BADD 2012: Toppliing Transactionalism

"Happy Birthday Vivian?" I ask. "Why would anyone put up a poster like that?"
"Vivian?" the response is somewhat incredulous. "What are you talking about?"
I point through the windshield. She follows my finger and stares. Then, because, well, we've been together a long time, "Oh no," she laughs, "those are candles! not letters, birthday candles!"

Ahh, the entertaining world of dyslexia.

Less entertaining might be a few recent wheelchair experiences. A DoubleTree Hotel (slogan: "cookies instead of service") in Roanoke, Virginia with no curb cuts near entrances, unnavigable ramps which changed slope suddenly, and a stage for me to speak from which prevented any physical interaction with those who had come to hear me speak. Or, sitting at the freezing cold plane ends of jetbridges because Rahm Emanuel's City of Chicago can't be bothered with timely responses to wheelchair requests at O'Hare Airport. Or, whether a restaurant in Roanoke or Michigan State University's campus police station, facilities whose "accessible" doorways feature thresholds so high and steeply cut that wheelchairs become stuck - if you're lucky - or you get tossed to the ground - if you're not.

But equally less entertaining are the millions of classrooms in which student movement is considered a problem. The millions of classrooms without student seating choices. The millions of classrooms without Text-To-Speech and Speech-To-Text routinely available. The millions of classrooms where cultural diversity in learning is sacrificed to the corporatism of the "Common Core."

And, I suppose, particularly less entertaining are the many places, from schools, to restaurants, to education PhD programs, where people with "disabilities" have to declare themselves pathologically damaged and beg for help in order to be allowed to pretend to function like "normal humans."

I believe in "Transactional Disability," a spin on Tom Shakespeare's great work linking the social and physical models of disability. To me, there is no actual "disability," there is only "able" and "unable," which are sometimes stable, but more often a constantly changing state of affairs - based on age, health, sleep patterns, energy levels, weather, the day of the week. "My ability to walk has been rapidly improving since my last surgery, but last Thursday the pain was really beyond my tolerance." "I thought I was reading pretty well Sunday, but when we got to the restaurant, and the menu was in ALL CAPS, I couldn't read anything."

"Able" equals, I can take care of it myself. "Unable" means I need help or tools. Those are basic human conditions, and no one should ever require a special permit, or a costly medical examination, or distinct permissions, to use the tools, or get the assistance, they, as equal children of God, need to function in their lives.

Whether you choose to take an elevator instead of the stairs, or you need to put on eyeglasses,
or you need to listen to text instead of "reading" (text-decoding) it - or watching
a video, or whatever... is a personal decision, not a societal prescription

The difference between "ability" and "inability" lies in the "transaction space." And "transaction space" is an ever-changing location. My living room is a different "transaction space" today than it was two months ago. The room, of course, is much the same, but where I can go in it, and where I am willing to go, are very different. The same classroom which may be fine for the "average," compliant, calm person, may be a nightmare for me. As I often say, the story of my friend Melissa and her son represents this perfectly: In the daytime, crossing a street, he is "visually impaired," and needs a cane and often assistance. But at night, as they walk around the lake, he is able to navigate perfectly, while she needs a flashlight/torch and often assistance.

A film is the easiest of transaction spaces for me to navigate in terms of literature, a print-on-paper book is the most difficult. A three-story high urban chain-link fence was a fine transaction space for me when my PF Flyers fit easily between the wires, now it would be an impossible barrier. I will never be able to reach the top shelf in the supermarket without some tool or strategy - that transaction space becomes otherwise impossible.

(Above and Below): fence... book... paths or barriers?

Now, Transactionalism arrives when someone, often someone in power, decides that their tools are fine but yours or mine are not. There was the Michigan State professor, wearer of thick eyeglasses, who drove five miles to work each day instead of walking, who often took the elevator between the third and fifth floors, but who thought I needed a $500 psychological assessment, and five dozen forms filled out, if I was going to use  text reader. There are the schools with impossible wheelchair ramps run by principals with reserved parking spaces up front so that they lose less time coming and going. There are politicians who use drivers for "convenience" and efficiency who run airports and transit systems that make life for wheelchair users close to impossible.

I see teachers and principals who use digital mail, messaging, and calendars all day but who operate in schools where students are not allowed to choose the same tools. I see students blocked from using school elevators so that students must declare their "inability" loudly if walking stairs is very hard one day. I see students denied the right to stand through class times by teachers who have the choice to stand or sit.

Which is all so very, very wrong. Without qualifiers. Without excuses.

Transactionalism is an evil. It must be confronted everywhere, every day. Until Transactionalism is toppled, "the disabled" will always live with identities crafted by others, and equality will always in unattainable.

- Ira Socol on Blogging Against Disablism Day 2012

Transition from Secondary School and the Freedom Stick

As the school year in North America and Europe begins to wind toward a close, here are four new "slide presentations" on making the transition from secondary school to university for students "with disabilities" or "differences" - which I might argue, is just about everyone.

My Study Bar tool from RSC Scotland North+East

There is a focus here on using the tools available on the MITS Freedom Stick, the software package you can download and install on a 4gb Flash Drive or simply run from your Windows computer. But the ideas can be adapted in many ways.

Of course the Freedom Stick is an "Americanization" of the fabulous LearnApps Drive created by RSC Scotland North and East, so you can download their version instead if that serves you better (or their AccessApps - more suited for visually impaired students, or the classroom tool building TeachApps). RSC also offers MyStudyBar for desktop or laptop installation.

The goal is to help students fully develop their Toolbelts for success at university, or in any post-secondary environment.

Transition to Post-Secondary- Disability Life

View more presentations from Ira David Socol

Disability Life presentation is also here as a Google Doc

Transition Firefox

View more presentations from Ira David Socol

Accessible Firefox presentation is also here as a Google Doc 

Transition to College- Open Office

View more presentations from Ira David Socol

Open Office presentation is also here as a Google Doc  

Transition to College - Reading and Writing

View more presentations from Ira David Socol

Universal Design for Reading and Writing presentation is also here as a Google Doc  

Remember, we have a full selection of support videos, ranging from hour long webinars to three - to - five minute tool use presentations for all of the Freedom Stick tools. RSC Scotland N+E has their own support videos as well.

Humans are tool users by nature. We succeed when we choose our tools intelligently based on the "TEST" formula - Task - Environment - Skills (at the moment) - and Tool Knowledge. If your tools do not offer you the support choices you need, you are making life unnecessarily difficult.

