Disabilities by Edith C.

I wrote a short personal essay on the topic of mental disabilities last semester that I would like to share for this journal. I haven't really experienced a disability in school but this essay I wrote about a family member explains a little about what I feel about it. To summarize what I wrote, I think being labeled with a disability can have many negative effects for a person with it. Especially because mental disabilities come with many misconceptions and stigmas.

I have a cousin who was diagnosed with Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) when he was small. It is one of the most common childhood disorders and can continue through adulthood. Symptoms include “difficulty staying focused […], difficulty controlling behavior, and hyperactivity” (NIMH). Only his parents and his mother’s sisters, including my mom, knew he had it. I never knew about it until a year ago. When growing up, my siblings did see that as a child my cousin was a little “trouble-maker.” We didn’t think much of it. After all, he was a little kid and he soon began to mature and act like any other teenager. When he was a boy the doctor recommended my aunt to give him medications, but my aunt felt that the medications just made him more hyperactive. She also didn’t want him to receive any special education because she didn’t want other people and himself to be stigmatized by the label she felt he would receive. People with ADHD are defined “successful” if they are able to do well in school and lead productive lives (NIMH). Although my cousin never did well in school, I argue that my aunt’s treatment to recovery to make ADHD a small and hidden part of his life was the best treatment for him. The stigma’s attached with mental disorders would affect his life and the big blur there is between how much his environment and the disorder play in his life could have led to the wrong treatment or report of progress.

His life would have been affected negatively if people, besides certain family, knew he had ADHD. Since mental disorders come with many stigmas and misconceptions, society does not know how to deal well with such delicate matters. Because of this my aunt was afraid that people would see him as “slow” or “dumb;” both which have negative meanings in our society. For example, to be honest, I think me and my siblings would have seeing him differently. I would have attributed the disorder to many of his behaviors as I do now that I know he has it. I try to avoid it, but I question if any of his actions, his unsuccess in school, and or personality has anything to do with ADHD. I, a close family member, am uncertain of how to think of his disorder. My aunt did right at making the disorder only a small part of his life because I believe it could have affected the way he also views himself. Not being labeled, has avoided him feeling abnormal in school, and thus others and himself have not lowered his expectations. He puts the same effort in school and in his social life as others. When he has trouble in school, he asks for help like any other person who has trouble with their studies and he tries his best even if he has trouble in school.

However, he is “successful” in his social life (he has many friends), but has been unsuccessful in school. He has trouble focusing in school, which makes me and my mother wonder if maybe receiving special education would have helped him. I know, he tries his best, but he finds it really hard to concentrate to do his homework and to focus in school. For as long as we’ve known him, he doesn’t do as well as many other students do. Some of the symptoms of ADHD are the following: People with ADHD are “easily distracted, miss detail […] frequently switch from one activity to another, “have difficulty focusing on one thing,” “become bored with a task after only a few minutes” (NIMH). All of these symptoms are related to some of his troubles in school which makes me wonder if maybe he did need help at finding studying strategies.

However, there is no way of knowing if his behavior in school is related to his disorder. His environment could also play a role in his school troubles. His dad was an alcoholic for many years of his life, which very much lowered his self-esteem. My brother says, “a father is a very important role model for a men.” It was for my cousin as well. My cousin told me how his dad’s behavior has affected the way he does in school and life. In addition to this, although there is a big controversy in why, Latino youth and African American American’s tend to do dropout of schools at a higher rate than other races and ethnicities. He goes to a Latino populated school and does not receive the best quality of education. If both of these examples play a major role in his school life, then it is hard to tell how much each his environment and his disorder affected his “success” in school. Ultimately, attributing his behavior in school to ADHD could have led to ignoring environmental issues and wrong report of progress of recovery if he would have received special education treatment.

Therefore, I agree with his mother that the best treatment for him was to make the disorder a small and hidden part of his life. The cons of receiving a treatment out-weight the pros. Yes, he has not done well in school and could have had troubles in school related to the disorder. However, he is very “successful” in other aspects of his life. In addition to this, my cousin could have also been affected in school by his environment; his dad’s alcoholism and his school environment. Even though he struggles in school, he has received help in school, like any other person who has trouble focusing in school without being labeled as a person with ADHD. Labeling people with mental disorders sometimes negatively affects the way we perceive the person and the way the person with the disorder perceives himself. The consequences of this is that this would to some extent lead to ADHD defining him instead of ADHD only being a small part of his life. Nevertheless, each mental disorder and each individual with a mental disorder is different. In my cousin’s case the best treatment for recovery was no treatment at all.

