Start here: If your school, university, business, government requires “proof of disability” - that is, diagnosis - before providing accommodations, it is discriminating, and it is not committed to social justice, not committed to equality of opportunity, not committed to the success of every student.

It is as simple as that.

The implication behind accommodation through diagnosis is that the accommodation is “cheating” or providing some kind of “unfair advantage.” And that means that those who need to use those alternate methods are permanently seen as lesser human beings - Children of a Lesser God - in one of my favorite descriptive phrases.

On this Blogging Against Disablism Day that is what I think needs to be said, and said loudly, and said continually, because very few understand this, or want to think about this - hell - very few in the Special Education Department at my university can comprehend this issue - and even fewer are willing to try to do anything about it, and unless the link between diagnosis and accommodation is broken (which is a link between pathology and sympathy, not humans and rights), progress will never get us where we want to go.

Because, obviously, if accommodations were not “cheating,” were not offering “unfair advantage,” everyone would be able to use them. Just as everyone gets to use all the “assistive technologies” everybody uses: cars (are you “able” to walk to your job 15 miles from your house each day?), elevators (are you able to get to your 27th floor office via the stairs every day?), ladders (can’t reach that? must be something wrong with you), power tools (what? you can’t saw 50 pieces of lumber accurately by hand this morning? you a cripple or something?), even those books which mean that dumb, lazy “normal readers” don’t have to remember everything.

Retard Theory

So it is time to say it, and say it every day. There is no normal. There is no normal way to read, or to write, or to listen, or to see, or to get from here to there. There are simply ways of doing things, and the ways which work best for each human individual will vary - based in human capability and human desire and human preference. And it is in individual choice that technique decision making must be based - not the diagnosis that I, or you, or we, are the victims of some pathology which infantilizes us.

This is why I argue every day for Universal Design, and this is why I recently refused accommodations from my university, when they wanted “proof of disability.” “I won’t,” I said, “I know you’ll think this is political grandstanding, and it is political grandstanding, but my opposition to this is at the core of why I am here.”

Forty years ago this May the students, and eventually, many of the workers of France took on the French government in legendary protests against a state ruled by too many rules and too many norms. They may have been beaten in the streets by the cops, and tear-gassed, and arrested. They may have lost the big battles, that “third Napoleon” - Charles DeGaulle - remained in power, but French society was transformed forever. As one participant in those events put it - responding to French President Sarkozy’s claim that the spirit of 1968 “must be liquidated,” - ‘“As a divorced man, Sarkozy couldn’t have been invited to dinner at the Élysée Palace, let alone be elected president of France,” Mr. Geismar said. “Both the vivid personal life and political success of Mr. Sarkozy, with foreign and Jewish roots, “are unimaginable without 1968.”’ (That’s not unusual, we all know that African-American US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas would have voted to preserve slave owner rights if he had been there for the Dred Scott Decision, and we all know “disabled” leaders who fight hard to preserve the old system because they believe they are somehow special for overcoming it.)

Sometimes a system - even a comfortable one - is stifling, discriminating, destroying. And so even if you now get every accommodation you need, you are being crushed if diagnosis is required to get them. Because the only reason “they” are giving you those accommodations is because they think you are “sick,” because they “feel sorry for you,” because they know that you are not equal to “them.” If they did not think those things - these solutions would not be accommodations - they would be rights and choices.

I’m not saying that you need to follow me and throw things away for a political point. I have some kind of shot at surviving “unaccommodated.” I really do. And - if not - I’ll just do something else. My risk may be much less than yours.

But perhaps we have to “queer” the experience around us - use “Retard Theory” whenever we can. De-normalize “them.” Demand to see the doctor’s note from anyone wearing eyeglasses. Ask for a note from the cardiologist every time you see someone in an elevator. Challenge anyone who prints out a copy of a digitally-supplied text - “Did your doctor say you couldn’t read a computer screen?”

Make “them” uncomfortable every day. They are willing to do it to us. So it must be “fair.”