- Ira Socol

Beyond Disability

I woke up this morning in a city which could not conceivably exist if technology did not allow humans to exceed their own capabilities.

We can start with elevators. Yes, there are a few humans who can run up the stairs of the Empire State Building. But its a small group. And there's even a smaller group that can carry, say, furniture to the upper floors of any of thousands of buildings in New York City, or even just groceries or the lunch order.

So we have technologies which enable us to exceed our abilities. And those technologies allow more of us to live and work together in ways impossible without technologies. And, in ways which do not require us to divide ourselves into people who can, (a) climb 3 flights of stairs, from people who can (b) climb 6 flights of stairs, from people who an (c) climb 9 flights of stairs.

Everybody gets to push the button and go up.

But we could go back further. New York City is a port built on an archipelago on the edge of a continent distant from its primary trading partners. Without first ships and then ships and bridges it could not ever have functioned as anything more than a great place to eat oysters.

The "default" methods of human movement are, I suppose, "bipedal locomotion," crawling, climbing, and perhaps swimming. The default method of moving "goods" is to carry them. The default method of storing and transmitting knowledge are face-to-face speech and memory. The default methods of learning are trial and error and memory.

"Assistive Technologies" - George Washington Bridge (background), rowboat and oars (foreground),
because not everyone can swim the Hudson River.

Anything beyond those "biologic basics" involve technology which increases human capacity and capability.

So, am I awakening in a city of cheaters?

Too many schools think so. They equate technological enhancement with cheating. Or, like those who understand why Oscar Pistorius might walk using artificial limbs - maybe artificial limbs which look like those they expect - but are very unsure he might run or race using limbs which seem unlike those they expect - they equate the unfamiliar technologies with cheating.

Schools have long accepted print literacy, for example, which Socrates derided as a symbol of learning's descent into laziness, though that technology dramatically - and artificially (there is no "reading center" of the human brain) - enhances human capability. They have also come to accept eyeglasses, pens, artificial lighting, they have even accepted - well, demanded - math on paper, distrusting those who do it "naturally" - in their heads.

In other words, certain "disabilities" are not "disabilities" at all, according to the "typical" school, and certain human "enhancements" are perfectly all right. So people are allowed to "cheat" in school regularly by storing information in books rather than memory, except on many tests, but if information is stored elsewhere, say, on the internet instead of a book, or if recall is needed during an artificial assessment process, it is "cheating." And people who might struggle with reading because of something different about their eyes are not disabled and get to use a whole variety of individual devices to help themselves, but people who might struggle with reading because of differences in brain use are disabled, and are often denied the use of their tools by teachers, school administrators, and state and federal politicians.

Parents who have money enhance their children's natural learning path with everything from houses full of books, to computer access, to travel, to tutors. But children without resources are denied these same enhancements in schools.

In other words, the idea of disability and the concept of enhancing the human is not just a social construction, but specifically a social construction of wealth and power. In New York the rich enhance their bodies via car ownership and access to cabs and limos. The poor lack those enhancements. Joel Klein wore eyeglasses and Cathie Black wears contact lenses to enhance their vision and reading as Chancellor of New York City's schools, but poor kids in those schools are denied the use of Text-To-Speech systems and audiobooks which would allow them to read. Arne Duncan daily enhances his human mobility and multitasking capabilities by being driven and flown around the country, but poor kids can't access tools which might get them to Duncan's "schools of choice" nor can they use the Blackberry which organizes Duncan's life in the schools he favors.

Friday I was lucky enough to meet people from DARPA and the MIT Media Lab Biomechatronics Group and the New York Hall of Science and the NYU ITP program, and many other brilliant people, and we pretty much came to the conclusion that our entire understandings of disability and enhancement need to be reconceived.

There are many examples of why, but I thought of one I personally observed. A high school non-reader I worked with was introduced to the WYNN Literacy Software. Within a month he was using this software to read at over 300 words per minute. Yes, in a month he went from not reading to exceeding the average adult fast reading speed by 20%. Thus, his tools, allowed him to "exceed capability." And certain educators were troubled by this. They actually wanted us to slow this boy down, so he would not have an advantage. These people never wondered about finding tools for the other kids which might maximize their abilities, rather, they were horrified when I suggested that this "special needs: kid now really needed to be in their gifted classes. He, like Oscar Pistorius, wasn't really doing it, his technology was, so he was "cheating."

Most of those teachers and administrators wore eyeglasses, one had hearing aids. And so I was confused.

Is "disability" a "thing" or an "idea"? Is "enhancement" anti-human or what humans do? And if we re-think these ideas, what does that mean for the way we operate schools.

And with that I will travel 985 miles in the next three hours. Am I enhancing my human capabilities? And if I couldn't afford the plane ticket, would I be disabled?

- Ira Socol

The King's Speech

There is a certain collection of literature I feel is important for people seeking to understand "disability" in a deep way. This includes books like Borderlinersand The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, films including Edward Scissorhandsand Rory O'Shea Was Hereand plays like The Elephant Man... Anyway, there are not many. Most suggest either "cure" or evoke the notion of "supercrip" and I despise both of those tropes.

But I watched The King's Speech this week and immediately added it to the list. Yes, the context... the British Royal Family... is far from most of our experience, but only one level of the film is "royal/historical" (though that is a very fine level indeed, with some fascinating attempts at insight into both the Queen Elizabeths of our age). The other level is a much more common tale. A tale of disability and bullying, powerlessness and power, perseverance and the high costs of being seen as a success.

"Bertie Windsor" is mocked and abused because he cannot do "the expected" easily. This occurs at the hands of the father who loves him and desperately wants him to succeed, and at the hands of those - including his older brother - who simply enjoy feeling superior. He is mistreated by quack "healers" - wait for the marbles scene - and made to feel as if he is somehow less than human, royal birthright or not.

This film is not a tale of triumph. Yes, George VI becomes a beloved monarch who did much for his nation at its time of greatest peril, but that is not the point of the film, or of this man's life. Rather it is a story of fear, of loneliness, of desperation, of effort, and yes, of cost. Becoming what others want/need him to be is a mountain which "Bertie" must scale, and it is a climb which injures him in permanent ways. As the film The Queen puts it, [Tony Blair on Elizabeth II] "That woman has given her whole life in service to her people. Fifty years doing a job SHE never wanted! A job she watched kill her father."

