In the Foreword of the Price book, Tobin Siebers writes that there is a way in which teachers are called upon to diagnose their students; that there is "a hidden agenda of classroom teaching- what is being diagnosed in persistent and determined ways is the mental health of students" (xii). While I agree with the notion that teachers often end up "diagnosing" the mental health of their students, I don't think I agree with the sentiment that it is as deliberate as the phrase "hidden agenda" suggests. This argument made me think about the Summers I have spent teaching swim lessons to young kids. I found myself spending a lot of time thinking about how to better teach each individual swimmer, which is intrinsically connected to thinking about the ways each student thinks and how their needs might be different than those of other kids in the class. It seems to me that while an environment of quasi-medical diagnosis may be created in classroom environments, it may often be a product of a desire to better teach and not a deliberate quest to seek out difference. However, I agree with Price that academic environments can tend to cast a negative light on mental differences and create an even more hostile environment for such differences than is found in the rest of our interactions. 

I really enjoyed Kai's poem and although I'm not black, I found myself relating to the experiences she was describing because I would describe myself as a woman of color too. When she called out the characteristics of her fellow classmates in AP classes, I thought about my experiences as a student in an AP class. My high school is very diverse, socioeconomically and racially, so most of the classes had students from all kinds of backgrounds. But what I eventually discovered was that the higher up a level a class I went, the less diverse the classes became. So by the time I was a senior and taking on more challenging classes, I found myself being the only person of color in the class. I would think an observation like that was irrelevant, like it shouldn't have bothered me, but it did. I had moments where I would feel isolated and sometimes I couldn't relate to other. And I often second guessed myself and felt like I had to put in two times as much work to compensate for my skin color. Sometimes I even wondered if learning English as my second language made me less capable than my English speaking peers. I wanted to know why I seemed to struggle more than anyone else in class. I wondered why I was the only person of color in an AP class and I'm sure there are students that are experiencing what I experienced back then.

After our viewing of Kai Davis' poem last week, and in light of a conversation I had had about it's possibility to offend people, I began thinking about powerful and eloquent uses of "vulgar" language and racial epithets throughout our pop cultural history.  As some of you may know, I have an overwhelming interest in pop culture and especially in rock history.  As such, Davis' poem caused me to think about other instances where poets or lyricists have used vulgar or offensive language and imagery to discuss their thoughts on their education and on their chances in life.  I initially planned to write a post about the uses of language in the classroom, but then I though about the uses of language as tool for expressing our frustrations with our class and education situations and prospects.  As part of this discussion, I am offering you three videos from youtube.

I want to do more commenting on other people's posts soon (I am reading them all!), but since we are figuring out paper topics this week I wanted to start thinking through ideas I want to focus on for that.

At the suggestion of Kaye, here are links to the songs I've used as titles for my previous blog entries. I'll be including a link to the corresponding song in each of my upcoming posts, which can be listened to separately or while you read.

9/3/2011 - "Down By The Water" -The Decemberists

9/11/2011 - "Bitch" -Meredith Brooks

9/17/2011 - "Cape Cod Girls" -New England Sea Chantey (composor unknown)

I think that a majority of people want to believe that education levels the playing field, but it does not. From my own experiences and what can be seen, money seems to level the playing field of education. Many students can have the opportunity to get an education, but the quality of the education depends on money. Lower class families do not always have the means to access private schools, charter school, etc. They may have access to advanced level classes, but do they compare to the advanced level classes at a private school a few blocks away? Usually in lower income areas, the schools do not have the funds to get new books or technology and rely on poor quality versions of Romeo and Juliet.

Upon reading the Margaret Price selection from her text Mad At School, I was struck by the necessity we exhibit for a sense of identity. An identity is something that we take on ourselves, something that we can choose to abort or adopt on our own free will. While I may be influenced by those I associate with in my community, no one forces me to identify as one particular thing; it is my own free will that allows me to do so.

I am intrigued by the motifs of identity written about in Margaret Price’s Mad At School introduction. Like Price, I may appear “healthy as a horse yet walk with a mind that whispers in many voices.” Can’t those “voices” be viewed as my many identities? Can I not obtain something unique from each of them, something intriguing with which another individual may identify? Morever, who is to say if I am mad or sane? After all, it does take one to know one.

As I read Margaret Price's Introduction to Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life.

With regards to the norm, Price writes that the disclosure of mental illness (as well as queerness) is "apparitional" and that it is only disclosed when the environment in which it is present allows it to disappear and appear. I think that this is a point of discussion because as we have sort of discussed in class, this 'norm' is something that is not particularly well-defined and changes depending on the individual. If we cannot define the 'norm', then can we really define the 'other' or the 'deviant' as a society as a whole? How can these deviations "appear"?

But, as with physical disabilities, it is difficult to push past the binary of the well/unwell paradigm in terms of mental illness. However, if the "deviations" are not fixed (and as Price has pointed out,  these so-called deviations can be anything from "coffee-guzzling, cigarette-puffing, vigorous human beings" to people who have been diagnosed with mental illnesses through the DSM) and neither is the "normal", then what is "ableism"? It is difficult to define this term if what its definition is based in is so rooted in other factors which themselves have no clear definition. 

It is my belief that education does not equalize our society. If anything, education is what divides out society. An education either affirms or changes your position in society. If it changes your position it can separate you from your home community, and affirming your position does not accomplish much. Education can only be truly equalizing if exactly everyone is presented with exactly the same education with varying educational environments that will allow each individual to achieve exactly the same level of knowledge. If this was the case, however, our society would be extremely limited. A diverse set of skills is unarguably vital to any community, and a truly equalizing education would hinder that greatly.

If the idea of an equalizing education is generalized from skill to class, this same issue still remains. Multiple individuals trained in different skills but all of the same class and access is still counterproductive. Class and educational experience are defining factors in everyone's perspectives and beliefs. Too similar experiences homoginize the view point of society and make the ideals of democracy pointless, and our leadership could easily come from one person. I'm pretty sure this prospect does not appeal to anybody here. Education is most definitely not what equals society nor can it be without consequences reminiscent of an unnerving totalitarian novel.