- Ira Socol

The Drool Room by Ira David Socol, a novel in stories that has - as at least one focus - life within “Special Education in America” - is now available from the River Foyle Press through lulu.com

US $16.00 on Amazon

US $16.00 direct via lulu.com

Look Inside This Book

Issues swirl together, and after weeks of being conscious of an ever increasing crescendo of complaints about technology in the classroom I sat talking with a group of other PhD candidates about Universal Design and Universal Access and why it does not seem important to most people, even in a college of education where everyone mouths support of the idea of education for all, in an American state where the Governor has promised to double the number of college graduates, in a nation committed to an idea called, “No Child Left Behind.”

Wouldn’t Universal Design - that joining together of differentiated instruction, new information and communication technologies, and learner-directed education seem the obvious solution to a diverse community with diverse starting points and diverse ongoing needs? Nothing quite matches the rhetoric of “we’ll get everyone to succeed” better than an educational design which abandons the industrial model for a humanist, flexible alternative. But - UDL is not only not embraced, it is barely considered.

“We don’t get there,” I say, “because we really don’t want everyone to succeed. And certainly those ‘in power’ don’t want everyone to succeed. Only when we admit that, do all the attitudes which run through American education begin to make sense.”

I put it in simple micro-economic terms. “If we had the chance to triple the number of people getting PhDs when we get ours, would we really want that?” I extend it a few ways, “Do the faculty upstairs really want their kids to be competing for spots in those ‘best colleges’ with twice as many high school grads? If you’re trying to buy a $250,000 house do you really want twice as many people able to bid on it?”

In the end I suggest that we - and I mean “we” as a system - don’t want those “at the bottom” to be miserable - that makes us feel bad. But we sure don’t really want them to fully succeed either. In a capitalist economy that makes them competitors, and while capitalists like competition theoretically, it is not really what any capitalist wants in their own life.

Universal Design threatens an elite

Suppose that people were allowed to truly get to where they needed to go on their own terms. If everyone could study in the way that best worked for them to assemble the knowledge and skills necessary to become a lawyer, a doctor, an architect, an accountant, even a professor - there is, of course, ample proof that there are many out there who can accomplish these things in their own way but may not - for reasons of disability or difference or temperament or family resources or societal bias or physical location or even simply attitudes - can not complete the traditional routes to those careers.

If these differing learners had real equal opportunity to succeed, life would get, at least in some ways, more difficult for those who do succeed via the traditional routes.

Now remember, almost everyone in power in the education establishment has succeeded by traditional means. They did well in school when most did not do well. (We know this, most students do not do well in school. In many American cities not even half of students can finish high school.) They went to college and graduated, a distinctly minority position. They typically have at least a Masters Degree - not we’re down to less than 10% of the population. They may have a PhD - a degree that is only granted to people by those already holding this degree in the manner of a a closed club or fraternity. In order to do all that the most important skills these people usually have is the ability to conform, to follow the rules, to jump through hoops.

People are interesting though. And few highly educated people want to be perceived as being successful mostly because they can conform, follow rules, and jump through hoops. So they create myths, myths which imply that these acts of conformity are both ‘essential’ and ‘important social skills.’ And, as in all myths, there might even be touches of truth behind them, but they are still myths which exist primarily to build walls which keep people out of a privileged and exclusive club.

Universal Design vs. American notions of equality

So, yes, there is no real motivation for American educators to embrace Universal Design. But worse, there is a real psychological motivation, particular to the United States, to actually oppose it. Europeans, when considering education and child development, seem to understand that different children are born to circumstances (both genetic and social) which somehow prefigure differing outcomes. I am not suggesting whether this is “good” or “bad.” As with most things my guess is that is, somehow, both. So children are “tracked” to different paths, and there is little notion that there is a “single route” - no “single path” which somehow makes sense for everyone.

Americans are typically appalled by this notion. “How can you divide kids so early?” they ask, expressing shock. Americans have been brought up in the world’s most Calvinist society, one which truly believes in that “single path” to “the light.” And, in order to believe in that idea Americans have constructed another idea - equality means that everyone is really starting at the same point (“anyone can grow up to be president”) and that if we simply treat everyone in exactly the same way it will all work out.