And it is not a tale of "cure" either, though Geoffrey Rush's Lionel Logue uses that term. Bertie needs "accommodations" his whole life - in the form of the personal and constant efforts of Logue at every speech. He needs - in the media of the time - to be seen much more than heard.  It never gets easy, it never gets solved, and Bertie battles his "issues" his whole life.

When you watch the film, when you watch Colin Firth's face as he struggles, as he is humiliated, see the faces of all the children in our schools who find themselves struggling, with speech, with reading, with writing. And stop telling them to "try harder" and reach out with the individual helps they need. And accept that they are fully human, even if they never will quite do things as you do.

- Ira Socol

"God bless us, everyone"

What was Charles Dickens modeling when he gave us "Tiny Tim"?

"'As good as gold,' said Bob, 'and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.'"

1870s illustration

It is Christmas, and so our television screens will be filled with one of literature's most enduring portraits of disability, Tim Cratchit in Charles Dickens' 1843 A Christmas Carol.

Tim has a small part in the book, but it is a powerful one, even before the pity inducing film performances of the 20th century. But, after debating with a friend on Twitter over whether Tim was a "positive" or "negative" for the disability community, I wanted to separate Dickens' Tim from Hollywood's Tim, because they are somewhat different characters - different in crucial ways.

The first difference stems from both time and intent. The book Dickens wrote at the start of the second industrial revolution was an indictment of early capitalism, barely less "radical" politically than the work of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels which would appear just five years later.

In Dickens' story Scrooge's capitalism runs over everyone and everything in its path, it is as malevolent to the well-born as it is to Tim and his family. Tim might be there to heighten sympathy a bit, but really, he is just another voice protesting for a more humane world. When Hollywood, or the British film industry, retold the tale before and after the World War, it became more Christian than political, and more sympathetic than angry, and Tim's position within the story changed.

1951 Tim

"The image of the Tiny Tim gained popularity in the 1940's and 50's when charities focused on finding cures for disabilities such as polio. They realized that pity opens wallets, so they began poster child campaigns. These campaigns played on society's fear that this thing, this disability, this horrible tragedy, could very easily invade their homes. Unless, of course, they sent in money to find a cure. The undertone of these campaigns was clear: G-d forbid you end up with a disability like the child on the poster. You're life will no longer be worth living; you'll be less then human (Shapiro, 1994)."

Tim gets prettier in these films, cuter. Of course everyone does. In the 1938 Hollywood version Bob Cratchit is fat. Capitalism has no longer run amok, rather, we are telling a story of charity, and charity needs the 'poster child.'

So the film Tiny Tim is sweet, high-voiced, pretty, and pathetic. But is that the character Dickens described?

To me, the literary Tiny Tim is something very powerful - especially in the context of his time. Whatever Tiny Tim's "affliction" - kidney disease is the most speculated - Tim was a fully embraced human in this story, when all across Britain, northern Europe, and the United States society was beginning to dehumanize those who could not 'compete.' The first "school" (asylum) for "idiots" was opened in Paris in 1841, with various other separated facilities appearing along with industrialization over the next 30 years. Tim was not separated. He fully participates in the life of his family. He even participates "as a male" - going to church with his father and brothers, not staying home with the females as they prepare the Christmas dinner.

And unlike so many "defectives" of the period developing as Dickens wrote, Tim has a voice. A clear, respected voice. This may not sound like much today... unless you've ever attended an American IEP conference or its equivalent in other nations... but in 1843 it was perhaps as radical as Dickens' call for redistribution of wealth.

Dickens is also decidedly less "romantic" about the ending. Though films often end with a "cured" and robust Tim, all Dickens will say is, "Tiny Tim, who did not die." There are no promises of "normality" here, only promises of humanity.

The visions of disability matter, and they need to be brought out into the open, and discussed. I like to use Edward Scissorhands as the classic example of trying to drag "the disabled" into "normality" by making them "heroic servants." I'd love high schools to do The Elephant Man - the play- rather than hold "carnival game"-type disability awareness weeks. (Compare it to the very different film as well). I saw a fabulous college version of Richard III a few years ago with Richard as a "contemporary" disabled man. In a wheelchair, constantly stared at by an unblinking video camera.

But we can begin this Christmas, in our homes, to explore those visions, and the divides between sympathy and empathy, and between victim and human. I see Tiny Tim as a great step forward for 1843, and sadly, in many ways, a great step forward today. But it is not a big enough step either way.

- Ira Socol

A week without technology?

Just about every "education reporter" in the United States - from small market local media to The Today Show - has written this story at least once by now. Students are asked to spend a few days or a week without "technology" so they can - well, get smarter? be less distracted? become better at human interaction? become better humans?

OK. Yes, by "technology" these people mean, "tools their teacher is uncomfortable with." By becoming "better" at something, these people mean, "becoming more like the teacher." Though those tidbits are never reported.

So students are asked to turn off computers and mobile phones, but not clocks or pens. They are asked to not use email and SMS, but school busses seem fine. They are asked not to use digital signals, but paper is actually recommended.

We need to understand this a whole lot better. Technology is the tools with which we manipulate the world, or even the art of manipulating the world, and it is time to stop pretending that it is "anything invented after [I] was born.

A small paper making machine. This is NOT technology.

The book, and the paper it is printed on, even the ink used to form those letters, are gigantic technologies. Expensive, polluting, highly-evolved technologies typically controlled by a few major capitalists - from Bertelsmann to Barnes+Noble to Amazon. Pens and pencils are also invented technologies. Sort of complicated and dangerous too. Kids cheat with them. Bully with them. And there's still a chunk of graphite in my hand from when I was nine and got stabbed for - I'm sure - "no reason at all."

But there are technologies I'd like schools to go without, for a week - or much longer... Technology "abandonments" that would truly demonstrate important things to kids...

Let's try a week without clocks and bells. Few technologies interrupt the learning process more, and limit learning to "the shallows" more, than the school timetable. And few things belittle students more - or expose our hypocrisies more - than bells. They are not just Pavlovian, they are unfairly so. Kids are "late" when the bell rings, but teachers often insist that they get dismissal power, meaning bells are only significant when they can punish students.

