Blog Post 9

 This week in FNED we had to read Thomas Hehir's “Eliminating Ableism in Education”. It was broken into sections that we had to read. The first sections I read were Ableist Assumptions and Ableism and Schooling. In this I was introduced to Penny and her son Joe. Penny was told after Joe’s birth that he would have disabilities. This was Penny’s first time having a child with a disability. “‘I have lost a child at birth, and I have had a disabled child. I know the difference. My son is a gift not a tragedy’ (p.1). Penny was quickly developing the view, held by most disability advocates, that while disability is not a tragedy, society’s response to disability can have tragic consequences for those who have disabilities.” I think this quote is a good introduction to the reading because the author goes on to explain how the world treats people with disabilities in a bad way. The next thing Penny does is go to activists' rallies because she sees how the world treats her son unfairly. I think it's good that she does what she can to help. In the reading they define ableism as “a pervasive system of discrimination and exclusion that oppresses people who have mental, emotional and physical disabilities. . . . Deeply rooted beliefs about health, productivity, beauty, and the value of human life, perpetuated by the public and private media, combine to create an environment that is often hostile to those whose physical, mental, cognitive, and sensory abilities . . . fall out of the scope of what is currently defined as socially acceptable” Then he talks more about ableism in the school setting. One thing that teachers will do is expect disabled kids to do things the same things that nondisabled kids do, when in reality they need extra help. At the same time disabled kids shouldn’t only be looked at with pity, they can do great things. The next part I read was The Education of Blind and Visually Impaired Children. In this reading they talk about how important it is to teach children brail. I didn’t even know this was something that people were arguing about, I thought every blind and visually impaired person was taught brail. The author argues how important it is because a child should have the right to read and not have to rely on others for that. I agree every child has the right to read. I think it is extremely important to give every child the opportunity to learn, and then the opportunity to also act with that knowledge instead of making them believe they can’t do anything for themselves.