Journal #12 | Disabilities | Wendy Wu

First of all, I think this is a pretty hard prompt. I like it because it's making me question what it means to have a disability. As a privileged able bodied person, I never really thought too much about it. Even growing up in school, students with disabilities were in a separate part of the school, so there was not much interaction. These tended to be the students with disabilities that were more obvious such as speech impairment or students who used wheelchairs. I always wondered why these students were not integrated into our classrooms, and I think it's probably to prevent bullying, teasing, or as this prompt discusses, unfair treatment. So, I have seen unfair treatment of students with disabilities. One, they definitely get less resources as mentioned earlier, they were kept in a separate part of the school. The fact that they were not integrated into the classroom made things worst because students instantly noticed the differences and teased them. If there was more initial interaction, students might be more used to these differences so they wouldn't react that way. As for adults treating students with disabilities, I've noticed that adults either treat them with care and provide them with more attention or they treat them as if they were inferior students. I haven't seen many adults or teachers in the middle. Many seemed to be in these two extremes.

What makes this prompt hard is the first question. I really don't know. Initially, before this class, I would be gung-ho about the former, but after reading "Adam, Adam, Adam", I'm not too sure anymore. I'm not sure if I can either one or the other, but instead, I think it's a mixture of both. I think that it's a social construction of classifying people because if you're not normal or the majority, then you tend to be "different", and in this case, people are classified into the category of "disabilities" in terms of their intelligence, performance, etc. However, I do think that disability is a concrete physical/mental characteristic as well because people can get disabilities genetically. Although I'm not a science major so I don't know my scientific terms, I do know that disabilities can be passed down from your parents and family. So, that's a tough question. I really don't exactly know, but I'm definitely fascinated by the topic.

Journal 12 "Disabilities" - Irene Van

Having the privilege of being an able bodied person, I realize that its difficult for me to think about a time where I have ever seen a differently abled person being treated unfairly. I think I have the privilege of not developing the sensitivity to such discrimination. I do not have to worry about ADA accessibility, simple things such as getting through my day, or reading a lecture on the screen. I often do not even see the discrimination that they feel because I am not susceptible to such things. However, I do remember once when a bunch of students were trying to get this one blind person’s attention. They started making fun of him behind their backs because they didn’t know that person was blind. It wasn’t until I confronted them that they stopped all of their bullying. This instance further reinforces the privileges that able bodied people have. The fact that we don’t think first about how a person can possibly be blind is already proof of our privilege.

Also, I think that, although people can be born with certain disabilities, the society plays a huge role in making them feel different, excluded, or inadequate. For instance, a student who has difficulty reading is made to feel crappy every time they read aloud to the classroom. But how often do we actually need to do that in real life? And how does this become a measure for other aspects of them? It doesn’t mean that this person cannot be a great musician, leader, or student in other aspects. But in some ways, it still brings down a person’s self esteem. In a classroom structure that didn’t focus so much on reading aloud, this student could feel very different. So therefore, I think the environment plays a huge role.

And everyone should check out this short speech by Mia Mingus! A queer, disabled, Korean adoptee activist! http://community.livejournal.com/micscorner/4252.html SOOOO GOOD!

Journal 12--Isel Lee

I always thought that disability is more of a concrete characteristic, but now I think disability can sometimes be a socially constructed way of classifying people. I remember when I transferred into a school in Korea, there was a student in my class who had a mental disability. The teacher never mentioned his condition so we did not know what kind of disability he had. All I knew was that his actions were random, his speech was poor, and according to what the other students told me, he had some kind of a mental problem. I remember everyone always made fun of him and called him a “retard,” and disliked sitting next to him. Once, during recess, he supposedly smeared poop all over his chair, causing the whole class to become disgusted with him. He got in trouble for it, but I’m not sure what actually happened because I did not personally witness the incident. Thinking back, I wonder if he would have been treated better if the classroom had a more supportive atmosphere socially and educationally. I don’t remember if he was obligated to do any of the homework or participate in class, but I do remember how his existence was ignored. Now, I wonder to what degree he was disabled. I wonder if he was given the proper educational and social support in class, would he have been able to participate in class as well? In other words, I wonder if labeling him a “retard” limited his capabilities. I did not stay in Korea long enough to know him, but it really boggles my mind whether his capabilities was nonexistent or that the label and the mistreatment he received actually caused his capabilities to seem nonexistent.

Journal 12 - Angela L.