So take a week. Cancel the start time and the finish time. Abandon the class schedule. Let students pick which of their classrooms they want to be in - and when. Let kids spend a day working on one thing, or five minutes, whichever they need and want. Let them eat when they want, use the toilet when they want, debate Shakespeare when they want. See what happens.

Our school schedule was invented by Henry Barnard to train kids for industrial shift work. Is that what are schools are still designed to do?

Let's try a week without desks and chairs. Pile them all up in the corner and ignore them. Let kids bring what they need to make themselves comfortable. As I asked one school district: "Do any of you have furniture like this at home?"

The chair and desk, that contribution of William Alcott in the 1830s, might have made sense them. But we have central heating now, and carpets are available everywhere. And pillows are cheap at Ikea - so are lapdesks. And kids would rather be comfortable.

And... teachers might find themselves worrying a whole lot less about controlling how kids sit in their chairs.

Let's try a week without books and paper. We know how many of our kids struggle with reading and writing - the physical acts. The word decoding, the holding of the pen, the traditional keyboarding - these things are our primary creators of disability.

So let's get "Socratic" for a week. Lets get fully digital (adaptable text, speech recognition) or simply verbal/audio. Let's talk and listen. Let's think out loud and work on auditory memory.

We might see a whole new set of student skills rise to the top with those "Gutenberg technologies" stripped from our kids' lives. We might see a whole new kind of learning.

- Ira Socol

History and Diversity. Globally, and in your School

"On Christmas Eve 1806, two decades after [St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church in New York City] was built, the building was surrounded by Protestants incensed at a celebration going on inside  —  a religious observance then viewed in the United States as an exercise in “popish superstition,” more commonly referred to as Christmas. Protesters tried to disrupt the service. In the melee that ensued, dozens of people were injured and a policeman was killed." - The New York Times, 7 October 2010

Unlike New York's Catholic Archbishop Timothy Dolan, Father Kevin Madigan knows all about "9/11" and the attacks on the World Trade Center:

'"Father Madigan returned to St. Peter's Church to make sure the staff got out safely and could get back to their homes. Then he went back outside. On the street, he met a priest who was an assistant fire chaplain and went along with him. "He and I were walking south on Church Street, which is the eastern boundary of the World Trade Center.

'"All of a sudden we heard this BIG RUMBLE! The South Tower was collapsing first—even though it was the second tower hit. ‘Go down here!' I yelled to the priest, pointing to the stairs leading into a subway station. I figured that if we could get down into the station—and nothing collapsed on top of us—we could walk along the subway platform and emerge about four blocks north of the World Trade Center.

'"Transit cops were also nearby and they ran down the steps behind us. ‘Huddle against the wall!' they shouted. We huddled there for about 15 minutes. Dust came pouring in and we began choking. The dust finally settled. We all linked arms. One of the cops had a flashlight so we just walked along the subway platform and emerged again into the open air after about four blocks."

"Father Madigan is still counting his blessings. If he and the fire chaplain had been walking a block or two farther down Church Street, he believes the falling debris of the collapsing tower might have easily killed them."

St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church, Barclay at Church Streets, New York

And unlike Archbishop Dolan, Father Madigan knows something more. His church is almost exactly as far away from the World Trade Center site as the proposed Park51 Islamic Cultural Center which has inspired such angst, especially among the ignorant and the easily misled.

And when his church began building, 225 years ago, certain "American crazies" opposed this building too. Claiming it was funded by anti-democratic foreign powers (in this case, accurately, King Charles III of Spain made a very significant contribution), claiming this church would be a center of anti-American activity.  In fact, the "powers-that-were" pushed successfully to have the church moved from the original Broad Street site which was deemed too provocative. But the acceptance of that move meant nothing, as the quote atop this post makes clear. The opposition was not patriotic or concerned with security, or troubled by memory - they despised difference, and they were not willing to accept anyone who acted so bizarrely "foreign" that they'd pray without books in their hands or celebrate a dangerous holiday, like Christmas.

"But [Madigan] said Catholic New Yorkers had a special obligation. The discrimination suffered by their forebears, he said, “ought to be an incentive for us to ensure that similar indignities not be inflicted on more recent arrivals."'

I'm not a big fan of the word "tolerance." Who wants to be "tolerated"? But I am a big fan of acceptance. And I am a big fan of adapting our culture and society in ways which make acceptance seem, and actually be, real.

Rendering of proposed cultural center in lower Manhattan,
two blocks from the World Trade Center, two blocks from St. Peter's

There are, of course, the obvious hate groups which abound globally - often funded by the world's wealthiest people - or backed by mainstream political parties. But the world of non-acceptance is much more pervasive than that, and it goes beyond those who are actively against groups, whether Islamic, Catholic, Jewish, African-American, Latino, etc. And that pervasiveness not only allows the hate groups too exist beyond the fringes, but it allows a hierarchy to dominate our societies, and specifically, our schools.

The problem at the core of the 1780s battle over St. Peter's, or the 2010 battle over Park51, is a belief in "normal," and that belief is an insidious destroyer.

Normal: synonyms: conventional, ordinary, standard, usual. antonyms: unconventional, nonstandard, unusual - abnormal.

In America, whites are "normal," heterosexuals are "normal," Protestants are "normal," people who speak English are "normal," people with a certain amount of money are "normal," people who read a certain way are "normal," people who hear, see, move, walk, pay attention... you understand.

You do understand, right? Because many, obviously, do not.

The same belief structure which allowed a mob to attack Catholics celebrating Christmas in 1806 (at least Christmas was not actually illegal in New York, it was in a number of other states), which allows Republican candidates to win voters over by attacking a Sufi cultural center, allows educators to insist that kids "read" a certain way, sit a certain way, "write" a certain way, take tests a certain way" - it is a belief in the 'absolute truth' of "normality."

Oh sure, these arguments are often couched in codewords. It will be "easier" if students behave "normally," if they "read normally," if they pay attention "normally." It will make them "more competitive," give then a "better" chance to succeed.

Fix 'em all, as we might say. It would be "easier" if all Americans were white, Protestant, English speaking, heterosexuals, right? So many fewer points of conflict and debate. No pesky need to worry that you've scheduled homecoming for Yom Kippur, or that your football schedule creates problems during Ramadan, or that you need to create accessible texts, or alternative tests, or flexible furniture.

