Start Date: January 31, 2023
I am a baby boomer. In elementary school our teachers managed 30-35 students per class. I don’t recall there being any aids other than a homeroom Mom who helped with a few celebrations or sales along the lines of Girl Scout cookie campaigns. There was one curriculum. The public school systems had Special Education for children with profound impairments, at the level of at Down syndrome or something more severe. Other than that the students had one program. We were to deal with it.
As my generation had children we were introduced to the concept of ADHD and Asperger’s syndrome. Autism in its extreme was recognized but more subtle issues were not identified. I have read one theory that it may be related to genes for skill in math and science. In the 1970’s elite tech colleges admitted female students for the first time. Some hypothesize that mingling of male and females with math ability allowed for more mating between two people with a related recessive gene, thereby causing more expression in the population. Just a theory. I have also been told, even by parents, that it is an incredibly easy diagnosis to get from a doctor if desired.
As best I can tell, having no children, the result is that the student is given alternate learning methods, more time to accomplish tasks, and perhaps different modes of testing and grading.
While we certainly don’t want to abandon talent due to disability it is a concern that we may conflate disability with inability. We ought not miss out on the next great scientist because there was no wheelchair ramp or internet option. Audio books for the blind, closed caption for the deaf. But no one should ever have assigned me to the chorus or track team with an adaptation for the fact that I cannot sing or run. Whether there is an underlying disability with my spine, knees, or vocal chords, the end result is that I am unable to do those things and should not get a medal or a pass.
When the disability/inability is intellectual it is harder to discern underlying abilities. Genius is often accompanied by a little madness. Yet my practical nature and recollections of the lack of empathy of some college professors had me ask someone, “So what happens when they go to college and have to keep up?” The answer was, no, it carries on there as well. More time to complete labs, etc.
if you are going to be a writer it is probably not awful that they look the other way in your science courses. I was slow in chemistry lab and still had a non-lab STEM career. But we can’t be encouraging these students to work at labs where they test for cancer. People will die in larger numbers if it systematically takes too long to do the job.
As the public school system is now failing to educate all students to a greater degree, they want to hide the problems by eliminating standard testing, making it difficult to know anyone’s abilities. We keep pushing the “Final Exam” further down the road. Sane society has held their breath that at least the critical fields: medicine, engineering, architecture, and law would maintain their standards.
Yet now we are adding social justice issues into the kit bag of things that cause people to not excel. That could be resolved with better schooling. But the lazier, cheaper solution is to make accomplishment and metrics irrelevant. So there are now law schools are considering abandoning the LSAT exam, a key test of necessary thinking skills. Some medical schools are declining to provide critical data for rankings.
With the combination of some parents not believing that their kids are ever less than excellent, i.e. “participation trophies”, “everyone is a winner”, and the social warriors thinking that “A’s for all” is easier than better schools, we now have no idea of anyone’s abilities and seem to think that the pathway to success is either your celebrity parent buying your test scores or ignoring them in lieu of quota based admissions.
We have developed a penchant for telling ourselves, our children, and society that you can be anything you want. Yet quite often that isn’t true. The late Betty White said that as a young woman she was totally committed to being an opera singer. The only problem was she could’t sing, at least not opera. Happily she was a wonderful comedic talent who worked for 7 decades at what she could do. Childhood fantasies that open kids minds to imagination are wonderful. The blind student who needs audio history classes may become a great professor, but not a surgeon. The kid who can’t pass geometry may excel in music but shouldn’t be an architect. If you get dizzy on an elevator being an astronaut isn’t in your future. This can only end in tears, and worse. The time and energy put into inevitable failure is taking away from finding where you can excel, maybe not the Olympic gold medal well, but well enough to live a good life and make a contribution.
The wonderful Mike Rowe, host of “Dirty Jobs” has said “Don’t follow your passion, bring it with you”.
Aspiration to be a productive member of society is the ultimate ability. Use it wisely.