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Seeing a wave of profs inspired by @michaelshermer tweeting about how they think (some) disability accommodations are scams/silly/bad. Some thoughts on that...
The first thing that leaps out here is, ironically, a lack of academic rigor. Not seeing engagement with scholarship on disability, pedagogy, testing, etc.
If your argument is a “this can’t withstand scrutiny” argument, the “scrutiny” should be something a bit stronger than the hunches and habits you fell into when you started teaching in the 1980s.
Second, the stuff you’re sharing about your teaching practices may be more revealing than you’re aware, and not in a good way. Setting questions of disability aside, even.
If you’re still reflexively teaching and assessing the way you did three decades ago, and the way your mentors did three decades before that, you MAY not want to brag about it in front of your students, your colleagues, and the rest of the internet.
I’m not a “one true path” classroom teacher, and plenty of old-timey strategies work just fine, but if you’re not interested in growing and learning as a teacher, maybe keep that fact to yourself?
Third, the internet is forever. You shouldn’t say anything here that you wouldn’t want to see in a printout on your dean’s desk in three years. And yes, that still applies if your account is “anonymous.”
Fourth, let’s say you’re right, and that accommodations are dispensed too freely and for too little reason. (A lot of smart people would argue that the opposite was true, but let’s say, for the sake of discussion.)
You’d admit, surely, that SOME disabilities are both real and deserving of appropriate accommodation, right? (If not, a free suggestion: Shhhhh.)
If that’s the case, I have two questions. One: Are you qualified, medically or otherwise, to make a robust, well-defended assessment of which ones are which?
If not, (and if you’re not a particular student’s doctor, the answer is almost always “not”), then what are you even doing? What’s the point of all this? What grade would you give a student who yammered like you’re doing on a test, or in class?
Two: Have you contemplated the effect that your comments here might have on students at your institution with “legitimate” disabilities? On their willingness to disclose to you, or seek legitimate accommodation at all?
Because while you may imagine that all your students are eager to work the system, I guarantee you that many—including some of those most in need of help—are hugely reluctant to step forward.
Do you really want your tweets to be the reason someone with a disability flunks your class, or drops out of college? Do you want to be a barrier to equal educational access? I assume you don’t. You don’t, right?
Anyway, my semester starts in six minutes. I gotta go teach. See ya.