But who, exactly, gets to decide what is "normal"? A lot of people who think its fine to expect to speak English when they visit French or Spanish speaking nations are adamant that we only speak English in the U.S. The so-called "Anti-Defamation League" which insisted on the "normality" of Judaism at a Houston high school,  decided that Muslims are not normal. A church which may argue strongly for the "normality" of minority religious practice may argue equally strongly against minority love. And a guy who thinks his racial status should be "normal" is willing to lead a group which actively discriminates against all kinds of students - including those unable to maintain "proper" eye contact, and those struggling to read ink-on-paper.

In schools across America, "normal" is described as being like the schoolboard, or like the principal, or like the teacher. The kids whose behavior, religion, background, skills, and personalities are closest to that of these 'power models' are both "normal" and, of course, successful. The further you differ, the more "abnormal" you are. Eventually, one standard deviation? you get pathologized. You are "at risk," or "disabled."

So I have this wish. I wish to do away with the word "normal," the concept of "normal." I think this has become the ultimate "hate speech" idea. "Normal" allows those who hold power to imagine that they are there by virtue of their innate superiority. It allows them to declare that those who are unlike them are - to use the best literary description - "children of a lesser god."

We are human, we are different. We all need to be respected and understood as the individuals that we are.

Please.

- Ira Socol

Reversing the Curriculum

How might a six-year-old describe the way a dropped ball bounces?

How might a five-year-old describe the way water pours?

And what about a kid telling a story?

When kids come to school at five (if kids should come to school at five in the first place) they have certain fascinations - hearing and telling stories, understanding signs, the physics which make their world work, hot and cold, animal behaviour. And great teachers do embrace much of this, but our school curriculum never does.

Instead of running with this natural learning curve, instead of meeting our students where they are, we focus all of our attention through the age of eight on a certain set of formalized learning systems which disinterest most kids, and are essentially impossible for many. We spend all of our time on complex symbolic codes (the alphabet, the numeral system) and on the operation of those code systems (phonics, spelling, arithmetic).

And, within three years, we have taken kids thrilled to start school and turned them into kids who'd rather be anywhere else.

Last night on Twitter I had a conversation with college professor Michael Walters - @rugcernie. At one point he was troubled when I said that we had to, "meet students where they are." "by making the practice "meeting them where they are," you may lower standards. Balance must be struck," he said.

When he said that I thought of the classic scene from Francois Truffaut's film Les Quatre Cent Coups (400 Blows). A teacher takes the boys out on a physical training run through Paris. Two by two, three by three, they vanish from behind him, running off into shops and alleys. By the time the scene ends the teacher is no longer being followed by 40 students, but by one.  "You can't bring anyone anywhere if you start where they are not," I suggested.

Imagine a tour leader waiting on a corner ten blocks away from where the group going on the tour has gathered. This is what most education looks like. We're frustrated because students are not following along, but the students can not follow because we are beginning where they are not.

And thus, the one-third who succeed are those who either somehow luck out into being at our starting point or who, essentially, don't need us in the first place, and the other two-thirds muddle along in failure, year after year after year.

Green percentage are students proficient in reading at grade four, according to US National Assessment of Educational Progress through 2009

And it never gets any better. The students aren't following at the start, and so they can never catch up.

Green percentage are students proficient in reading at grade eight according to US National Assessment of Educational Progress through 2009

This creates not just overall failure, but creates disability as well. Because we do not want to admit that our system is flawed, we label our children as flawed. We don't look at the charts above and see a system which is ignoring children, rather, we describe those falling in the orange zones as "retarded," whatever polite words we choose. Thus, it is the kid's fault, and we can go on and on as before.

But what if school began differently?

I'm not promoting Montessori specifically, but they surely understand the idea

So do many hands-on museums (here, the New York Hall of Science)

What if school began with where kids actually are? With the bounce of a ball, the spin of a playground ride, the stories of their mornings, their obsessions with cars, planes, boats, or dolls? What if we allowed kids to create their own paths from their own starting points? What if letters, numbers, reading, counting, multiplying were only introduced as it appeared as a problem-solving solution for the student's interest?

Then that learning wouldn't be the worthless chores they now appear to most kids, but rather, as a route to where the student wants to go: Wouldn't you like to read this story about Nascar, Arsenal, the Titanic, knights, off-road-vehicles? Let's start with text-to-speech, so you can listen and watch...

And if the student wants to go there, the learning is motivated. And motivated learning is effective learning.

In 1865 the New York State Board of Regents cranked out the first standardized test of general education. About one-third of students did well. Today, 145 years later, our school curriculum system is the same, and so are our results.

So, do we keep insisting that our students change? That our teachers change? Or do we change our system?

- Ira Socol

to be fully human

Blogging Against Disablism Day 2010

I move through a lot of schools, and through a lot of public spaces, and everywhere I go I see people who are made to be less than fully human. The high school kids who can not read sitting in classrooms during "silent reading" time. The girl in the wheelchair set off to the side of the middle school choir because everyone else is on risers. The poor reader at the bank or hospital faced with piles of incomprehensible paperwork. The man or woman denied the ability to go out to eat because of too few or badly placed "handicapped" parking places. The child who struggles with writing who is denied the right to communicate in his classroom. The university students forced to spend large amounts of money and time to "prove themselves" "disabled."

Less than fully human, or, as they say, Children of a Lesser God.

We are all human, we are not all the same...

And I have my personal scenes:

In March of 2009 I struggled to walk with crutches through Kennedy Airport in New York when Delta Airlines refused to provide me with a wheelchair. When I fell, as fellow passengers ran toward me to help, my Delta flight crew literally stepped over me in their rush to get out of the terminal. Delta has acknowledged that all they did was wrong, but refuses to consider any solution.

the smug rich guy on the left is Delta Airline's CEO, give him a call 1-404-715-2600, ask him about this...

In October 2009 I could not attend an academic conference at Michigan State University when the campus's Kellogg Center gave away its disability parking spaces to football fans who set up tents for drinking. The university claimed that they would take steps to make this up to me, but has refused to do so.

Just last week a taco restaurant in Zeeland, Michigan - which already lacked any disability parking - refused my request for help with my food tray, after I had paid for the food. I left, $6.00 poorer and still hungry.

And, of course, back at my own university, students with disabilities are considered so foreign, so different, that in order to be treated with respect they must obtain a visa from the disability office. Yes, a visa. Carry your papers with you, my friends, lest you be considered an alien.

