This is very important and super crucial. I have tried to bring this up to my colleagues but they have yet to be concerned about it. Thank you for putting it out there so beautifully.
Yes, thank you. I noticed something similar (though thankfully I had more time to address it) when leading a class on music and disability last fall. We started with a deep dive into various inequities disabled people face and immediately students wanted to go to “what they could do” to address those inequities. I was able to help us sit with the discomfort of knowing how pervasive systemic ableism is, and reading / listening to disabled voices providing nuanced perspectives on their experiences, for a couple of weeks before we even began talking about anti-ableist and intersectionally liberating “strategies” — and even then we kept reflecting on the perils of saviorism and “one and done” thinking.
Regrettably those perils are front and center in the neoliberal academy and I think you’re absolutely right that faculty are all too often under pressure from scalability-enamored leadership to find quick solutions. Thanks so much for your crucial call to slow down and your modeling of careful reflection on the principles of UDL.
Appreciate you reading, as always Andrew! I think we just lose a lot when we need every discussion to end with a solution, and I think the more opportunities to learn and explore without that pressure, the better
I wish the academic publishing system were bereft of this sort of ableism and these sort of ableist narratives and demands on disabled scholars! As always we are still dealing with this in our treatment of academics far more than in our treatment of students.
This is very important and super crucial. I have tried to bring this up to my colleagues but they have yet to be concerned about it. Thank you for putting it out there so beautifully.
Yes, thank you. I noticed something similar (though thankfully I had more time to address it) when leading a class on music and disability last fall. We started with a deep dive into various inequities disabled people face and immediately students wanted to go to “what they could do” to address those inequities. I was able to help us sit with the discomfort of knowing how pervasive systemic ableism is, and reading / listening to disabled voices providing nuanced perspectives on their experiences, for a couple of weeks before we even began talking about anti-ableist and intersectionally liberating “strategies” — and even then we kept reflecting on the perils of saviorism and “one and done” thinking.
Regrettably those perils are front and center in the neoliberal academy and I think you’re absolutely right that faculty are all too often under pressure from scalability-enamored leadership to find quick solutions. Thanks so much for your crucial call to slow down and your modeling of careful reflection on the principles of UDL.
Appreciate you reading, as always Andrew! I think we just lose a lot when we need every discussion to end with a solution, and I think the more opportunities to learn and explore without that pressure, the better
I wish the academic publishing system were bereft of this sort of ableism and these sort of ableist narratives and demands on disabled scholars! As always we are still dealing with this in our treatment of academics far more than in our treatment of students.