The trouble is, Louis, change IS being interpreted as "dumbing down" by many administrators who view the risk of "offending" someone who might sue as a result as being FAR more important than the risk of graduating students who don't know anything about the subjects they studied.I'm not sure what "college-as-we-know-it" means. Professors were heeralding the doom of academia when the G.I.Bill was passed; many were doing likewise during the civil rights movement; now some are doing it with special students. Do we go back to the segregated days, to the days when women weren't admitted or respected, to the days when only 15% of high school graduates went on to college, to the days when.....? If students have changed, shouldn't we have to make adjustments? The more we learn about learning would seem to mean that we should be applying that new information which in turn means in developing new attitudes, new techniques, new methods. Change does not automatically mean watering down or dumbing down or reduced rigor. It can just means change: doing things differently. I wonder if some of this response is a mask for not wanting to be inconvenience by having to make accommodation. Trust me when I say no great cosmic catstrophe will occur if we display some empathy and sensitivity to the needs of special students.
The ADA wasn't designed to make things "easy" for those with disabilities--it was designed to make them equal. There's a very great difference there. It was never the intention of the act to make it possible for people to be certified capable of performing tasks they are incapable of actually performing under normal conditions. Yet, if students are permitted to pass classes they have not mastered the materials from, that is precisely what is occuring.
Would you go to a surgeon who had earned his status due to the ADA, not due to his skills? If his disability happened to be uncontrollable tremors of the hands, how comfortable would you be with your operation? How about having your books done by an account with a math learning disability who frequently made mistakes such as putting the numbers in the wrong columns or entering the number backward in his or her calculator? I may sympathize with the individuals with those disabilities, and I'm more than willing to help accomodate them in areas where their disability simply prevents them from demonstrating their learning (i.e., the student with the tremors could dictate answers if he couldn't write an essay; the student with the math learning disability could have his calculations assisted if he had to demonstrate--in a NON-math class--that he understood the principles of statistics well enough to read and interpret scientific research). Certainly in my classrooms, I accomodate students who are blind, physically challenged, hearing impaired, or otherwise suffer from disabilities that prevent them from using only the facilities available to non-disabled students. But if the student can't demonstrate that he or she has learned the material I am teaching, that student will NOT pass the course, ADA or not. There is simply no justification for allowing him/her to do so.
If administrators took such an approach (and some do, of course), the claims of "dumbing down" wouldn't exist. But the fact is, they frequently don't. The result is the creation of more poorly prepared graduates from our institutions. That isn't doing ANYONE a service--disabled or not.
Imagine having a student with a learning disability that prevented him or her from understanding temporal relationships--and was thus unable to recognize whether, for example, Alexander was a contemporary of Adolf Hitler, and could not answer the question "Did Alexander agree with Hitler's views on the purity of the Aryan Race?" Now imagine having to test that student's knowledge of history in a manner that would not subject him to such questions, as he could not answer them and it would limit his ability to pass your class.
How would you--personally--evaluate such student in a way that did not penalize the other students for NOT having that disability yet which gave him or her the opportunity to earn a good grade in your course?
I tend to agree with those who argue that "college may NOT be for everyone." Not because I want to exclude anyone--but rather because unless the student is capable of profiting from the knowledge and information a college can provide him or her (not just the from the credentials graduation confers on him or her), that student simply has no benefit to be gained from attending a traditional institution in the first place. Instead, the student needs to attend specialized schools that offer the kind of education he or she CAN use profitably, rather than spending four years (or longer) learning nothing and gaining nothing from his or her enrollment.
Rick
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Rick Adams [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"... and the only measure of your worth and your deeds will be the love you leave behind when you're gone."
-Fred Small, J.D., "Everything Possible"
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