I could go on. There was the international education conference in Chicago where Columbia University's Teachers College (among others) slammed the door in my face. The numerous businesses which make entry impossible for those in wheelchairs, and restaurants which love funny fonts on the menu so dyslexics cannot use reading technology. There are faculty who cannot understand a student being unable to sit in their classrooms - their completely structured - non-universally-designed classrooms. There are toilets people cannot get to, signs which cannot be read, parking spots not designated, untrained employees from fast food spots to the greatest universities.

And each of these things make some of us less than fully human, in our minds, and everyone else's.

On Blogging Against Disablism Day I've been angry (Retard Theory, 2008) and I've been depressed (Suicidal Ideation, 2009), but today, perhaps I need to be committed.

 I have tried to do what I can, I suppose, but I wonder what "that" means? Have I eaten at restaurants with car parks but no "handicapped" spaces? Yes, I have, and I shouldn't. Have I spoken up at the sight of each injustice? No, and I should. Have I followed through on legal threats? Well, yes, against Delta, but generally not - it seems messy and tiring too often.

And I know the cost of constant action. I had a friend who battled everything at every moment. Every bad toilet, every bad airline experience, every narrow door, and he too often seemed miserable. He was at war with the world every minute, and that is no fun.

Sometimes, we all just need to pretend to experience the full humanness so many would deny us, and just go out and be. That is OK, right?

classic higher education accessibility

So, maybe we need to take turns. We surely need to fight more, but I suspect we need to tag team this world. You this week, me next, someone else the week after that. Maybe we need to make sure behaviors are challenged even if we can't do it. Perhaps we need to set up Wiki-Exchanges so we record it all, and let those with the energy "now" to push the battle forward.

I'm not sure. But I know that we can not continue to accept a world which demeans so many of us, while at the same time, I know we need to keep ourselves as safe and all right as possible.

And we can only do both those things if we're together - whatever the "disability" label society tags us with - if we look out for each other, cross-protest, pick up each others fights - and do it in a way that ensures that every dehumanizing action and moment is addressed - by someone.

So you call CEO Richard Anderson at Delta for me - that's 1-404-715-2600 - and I'll harass your school board, and we'll all get into this boat together and move toward being fully human.

- Ira Socol

with very special thanks to Goldfish, a friend and mentor...

Constructing Disability: The Second Class Citizen

In 2008 I wrote a post with a title similar to this about the construction of disability. Consider this "part two."

On Wednesday night I was at the Comparative and International Education Society Annual Conference at The Palmer House Hilton in Chicago. I was exhausted from a day of rolling a wheelchair over vast distances on very thick carpet. My leg hurt like a m..., well, it hurt in ways that pain meds weren't touching. And my arms, shoulders, and hands were burning from the "work out" of the day - which had begun with an 8.00 am presentation.

But I really did not want to hide in my room. The real reason anyone goes to a conference like this is to get to meet, and talk to, the brilliant, fascinating people who are there - people from everywhere on the planet. So I pushed through my room door, wheeled through the long corridors, rode down in the tiny elevator which barely fit my chair, and went down to the grand lobby where two big receptions for conference attendees were being held, one sponsored by my university, the other by Teachers College of Columbia University.

I rolled through the lobby and met a friend near the base of the stairway below, which led to one of the receptions:

Entrance to the Empire Room at The Palmer House

"Are you going in..." my friend asked, voice trailing off as he turned to look. "Oh." "Yeah," I said. Now - I'm sure there is another route. I've ridden in my share of kitchen elevators, etc. But as I looked, realizing there was no indication of a disability route, no statement at all of accessibility, I decided I didn't want to be carried in through the back door to this event.

So I said goodbye to my friend and moved toward the Teachers College reception in the hotel's Honore Ballroom. There, I met another staircase only entrance, also without disability signage. Worse, Teachers College - one of the foremost and forward-thinking education schools in the nation, had placed their "check in" table on a landing in the middle of the stairs. Again - I'm certain that there is a way in - but why should I, unlike everyone else, have to beg for admission.

Blocked from the free food, and hungry, I turned into the hotel bar. But service was either unavailable to those unable to climb the six stairs to the bar itself, or I was invisible, because I sat at a table for 20 minutes, attempting to corral a wait staff member, quite unsuccessfully.

So I went back up to my room, crawled into bed, and spent a small fortune on room service. As I ate, I realized that the Thursday night dinner, the "big event" of the conference for which I had purchased a $65 ticket, was being held in the Empire Room - that first place with the big, beautiful stairs. I called downstairs, cancelled my stay Thursday night stay, and arranged to leave early Thursday afternoon.

Now, let me pause to say that I have no complaints about The Palmer House. In fact, I have never been treated so well in any hotel anywhere. Except for the bar staff, every employee was not just helpful and kind, but positively wonderful, and - and this matters - was clearly perfectly trained in disability etiquette, offering help without pity, treating me as fully human at every turn. The service was so good I thought I was on the Titanic - without the whole unfortunate iceberg thing.

Monroe Street Entrance

And it is not the fault of The Palmer House that they are trying to fit modern function into a landmark 1871 hotel. I believe in aesthetics - I don't want them hacking through 130-year-old marble to install an elevator next to the Empire Room stairs. I could ask for better signage, sure, but historic facilities are historic facilities, and people choose their conference facilities either considering access, or not.

So, Michigan State University, as conference host, chose a facility without wifi (blocking many free accessible technologies), with poor 3G reception (blocking others), with long, deeply carpeted corridors that made mobility really difficult, with major reception rooms with stair-only main entrances, with many tiny meeting rooms which wheelchairs could barely - or simply not - fit into. This was not a "single oversight." Those checking people in to the conference sat behind a tall desk I could not see over. No conference signs referred to accessibility, either for mobility, or hearing, or vision.

There has been only a very few times in my "mobility-challenged" experience when I've been told more consistently, or more repeatedly, that I was not "fully human."

As when my university chose to favor football tailgate tents over disability access to an educational event, it was more personal, because this conference was organized by people who know wheelchair users, and knew wheelchair users were coming. It was organized by people I know.

It is not malice. No one organizing this event set out to make anyone's life miserable. But that does not make it better. I can fight malice. Instead, my disability was constructed by educators I know through complete indifference, through complete lack of empathy. That is much harder to fight, If any of these people read this they will likely be horrified. They will be apologetic. They may be even resentful that (a) I didn't help with the organization, and (b) that I didn't ask them repeatedly for help, rather than launching this "public attack." They may, even, in regard to those latter two issues, be partially justified. I did not help. I did not ask.

