Defining Normal - Becca Burke

Fair warning in advance this is probably going to be long…

I hate commenting on and analyzing articles like this. Coming from a white, upper-middle class family, who pushed education, responsibility, and family values, I often think it sounds and feels hypocritical to comment. You struggle with wanting to give a fair opinion and worrying that what you say, or your opinion could be misconstrued as racist or prejudicial. I never imagined being able to speak to the struggles of being a minority in an educational atmosphere, that was until I became a minority. Over the last ten years, I became the D word - disabled. “Disabled” is a word I never thought I would have to use to describe myself. I’ve always had great sympathy for those who are disabled. I pitied the hardships they faced, admired their tenacity and plucky spirits in the face of adversity, and thought it was courageous and brave when they kept functioning in society, trying to have as normal a life as they possibly could. In short, I was an asshole, not just an asshole but a self-righteous one, the worst kind of all. I lost my eyesight and became ill, I developed a permanent disability and found that society and people around me I’ve known my entire life began to have a different opinion and perception of my abilities as a human being.

Before I got sick, I had started preparing to return to university and no one questioned it, there were words of encouragement, and congratulations. When I talked about having a family, being married, or getting divorced prior to losing my eyesight everyone was encouraging and sympathetic. Once you suffer a lack of ability, that perception changes completely. Ableism is the curse and the wall many people with disabilities face in an able-bodied world. Statements attesting to courage and perseverance for living a daily life aren’t encouraging, they’re demoralizing. There’s nothing courageous in the morning when I shower, get dressed, and leave my house. Trust me, it’s not a pretty sight some mornings when I have to have the dogs help to drag myself out of bed, or I’m seizing on the floor. It can even be described as hilarious when I put on two different shoes because in the light in my bedroom the black shoe and the dark brown shoe look the same, or if I haven’t had enough sleep and I’m feeling groggy from one of the six medications I take daily makes me forget to put shoes on at all, but I wouldn’t describe myself as courageous.

Ableism came to the forefront in many facets of my life. The first began when people would tell me about how I must be so sad I wasn’t going to have a family. “Why wouldn’t I have a family?” I would ask incredulously, to which people would respond, “How could YOU be a mother with all your disabilities?” When I told people I was getting divorced, I was met with horror, “Don’t you want to try and work it out, I mean who is going to want to date you or think about marrying you now?” People would stand there indignantly waiting for an answer and in the early days I would feel ashamed, embarrassed, and stupid that I would consider to want things that “normal” people had.

When I decided to go back to college, the ableism reared its ugly head and came up in every conversation I had when I announced my plans. A common response I received was, “Why would you do that? Won’t that be so hard, especially for you?” I also was met with the famous statements of, “You get disability, just be happy with that.” However, my favorite question I was asked by everyone was, “What are YOU going to be able to do anyways?” During a particularly frustrating class in one of my first semesters back at Boise State, which I was struggling with the material I met with the professor during a conference and his response was, “The material is challenging for normal students, I’m sure it’s especially challenging for students with disabilities, so be happy with a C.”

I would find myself absolutely livid to the point I could hardly stand it. What the hell did “especially for you” mean? Why would college be any different for me than anyone else? Why did I need to be happy with a C? I considered myself to be a reasonably intelligent person, but somehow there was this mindset that because my body physically doesn’t work the way everyone else’s does that it somehow had turned my brain to mush. For some unknown reason, people seem to think that once you have a disability that you’re resigned to a life of sitting on a couch watching Judge Judy and NCIS reruns and drooling on your shirt. That because my body doesn’t work “normal” that I should be content with giving up and declaring myself feeble and incapable of anything better. 

I felt and often feel pigeonholed, I think in a lot of ways our educational system pigeon holes minority students and students from low income backgrounds. We assume that because they come from a low-income neighborhood, or they’re from a different ethnic or minority group, or don’t use the vernacular or linguistic patterns we deem as “socially acceptable and correct” that they’re incapable of maintaining the same level as other students. The ones who do keep up with their more privileged peers are deemed as exceptional, while the ones who are more challenging are deemed broken and damaged.

Unfortunately, public education has become the judge, jury, and executioner for children in an underfunded system, with overworked employees. Kids who are deemed as problem children or struggling are often isolated because the teacher doesn’t have time to focus all their energy on one or two kids, when they’ve got 33 others sitting in the room depending on them to teach. So we see kids passed along for the sake of passing, handed off to be the next instructors problem, and that how you get kids in high school who read at a third or fourth grade level. We expect less from students who face adversity, like because life has given them more challenges, it's normal for them to not succeed and when they are successful they're exceptional rather than just like everyone else.

I worked in a grade school a few years ago with kindergarten through fourth graders who tested behind in their reading comprehension levels and saw firsthand the breakdown between teacher communication and students. Our demand for a politically correct and soft touch society leaves these kids thinking they can walk all over the teacher, and the teacher is frustrated because she can’t control them, and when they call home, the parents are frustrated because they don’t have behavior issues in the home. They don’t understand why the teacher isn’t doing their job and controlling the situation, all the while the teacher is petrified that the wrong harsh tone or “mean” look could get them fired.
Education and academia breeds “normality” it sets up standardized tests and tells you that you should achieve x rating otherwise you’re not normal or you’re lacking in a skill set. Academia, sets standards on exams, papers, and writing and tells us if we don’t achieve these standards, we’re behind. We’ve stepped away in education from encouraging free thinking and creativity in a lot of ways and instead we tell people that they should conform to the standards that those in as Delpit puts it, the culture of power deems acceptable. The problem is, how do we fix this, which there isn’t an easy solution. You have to be able to see progression and teach material and know the student is learning it, and benefitting from it, but without setting up an individual curriculum plan for each student this is impossible without setting up some standardized margin, and academia and public education doesn’t have the funds to meet each individual students creative and intellectual needs.