This is not simply the lunatic ravings of a Clarence Thomas or a George W. Bush. Sure, they will sound ridiculous making the argument that the child of a single-mother McDonald’s minimum-wage minority group employee who lives in a 1979 Chevy Van has the same opportunities as the child of a Harvard-graduate bank president from Connecticut, but even “liberal” Americans, from Ted Kennedy to Hillary Clinton to most university faculty truly appear to believe the same thing. For example, No Child Left Behind is frequently bashed for excessive testing, but remember, both Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton voted for a law which presumes:

that (a) all children learn at the same rate and learn all things at the same ages, and
that (b) the only form of acceptable research in education is research which treats education as an industrial process.

Also consider that university education faculties across the US have embraced these ideas, and fight for grants for studies which will encourage these beliefs. And finally - walk into any university classroom, read any university syllabus, hell, read any graduate school guidebook, and you will see as little understanding of the idea of differentiated instruction as you will see in a KIPP boot-camp school or a New York City School System elementary reading lesson. In other words - none.

An inability to accept…

So, if you suggest to those who hold the power in education in America that it may not matter…

• whether students read via ink-on-paper, or audio-book, or digital text
• whether students take notes on paper, or computer, or mobile phone
• whether students come to class, or view a video of the class, or listen to a podcast of the class, or just read the material on their own
• whether they take the class at all if the can demonstrate the skills and/or knowledge
• whether they can express their thoughts via pen, or keyboard, or speech recognition
• whether they use APA or MLA citations or simply offer “livelinks” (hyperlinks) to the source of the data

two things are immediately threatened. First, the rules and traditions of the club, which are both methods of controlling entry and establishing elite identity. Second, the very notions of equality and fairness which see differentiation as ‘cheating’ and ‘unfair advantage.’

Models of Fairness

I do not want to suggest that simply because this is so ingrained that is thus fully “unconscious.” I do not believe that it is. I see it as a set of choices, because Americans have many models of fairness that they routinely adopt as long as all involved are already part of an elite.

Sailboat racing, for example, uses a complex handicapping system which allows 20 foot boats to race against 100 foot yachts. Golfers use handicaps as well. “Legacy” admissions to Ivy League schools allow access to the benefits of elite education to the occasionally lazy, irresponsible child (the current US president, among many others). Wealthy parents hire tutors and ‘packagers’ to help their children get into college. They buy their children fancy computers which check their spelling and help them make creative videos. They fill their homes with all the things that give their children “advantages.” American sports leagues even hold “drafts” which help unsuccessful teams compete (as opposed to European leagues where unsuccessful teams are tossed into lower levels of competition). But in every one of these cases those who benefit from these “assistive technologies” are those who have already secured their spots among the elite. When equivalent systems are suggested for those from “outside,” be it screen readers in the classroom, affirmative action (reverse discrimination), or a path to credentials which does not conform to “the rules” - these are derided as “unfair,” “un-American,” even as truly dangerous - “a lowering of standards,” or - to use the ultimate attack - “socialism.”

So the system of power resists. It fights. It shifts its arguments as often as Dick Cheney on Iraq but it stands its ground despite it all. Laptops in the classroom are “distracting,” yeah, that’s why we’re against them, they’re “distracting.” It isn’t that we want to limit success to those just like “us.” Of course not. Mobile phones “allow for cheating.” It’s not that new communications technology might support the success of different learners, surely not, we just need to maintain our “standards.” On-line publishing allows for “plagiarism.” Really, we’re not trying to protect our jobs and our control of information, it’s a “legal matter.” Videotaping the class promotes “laziness.” We’re not against different ways to learn, but we’re “the experts,” these are “time-proven” educational methods. Alternative paths to credentials and certifications? “It’s possible,” we suggest, “as long as we stay in control and maintain the standards.”

And thus the elites will of course embrace sending rich kids with no training out to teach poor kids but will attack the idea of one-to-one computing or mobile learning. And thus most of the students who are allowed college entrance-exam accommodations are wealthy, white, suburbanites.