But should I have to? Back in 1998, when I was at Grand Valley State University, I was explaining to the Academic Computing staff why we were going to put accessible computers in to every computing environment on all of our campuses, and why we were not requiring "disabled" students to show some kind of ID card to use these workstations. One of my co-workers there got it immediately. "We don't ask anyone else to go somewhere special to use a computer," he said, "we don't ask anyone to show an ID to use a monitor or a keyboard."

That was 12 years ago. I don't know if the term "Universal Design" had entered education yet - surely I had never heard of it - and yet, people knew what was right. Today the expectations should be much higher.

There were many fabulous things about this conference. Great people. Great sessions. Great ideas. Great conversations. I would say that I would love to go to CIES2011 in Montreal, but at this grand international event, my fellow educators, grad students, and researchers were willing build my disability into something so big I felt not just like a Second-Class Citizen, but as someone less than fully human. If they'll do that here, to me, what are they doing to the students in their classrooms?

I hope the person I gave my dinner ticket to enjoyed... I hope they had no problem with the stairs.

- Ira Socol

Sarah Palin's Disability Disability

Sarah Palin hates people with disabilities. I knew that before I knew anything else about her. She introduced herself to America by holding up her baby and telling all the world everything that was wrong with him.

That's despicable.

If she really viewed her infant as a human with real potential she would have either left him and his siblings at the hotel (like a responsible parent) or simply introduced him, rather than claiming some kind of hero status because she chose not to have an abortion (a choice, by the way, which she implied was hers to make).

That plus the simple facts that Palin opposes a universal health care system (the only thing which would actually move the "disabled" toward equality), opposes adequate educational funding, opposes hate crime legislation, and opposes federal regulations which might ensure that people are treated equally in America. She also, of course, opposes parental leave laws and increased welfare benefits which might make it possible for parents to care for high needs kids.

Now we have Sarah Palin vs. Family Guy, a cartoon politician debating an actual cartoon. And, well, I'm with the actual cartoon, and here's why:

Just as The Simpsons, for all the criticism leveled at them by America's right-wing, remains the only show on television where the family eats breakfast and dinner together daily and goes to church together every week, Family Guy and South Park are the only two shows on American TV which deal consistently with disability issues in the context of normal life.

Wheelchair-user Joe, on Family Guy is - by far - the most competent male on the show, but that's not the thing... the thing that Family Guy does is face the issues. Yes Joe is a hero cop, but it won't get him into the brewery tour (see above), and yes Chris can go out with a strong, determined girl, but people will still make fun of him for dating a... yeah, you know the word. That's a kind of reality brought into American living rooms which pretty stories on the Nightly News can not offer, and which all of Sarah Palin's whining about "haters" can not touch.

Just as on South Park, where Timmy and Jimmy are truly part of their school's community, of their town's community. They are not "surprisingly successful," because, damn, few of any of us are. Instead they are real kids who sometimes do things well, often can not, who are sometimes picked on, and sometimes befriended.

Let's bring in the Jeff Shannon of the Seattle Times here, commenting on a BBC Ouch! poll which found Timmy to be the favorite disabled character on TV in Britain:

"So why would disabled voters choose an animated, learning-disabled, wheelchair-using fourth grader as "The Greatest Disabled TV Character"? A misfit kid whose vocabulary is almost exclusively limited to garbled repetitions of his own name, yet who has gained a minor cult following as lead vocalist for a heavy-metal garage band called The Lords of the Underworld?

"The simple answer is that Timmy is downright hilarious, but for disabled "South Park" fans, closer examination of the character's popularity (like that of "Stevie" on Fox's "Malcolm in the Middle") leads to a startling revelation: Comedy Central's controversial cartoon series, featuring a foul-mouthed batch of fourth graders in the "quiet mountain town" of South Park, Colo., is the source of the most progressive, provocative and socially relevant disability humor ever presented on American television.

"With his jagged teeth and can-do spirit, Timmy appears, at first glance, to uphold the condescending disability stereotypes that are gradually fading from mainstream entertainment. But like everything else in "South Park," he's actually challenging preconceptions, toppling taboos and weaving his singularity into the fabric of the show. Insensitive, unenlightened viewers may laugh at Timmy, but the character's popularity is largely determined by those who laugh with him.

"That this is happening on "South Park" — a series routinely condemned by conservative watchdogs — comes as no surprise to anyone who understands what the show is all about. Co-creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone (who financed the excellent documentary about disability "How's Your News?," available on DVD) may seem like juvenile provocateurs with a liberal agenda, but "South Park" would not have become a pop-cultural phenomenon if there wasn't a method to its madness. Parker and Stone are equal-opportunity offenders, and when nothing is sacred — not even the seemingly unassailable image of the late Christopher Reeve — the satirical playing field is level, and timely issues become ripe for outrageously comedic scrutiny."

You see Sarah, holding up your baby for political gain is hate speech, bringing the disability community into the mainstream is not. I hope that when Trig grows up, Sarah, he explains that to you.

- Ira Socol

What is Technology?

What is "technology"? What is "assistive technology"?

Before we can talk about accommodations in the classroom, we need to begin to understand humans and their tools, and thus, the definitions of technology.

The issue is that schools are not at all "anti-technology" - quite the opposite. Schools embrace all the ed tech introduced by Horace Mann and Henry Barnard in the mid-19th Century. Desks and individual seats with backs. Rectangular classrooms with windows on one side. Black-Boards (or their successors) hung in the front of the room. A school day in which everyone was expected to attend from "bell to bell." Printed books ("the most significant technological invention of the last millennium" according to The Guardian). The school calendar. The idea of dividing children by age into "grades" (a radical idea imported to the US by Barnard from Prussia). Maps on the wall, the flag in the corner. OK, yes, paper had been introduced earlier, pencils would come a bit later, but all of these were intentional inventions of humans who were designing an educational system. So was the "standardized test" - that 1867 invention of the New York State Board of Regents.

All of these technologies have been "naturalized," of course, so we no longer see them as technologies. And we need to wonder how fair that is to those who might do better, be more comfortable, with newer, or other, technologies.

So I asked my students to join me in a VoiceThread investigation of what "technology" and "assistive technology" means.

I began with this: from the discussion tab in Wiktionary - 

"Technology is a word that is made of two greek words. Techne and Logos.

