one of my many roles is editor of the Forum for the journal TESOL Quarterly. i love how this role has allowed me to engage with different topics and to push the boundaries of what counts as scholarship

right now i'm embarking on learning about ableism. my own activism has mainly been centered around capitalism and racism. but a few things have pushed me to begin thinking about ableism

first, the presence of awesome deaf scholars and students whose unpacking of ableist ideologies about their language and personhood has been enlightening

shout out to @jahochcam, @jmhenner, and @jaceyhill (i recommend following them if you don't already)

second, my own recent experiences with disability have made what i once struggled to understand intellectually viscerally real for me

so i'm very excited to be reading work like this today:

"Eliminating ableism in education" by Thomas Hehir https://hepgjournals.org/doi/abs/10.17763/haer.72.1.03866528702g2105

Hehir (2002) discusses educators' and societies assumptions that it is better "for a child to walk than roll, speak than sign, read print than read Braille..." in other words, we seem to want "disabled students to do things in the same manner as nondisabled kids" (p. 3)

he illustrates these ideas by discuss 3 historical examples: education for the deaf, education for the blind / visually impaired, and education for students with dyslexia

policies regarding education for the deaf have strangely (to this contemporary linguist at least) been ambivalent about the role of sign language

Hehir attributes this to fetishization of "the supercrip", in this case "the deaf person who can read lips and speak" (p. 6)

Hehir "the continued adherence to the ableist assumption that it is better for deaf children to lip-read and speak than to learn sign language will surely guarantee poor educational results for this population" (p. 8)

Rowley v. Board of Education of the Gloversville Enlarged City School (1993) -- court ruled deaf girl integrated in hearing classroom wasn't entitled to sign interpreter because she was still "receiving benefit" UNACCEPTABLE! (see Hehir, p. 8)

more recently, thanks in part to work by @judithheumann and others, when individuals with disabilities edu act was reauthorized, communication needs for deaf children became mandatory part of their individual educational plans (p. 9)

next up, Hehir discusses the education of blind students, and specifically the teaching of Braille. he points out that Braille has been around since 1829 and yet "many blind and significantly visually impaired students are not benefiting from this old technology" (p. 9)

Hehir quotes a young blind person: "I was taught to read print, not Braille, because everyone felt it would make me more like sighted people". she went on to note that reading print is "exhausting for her" (p. 10)

the final group Hehir discusses is students classified as learning disabled, especially students who are dyslexic

in terms of numbers of students this group is much larger and much more familiar to your average educator but these students' education is also impacted by ableism

one issue has to do with schools wanting to avoid attaching labels to these students for a variety of reasons including fear of inadequate special ed resources or the stigma that attaches to these students

Hehir makes the compelling point that the practical definition of learning disabled requires students to first fail at learning in order to be identified, a problematic situation!

the question of where to place these students -- in special ed classrooms or 'mainstream' classrooms -- is a difficult one. neither seems to serve these students well. special ed classrooms often do not challenge them sufficiently, and mainstream classrooms fail to support them.

Hehir (2002): "educators planning programs for students with LD must strategize around how these students will most efficiently access the curriculum, given that they are typically laborious readers"

this is perhaps a moment for me to reflect on my own practices: i am uncomfortable with the reading heavy syllabuses i have developed as a college professor. i would like to explore other ways of helping students access material such as audiovisual media or experiential learning

there are many accommodations that could help students in US schools who are classified as learning disabled (e.g., audio books, spell checkers, etc.) but these are often portrayed as "lowering standards", a clear example of how "maintaining standards" discourse is exclusionary

Hehir (2002): "the education of students with disabilities has been plagued by low expectations, which is why many in the disability community have sought to have students included in state and national accountability systems" (p. 18)

i'm excited to read more recent literature looking at this push to include students with disabilities in standardized testing. i'm familiar with similar arguments for students classified as ELLs, but the two decades since No Child Left Behind have raised new questions

Hehir (2002, p. 24): "Special ed should not mean a different curriculum, but rather" it should help "Ss with disabilities access the curriculum" and address "unique needs that arise out of the child's disability. This role requires a good deal of specialized knowledge and skill"