In the end Universal Design is not difficult, nor expensive, nor do we lack examples of how to do it. But it is not really something which our society wants to do. And so we do not do it.

- Ira Socol

The Drool Room by Ira David Socol, a novel in stories that has - as at least one focus - life within “Special Education in America” - is now available from the River Foyle Press through lulu.com

US $16.00 on Amazon

US $16.00 direct via lulu.com

Look Inside This Book

Here’s my email:

“Your column today on classroom clickers at MSU was depressing. Once again we find a Michigan educational institution wasting vast sums of money (the taxpayers’ money and the students’ money) by embracing already antiquated technology in pursuit of antiquated teaching practices.

“Everything that a “clicker” can do, can, of course, simply be done by embracing the mobile phone and text message capabilities almost all students carry with them. This kind of sophisticated classroom interaction via the mobile phone is in use in many nations, either by using basic text-message capabilities or through small bluetooth receivers attached to instructor computers. These systems can, however, do so much more - allowing things other than guessed multiple choice answers to be transmitted. Short answers, even mini-essays, math solutions, all easily flow through text messaging.

“But what is worse than the waste of money is the way that the clicker reinforces all the worst instructional and evaluation practices, emphasizing the mini-quiz rather than the search for authentic evaluation of student learning and the kind of differentiated instruction which is the key to expanding access to higher education.

“So, the multiple clickers aren’t just silly and wasteful. They are destructive to the goals the State of Michigan should have for Michigan State University.”

individualized education at work (photo from Ohio University’s Center for Academic Technology)

As a friend noted in an email in response, “We had a demo of our clicker system at the [institution where he works], and it was magical how people felt empowered by having any input in a classroom at all. It was demoed with a class full of teachers, and they were so energized it was sad to see, because it shows how used they are to being passive vessels in learning. It is clearly a transitional technology, and a more politic guy would have found a way to say that, rather than jumping in their face. But that’s why America needs you.”

Yes, of course, but my anger with the growing “clicker culture” at places like Michigan State University is that if universities with “top ten” schools of education are not leading the way in educational practice, who is? And the problem with transitional technologies in education is that they all too often become permanent - technology adoption in schools being as painfully slow as it is.

But this really isn’t just a tech question - it is an education question. “Clickers” feign interactivity - sort of the way the Iraqi Government of today feigns sovereignty. These remotes offer a single-direction communication system - based in purely faculty (or more often, textbook publisher) created content and context. The clickers do not ask questions, they can only respond within faculty or textbook publisher created restraints.

My friend, however, seems right. Preszler, Dawe, Shuster and Shuster (2007) found that first and second year university students preferred lecture courses with clickers to lecture courses without clickers, and that, when “clicking counted” (that is, “clicks” became part of the grade), attendance increased, and, standardised test responses may have increased as well. In other words, something is better than nothing. Just - to extend the metaphor - as Iraqis prefer the fig leaf of their current “protectorate” status to direct imperial rule.

Which brings us back to the question, doesn’t it? Or even further back. Is the lecture (as a course model, not an occasional dip into a great illuminating academic performance) still a legitimate learning model? If it is - if we are to continue to dehumanise (de-individualise) education this way - shouldn’t we be jumping ahead to the best possible systems? And whatever that decision, shouldn’t we be (if only on cost or environmental bases) using ubiquitous technology to do this? Shouldn’t we be using (at least) individualisable technology to do this? (if only on equity grounds for students with differing capabilities)

The clicker is, of course, an instant anachronism. It is one more try by the educational powers-that-be to limit the capabilities of technology, and to enforce control. Texting on your mobile is seen as “dangerous” because students might “be distracted” or “do other things” or - is it - because they might engage in “back-channel” learning - choosing to learn other things or the same things in other ways. And texting is more difficult for lecturers because they might have to deal with the range of difficulties or concerns students were having instead of simply taking a quick poll.