"Techne is the greek word for Art. Logos is the Greek word for "reasonable language" or "reasoning about". Therefore a direct translation might be "the reasonable language of art" or "reasoning about art" . So this is not confusing we might substitute the word "technique" for art. For example, a technique which is an "art form" even though it is quite technical in nature. The resulting literal definition might then be "reasoning about techniques."

"Technology is therefore "thinking about the best way to do things. - Eric
 
"Etymology of these both words is more complicated than that. Techne (also spelled tekhne) means art as in skill or craft (if we want to see a difference between art and skill). Logos means "language", "reason", "reasoning", or even "world". Also, technology isn't just "thinking", it is also constructing and manipulating the world. wikipedia:Martin Heidegger saw technology as a mode of thinking where everything that is, is seen from the perspective of manipulation. He said this the prevailing mode of thinking today. - Nikke"

The narrowest point in the East River in New York City

On the VoiceThread, which you can listen to right here, each slide begins with me introducing a technological challenge. What skills, what capabilities, what tools do you need to travel between New York neighborhoods? To absorb a story written 90 years ago? To bring a refrigerator home? To get to the 88th floor of the Sears Tower? To write a story in a way that others can read it?

After we began our VoiceThread conversation, I sent my class the following note, title: "What is technology?" 

Let’s begin with the first VoiceThread slide, the trip from Canarsie (on Brooklyn’s Atlantic coast) to the Turtle Bay neighborhood in Manhattan (the UN area). I chose these because they are two places clearly settled long before Henry Hudson first sailed in to the harbor 401 years ago.

Imagine the trip in the present, then imagine it in 1609.

Manhattan in 1609 via The Mannahatta Project

In the top image here you can see the “narrow spot” in the East River, a fast flowing tidal strait that moves with the tide action. In the next picture you see a vision of Manhattan in 1609 (the shadow represents the current landmass – see http://themannahattaproject.org/). The “narrow spot” I just talked about is just out of the scene to the right, but if you look north you can see another opportunity for crossing, where what is now called Roosevelt Island splits the river. Of course getting to that spot from Canarsie might mean covering lots more forest, and perhaps crossing a major stream which we call Newtown Creek and which divides Brooklyn from Queens (you can just make out the entrance into the East River to the right of the picture).

I bring all this up not as a history lesson (though it is a fun history lesson), but to demonstrate how our ideas of technology change and “naturalize.”

In 1609 a Manahatta or a Canarsie making the trip – and make the trip they did (it has oft been rumored that it was the Canarsie who “sold” the Manahatta’s island to the Dutch in 1625) – would have considered moccasins technology, and the clothing that prevented brambles from ripping his/her skin, and surely the dugout canoe which probably beat swimming for it. Plus the trail that crossed Brooklyn from the shores of the Atlantic to the East River (now called Flatbush Avenue).

Today, we might not even see the roads, railroads, and bridges as technology, though just a bit more than a hundred years ago those items pretty much defined technology.

So, like the teacher who says, “All I need is a chalkboard, some books, and a classroom,”(1) we tend to assume that anything we are familiar with – anything “invented before we were born” – is not “technology” but “natural.”

In schools books, desks, chairs, pens, pencils, papers, chalk-boards, the school timetable, eyeglasses, the cars which bring teachers to school, even the stairs which make it much easier to get to the second floor, have all been “naturalized.” Yet all were once “introduced” into education, many controversially.

And my argument is that every technology both enables and disables – it simply depends on the individual.

So, the human “default” method of getting from Canarsie to Turtle Bay would be walking and swimming, protected by your own skin. For climbing 900 feet high it would be, yes, climbing. Carrying a heavy object? Picking it up and carrying it, or collecting enough other humans to join you if it is really heavy. Transmitting stories? You speak, they listen, or vise-versa. Everything else which “assists” is “technology” – from shoes to roads, from stairs to ladders, from straps to wheels, from paints for cave art to paper to radio.

But with each technological “advance” there are some who can take advantage of it and others who cannot. A person without eyesight is not nearly as “disabled” in a place of verbal information transmission as they are in a world of visually transmitted data (think Homer). The learner who cannot “sit still” is not “disabled” until the classroom and the chair are joined together.

Is there a difference between “technology” and “assistive technology”? What is “unassistive technology”? Is it technology which does not help “you,” the individual?

How does our definition of technology impact how we view “disability”? If the only way from Brooklyn to Manhattan was swimming, and for survival reasons you had to get from Brooklyn to Manhattan, would the “disability” label be applied to different people than it is right now?

It took Europeans over 260 years of living in the New York area before they managed to bridge the East River (here the Manhattan Bridge – the bridge closest to that “narrow point” – is under construction in 1909)

And for those of you who were going to drive to the 42nd Street and First Avenue area of Manhattan: if it costs you $65 to park there, does that change your capabilities? What if you could not afford the $4.50 round trip subway fare? In other words, how does socio-economic status impact our ideas of “ability” and “disability”?

If you have the wealth to own and insure a car in New York City (and to have paid to get a drivers license) and the wealth to pay for Manhattan parking, the inability to walk 20 blocks at a time, four times a day, is not “disabling,” but if you cannot afford that, and you had to walk from your home in Canarsie to the bus stop, then climb the stairs from the bus to the subway, then walk from the subway to your job through a very hilly part of Manhattan, then do it again when work was done, a little “shortness of breath” can keep you from your job. But we would rarely call a car “assistive technology.”

I often say this: I am “disabled” if you give me paper and a pencil. I have dysgraphia. I am disabled if you give me an “ink on paper” book to read or you ask me to read your handwriting on the chalkboard or whiteboard, I have dyslexia. I am disabled if you expect me to sit in a chair, in a room, for 40 minutes straight, I have ADHD. But if I am working on my computer, able to move as I need to, with the TV on at home or, say, dozens of people chatting around me in a coffee shop, I am not disabled at all. I am very able.

What about your students?

- Ira Socol 

(1) "All you need to teach English are books, desks, paper, pens, and a chalkboard. You don't need any technology--just use what's there." - a university professor quoted in Steven D. Krause. "Among the Greatest Benefactors of Mankind": What the Success of Chalkboards Tells Us about the Future of Computers in the Classroom."  The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, Vol. 33, No. 2, Computers and the Future of the Humanities (Spring, 2000), pp. 6-16.