Do you think that disability is more a concrete physical/mental characteristic or more a socially constructed way of classifying people? Reflect on your experience with disabilities in school. In particular, was there ever a time when you or another student was treated unfairly by a teacher or other adult because of a disability?

To me, the term "disability" is a socially constructed label for a concrete physical/mental characteristic. The word "disability" gives a distinct flavor to this characteristic, one that suggests that the person affected has lost his or her ability to do a certain task such as learning, walking, etc... Unfortunately one side effect of this labeling is that it's very black-and-white: either the individual has the ability or does not. There's very little middle ground, with this understanding of the physical/mental characteristic, for each person's individual nuances and ways of overcoming the existing barriers of the characteristic. So in that sense, I think that whoever coined the word "disability" originally intended to refer a physical/mental characteristic, but it's difficult to argue that the term is entirely innocent since it has been impregnated with various other socially constructed meanings.

A friend of mine last semester got into a terrible accident. She got off her bus, and in the process, was hit multiple times by a biker, a car, and then the actual bus in a horrible domino-effect incident. She wound up in the hospital and with a temporarily paralyzed right arm, from the shoulder down to the hand. This happened a few weeks before finals, and though she was given the option to withdraw for the semester, decided that she wanted to finish her classes. So, she became a part of DSP (The Disabled Students' Program), and began looking for scribes (other students to do the writing portion of her finals for her, while she dictates to them during the exam) as well as emailing her professors to ask about alternative final times and the DSP scribe program. Most of her professors were understanding and accommodating. However, one of them was particularly difficult and told her she should just withdraw from the class if she couldn't take the final herself and take the course again next year. He didn't want to deal with coordinating a separate final time and scribe option, and would rather have had her waste an entire semester's worth of work and effort and receive the mark of withdrawal on her transcript. His inflexibility gave her so much added stress and difficulty on top of the serious physical repercussions of her accident, scrambling to find scribes, and general finals stress from a heavy courseload. The temporary nature of her disability gave a shocking and disappointing view into the experiences others may encounter that do not have the benefit of knowing that they will someday have that label removed.

Journal #12 - Alan V.

Do you think that disability is more a concrete physical/mental characteristic or more a socially constructed way of classifying people? Reflect on your experience with disabilities in school. In particular, was there ever a time when you or another student was treated unfairly by a teacher or other adult because of a disability?

To classify someone as disabled has been something has been construed by society, yet I still believe that it has been based on a concrete physical/mental characteristic. The terms has been solidified in recent times to classify those individual with disability into groups that can receive special attention. Specific guidelines were constructed in order to have these individuals receive aid and which ones should not. Thus I see no problem with the term being used as long as it is being utilized to help those that have a disability. I did have a roommate for a semester who was in a wheel chair. His disability required that he have an attendant sleep overnight as he was incapable of turning sides overnight. He also required that certain food be cut for him and such. Being his roommate I helped him go about his everyday life, which made me realize the difficulties they encounter that other individuals do not. In elementary I had a fellow classmate who was missing an arm, yet he seemed to be much better at sports than most of our class. Yet I have never noticed no one be treated unfairly due to certain disabilities.

Disability Journal-Ashmi

It's always been hard to discuss issues regarding disabilities because I personally have never experienced one. Even though I am only a spectator, I can really sympathize for those who do experience discrmination due to a disability. I feel like discrimination towards disabilities isn't acknowledged very well in society as a major issue because it has become so normalized. There have been all kinds of stereotypes associated with disability because some feel as though disabled people are taking advantage of the "perks". One day I was challenged to take only ADA accessible routes. Mind you all, I live at Clark Kerr. If I was in a wheelchair, I would have died rolling down the hill merging onto Piedmont. In fact, I wouldn't have even been able to get to my room on the second floor because my building doesn't have an elevator. My travel time in between classes and Clark Kerr was set back by 15-20 minutes. My experience with ADA accessible routes definitley made me more aware about how much able-bodied people take for granted.
Whether people have a physical or mental disability, they always have to accommodate and compromise. There are people who will never know what it feels like to walk or pedal with their legs and there are people who will always have to work harder in school/work because of a mental disability. For them, what we consider the simpler things in life all become quite complex. I think there needs to be more awareness of issues regarding disabilities so we can remove stereotypes and normalize disability. I hope that one day we, as a society, can realize that even people with disabilities are normal human beings; they have feelings, dreams, and aspirations just like everyone else and they shouldn't be judged because of a physical/mental disablement.