the young saw but dimly, and the children that were born to
them never saw at all. But life was very easy in that snow-rimmed basin, lost
to all the world, with neither thorns not briers…” (1)
How does this quote undermine popular perception of those
that are “disabled”? When, as in the story, a disadvantage becomes the norm,
how does that impact the perception of what is normal, and what is difficult to
manage?
2. How
does the genre of this reading impact your relation to it? As it is a work of
short fiction how does it become more or less accessable to you as a reader?
What truths about disability and perception can we observe, even in fiction?
3.
How does the proverb “In the Country of the Blind the One-Eyed Man is King”
invert cultural perception of ableness? How can it be extrapolated to deal with
a broader spectrum of “disadvantages”?
Group 7 - Embodied Capital & Intersectionality – Berezin, Wells, and Hehir
ReplyDelete1. Berezin discussed having disabled capital in the field of the classroom. He was equipped with the preferred capital needed – he was a middle class, white male in a good public school system. Yet, his disease did not allow him to excel in the classroom because the teacher segregated him from the other students because he was disabled compared to the mass of the students. Were you ever put in a situation like this in your schooling or life? You had the capital – cultural, social, and economic to succeed but it was disvalued or not appropriate for the filed so you were assimilated from the masses? Do you think one type of capital (cultural, economic, social) is more commonly set aside and devalued? Can you “get by” by faking one more so than the other?
2. How do we fix this issue in classrooms where those that are disable/lacking the ability to use their capital in the normal classroom experience are set to the side and made to watch the normal students? Are special education classes helping this issue? Hehir makes a few suggestions toward ending albeism in education and schools. Two of his suggestions that stuck out to me most were to “encourage disabled students to develop and use skills and modes of expression that are most effective to them” and to “special education should be specialized.” I have not been in a special education classroom or taking a course yet in this subject but as I was reading this article and watching Berezin’s article I kept wondering if there is an issue of albeism in special education classrooms. There are so many disabilities and diseases that affect are learning and lives so how do we treat them all? How do we teach to not segregate or assimilate our special education students?
Group 4 Questions for 3/21
ReplyDelete1. While watching Jared Berezin’s video autoethnography, he speaks of the difference between having capital- or even the referred capital- and the ability to use that capital to perform appropriately. This distinction became relevant when his ADD got in the way of his cultural capital (academic knowledge, financial status, and parental involvement). Rather than deem them useless and unteachable, how might teachers recognize and utilize their students capital when the students themselves have yet to figure that out? What, as educators, should we do when a student appears to suffer from similar conditions (ADD, ADHD, autism, etc.)
2. Berezin states that “the enforced segregation and in turn subjugation of the disabled body’s performance of abnormality remains vital for the maintenance of the dominant class’ definitions of normal versus abnormal, powerful versus powerless, valuable versus non-valuable.” Although he was not taking it to this extreme, can sub-separate classrooms be seen as this same process? Aren’t public schools segregating students with autism, severe learning disabilities, and other disabilities into separate classrooms in an attempt to better educate all students? Although I work in a sub-separate preschool classroom for students with autism, I can’t help but wonder if we are stigmatizing our students by segregating them from their peers. Is there a better option? Is it enough to send a student into the general education classroom with an aide for part of the day? Will general education teachers be able to incorporate the needs of students with disabilities?
3. H.G. Wells, in “The Country of the Blind,” writes about a man who encounters a civilization that has been shut off from the world for 15 generations. Additionally, they are all blind and the ideas of the sighted world have long been lost among the past generations. Nunez, knowing little about these people except rumors of their existence, finds himself a sighted person in a blind society. As blind people who knew no different, they were critical of him and untrusting. They saw him as the one with a problem rather than themselves as blind. Nunez knew he was sighted and felt he was therefore more capable than them in all areas. How does this correlate to the ideas of Bourdieu’s theory of capital? Who had the preferred capital in this story? Why was sight devalued and untrusted so greatly?
**Does anybody know why I can only comment but not post?? I have a google name and I'm signed in...
Group 6 Discussion Questions
ReplyDeleteIn H.G Wells, "The Country of the Blind" details how worldview creates reality. "Bogota" is confronted to translate his perceived gift of sight to people that do not understand its existence and actually abhor "sight" altogether, "what is blind?" ask the blind man,carelessly,over his shoulder."
Bogota is forced to confront his worldview, which altogether challenge his reality in his world past the mountains. At the end, while he attempted to niche himself a space within the "country of the blind," he realized he couldn't because his sight his existence.
Attempting to expand this idea of worldview creating reality, and how ableism as an oppresive force undermines the ability of people with a kind of "disability" to create a reality about the world they experience.
With the previous readings on MacLeod "The Brothers vs. The Hallway Hangers" proposes the idea that achievement and attainment is linked to the capacity of people to see past their realities. How does your worldview impact the way your experience others? Also how does that experience dictate your actions towards them.
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ReplyDeleteGROUP ONE
ReplyDelete"The Country of the Blind"
H.G. Wells
"There is no such word as SEE"
I had a good friend on a trip in Ghana who asked our group to slow down and actually look around-look at where you are. It made me realize how fast-paced my own life is and how I do not sit back and appreciate life and everything in it. It is also easy to forget how different people experience the world-what they consider 'normal'. Do you agree that people tend to also assume they understand and know how others have it or what others must be lacking? "But Nunez advanced with the confident steps of a youth who enters upon life. All the old stories of the lost valley and the Country of the Blind had come back to his mind, and through his thoughts ran this old proverb, as if it were a refrain-In the Country of the Blind the One-Eyed Man is King."