With mobiles (as the alternative) the instructor effort required is significantly greater, but the changes wrought in the classroom might be significantly greater as well, “The line between specific educational applications and general uses of the mobile abilities for educational purposes is not always all that clear. This is due to the fact that the mobile phone is a multi application system, and as such, enables educational application to use other utilities of the cellular phone (for example: communication utilities). Thus, the cellular utilities can be seen as building blocks of the global educational application. An example is the Mobile Author application (Virvou, 2004), which helps teachers create and author their computerbased courses. It allows teachers to insert domain data into the application (lessons, assessment tests etc). The data documents are html documents. Both students and the teacher have access to the databases of the application, and they communicate with each other via SMS, email or the databases. All can be done via the mobile phone. Students can read their assignments, do their tests and send them to the teacher for him or her to check them. Throughout teachers stay informed of the progress of their students wherever they may be and whenever they want. Results show that the majority of teachers found the mobile facilities both useful and user friendly (especially those teachers without previous experience with computers).” (Yerushalmy and Ben-Zaken, 2004)

So my problem remains - “clickers” are not just wasteful, they encourage preservation of a system which really does not work, by making it, oh just so slightly less awful. But that gets us back to that eternal question… are you so satisfied with education-as-it-is that you simply want to tinker, or are you so angry that you want to revolutionise?

but perhaps not as engaged as we hoped… as we look closer

(and P.S. to the Lansing State Journal commenter who assumed I owned “stock in Verizon” - well, no, but not in a textbook publisher either. Just as a price comparison - a Verizon Mobile customer could add 250 texts a month to their plan for $5 - so seven months, almost two semesters, for the price of just one clicker. And that’s expensive. My unlimited texting plan costs me $5 monthly.)

- Ira Socol

see previous post on Mobiles in the Classroom.

both columns - in reverse order…

Schneider: Classroom clickers already out of date, MSU scholar says

John Schneider
Lansing State Journal

EAST LANSING - Regarding those classroom clickers I wrote about Wednesday, at least one fan of technology at Michigan State University isn’t buying them at any price.

In response to Wednesday’s column, I heard from Ira David Socol, the College of Education’s special education technology scholar.

Socol, a graduate student, was unequivocal in his disdain for the gadgets.

“The multiple clickers aren’t just silly and wasteful,” he wrote. “They are destructive to the goals the state of Michigan should have for MSU.”

Clickers are the informal name for Student Response Systems. They’re hand-held gadgets that look like TV remote controls. They allow students to give instant feedback to instructors. Think of the audience in “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” voting for the correct answer to a question.

In Wednesday’s column, the father of a student complained that his son had to buy three clickers (at $35 to $40 each) for three classes. Why, the dad wondered, couldn’t the instructors get on the same wavelength?

‘Useful tools’

In his response to my inquiry, David Gift, MSU’s vice provost for technology, among other things, said MSU is working toward clicker consolidation, but defended clickers as “remarkably useful teaching tools …”

Remarkably ridiculous, says Socol.

Here’s more of what he wrote:

“Your column on classroom clickers was depressing. Once again, we find a Michigan educational institution wasting vast sums of money (the taxpayers’ money and the students’ money) by embracing already antiquated technology in pursuit of antiquated teaching practices.

“Everything a clicker can do, can, of course, simply be done by embracing the mobile phone and text message capabilities almost all students carry with them. This kind of sophisticated classroom interaction via the mobile phone is in use in many nations. …”

More options

And, Socol added, the cell phone technology can do so much more, “allowing things other than guessed multiple choice answers to be transmitted. Short answers, even mini-essays, math solutions, all easily flow through text messaging.”

Socol went on to say that clickers are worse than anachronistic - they’re contrary to the mission of education.

“What is worse than the waste of money is the way the clicker reinforces all the worst instructional and evaluation practices, emphasizing the mini-quiz rather than the search for authentic evaluation of student learning and the kind of differentiated instruction which is the key to expanding access to higher education.”

In fact, clickers, Socol says, are practically un-American.

“This is just one more way U.S. education continues to fall behind that of other nations - a failure to embrace transformative technologies,” Socol wrote.

