Blog #9: Hehir and Butler

This week's video/article talked about ableism in education and the world. 

The video showed two women, one in a wheel chair, and the other walking beside her. Their discussion centered around the idea that just because someone is disabled, does not necessarily mean that they are incapable of doing regular things in their day to day lives. For instance, the woman in the wheel chair says that she can get coffee on her own by using her mouth to pick it up. However, she then stated that society has deemed this "irregular", which granted it is, and so she isn't able to do that. 

I can see how people would find that action to be weird or even make some people uncomfortable. That said, it doesn't make sense to not allow something to due societal standards. There are no rules in place for that specific instance, just the comfortability of the other people around her. She had to bend to their comfort in order to complete her task, even though she could have done it on her own.

In the reading, the idea of the video is explored in greater detail. 

Towards the middle in "The Education of the Deaf", Butler points out that while there has been education for the deaf for the last 150 years, it took a great hit in the 1880s which set it back quite a bit. Ironically enough, the man that our building is named after, Horace Mann, was a large proponent in this set back. He was an advocate of oral teachings and methodology, as well as lip reading and speaking. He believed that sign language was a hinderance and took too much time. 

True as that may be, we have come to learn that it is the best and most accurate way for the deaf to communicate with us. Additionally, Alexander Graham Bell was a huge supporter of oral teachings. He even went as far as saying that sign language education should be banned from being taught to the deaf. He also was a advocate of "the enactment of qugenics laws to forbid the intermarriage of deaf mutes", an ideaology that would have stopped those from marrying who they wanted based soley on a disability. 

I do believe that we should work more to better accomodate those with disabilities. They didn't ask to be born that way, and it should be our duty to help those less fortunate than us when they ask for it.