Responding to Socol’s comments, MSU spokesman Terry Denbow sent me an e-mail that he said reflected the views of various education technology specialists at MSU. It said, in part:

“Technology changes fast, and we don’t know where clickers will be tomorrow, but they can be very useful if an instructor incorporates them in smart, meaningful ways.

“Mobile technology is quickly becoming another option for this purpose in classrooms, and, yes, text messages can be used in similar ways. We need to be considering all options, while keeping in mind the potential technical issues.”

Schneider: Multiple classroom clickers for MSU students puzzles dad

John Schneider
Lansing State Journal

EAST LANSING - If you’re like MSU spokesman Terry Denbow and me, the only “clicker” you ever carried to college was a ball-point pen, described by Denbow as “a wonderful ‘new’ invention that precluded all the quills from dropping all over my mid-terms.”

Denbow was responding to an inquiry I forwarded him from Tony Sporer of Portland, who wanted to know why his son, an MSU student, had to buy a separate clicker (at $35-$40 apiece) for each of his three classes.

The electronic gadgets allow students to give instructors instant classroom feedback.

Now, compared to tuition and textbooks, 35-40 bucks per class may sound like small change, but, as the beleaguered Sporer sees it, college is expensive enough without the nickel-and-diming.

Sporer is hardly anti-MSU. He pointed out that he, his wife and his daughter have six MSU degrees among them. But sending kids to MSU these days, Sporer said, gives “Go Green” a whole new meaning.

“This feels,” he wrote, “like another example of MSU’s seemingly callous attitude regarding the cost of a college education … How difficult would it be to standardize the university so that only one of these programmable devices is required?”

Remote responses

Before I answer that question, I must address a more urgent one: What the heck is a clicker?

It’s a hand-held gizmo about the size of a TV remote control. Typically, it’s used in conjunction with a PowerPoint slide show. It allows instantaneous electronic “conversation” between students and instructors.

It could make the raised hand obsolete, if it hasn’t already.

Although clickers can be used, for example, to conduct in-class quizzes, most instructors employ them to gauge how well students are grasping the ideas they’re teaching.

As for Sporer’s implication that MSU could, if it wanted to, create a universal clicker, Denbow handed that one off to David Gift, MSU’s vice provost for libraries, computing and technology.

In his e-mail to me, Gift wrote: “We have heard this message from students, and have responded; the current state of play is NOT a result of inattention, callousness or inefficiency.”

Multiple forces

It’s the result, instead, Gift said, of a variety of factors, including:

• Clicker technology is racing forward so fast that MSU officials have been reluctant to pick a winner.

• Some early clickers required the installation of expensive receiver systems in classrooms that would have become obsolete within three years.

• Clickers, and their software, often get bundled with textbooks. Instructors are inclined to use the clicker that comes with a textbooks they choose.

That’s not to say it’s a closed issue. Last spring, MSU officials began recommending that faculty members choose from one of two products that, together, pretty much cover all the instructional bases.

“It will take some time,” Gift wrote, “for the older clickers to wash out of the system - and the competitive marketplace will always drive more choices - but we seem to be heading quickly toward a situation where the cost to students of clickers will be better controlled, and faculty will still have the ability to select the best tools for their classrooms.”

Academic Papers
SMS in the Classroom - “Pls Turn Ur Mobile On” (Ireland - Open Access)
Mobiles in the Classroom (Israel - Open Access)
SMS in a Literature Course (Germany)
SMS messaging in microeconomics experiments (Australia - Open Access)
Mobile Learning in Distance Education (Norway - Open Access)
Testing using SMS messaging (New Zealand)
Cell Phones in the L2 Classroom (Korea)
Instantaneous Feedback in the Interactive Classroom (Singapore - Open Access)

The Drool Room by Ira David Socol, a novel in stories that has - as at least one focus - life within “Special Education in America” - is now available from the River Foyle Press through lulu.com

US $16.00 on Amazon

US $16.00 direct via lulu.com

Look Inside This Book