February 16, 2016 - 01:01
Reading Heather Hollingsworth’s Huffington Post article on college students with intellectual disabilities left me thinking about the nature of elite colleges—their purpose, their symbolic function, and their role in perpetuating dangerous notions of intelligence and normalcy. This was not something that I had considered much before—I had so fully bought into the liberal arts experience that I had never stopped to question the nature of this system or its potential to do serious harm. One line from Hollingsworth’s piece that really put things into perspective for me was a quote from researcher Meg Grigal, who asserts that the purpose of higher education “in our community and our culture” is “to provide opportunities for learning.” This line stuck out to me as discordant with the way that liberal arts colleges actually operate today.Even though these schools tote the diversity of their student bodies and the variety of experiences that coalesce on their campuses, they are really only accessible to a very small segment of the population. This means that the spectrum of stories and opinions shared in these educational settings is quite limited, and the dominant ideas of the academic elite are deemed credible and reproduced without much questioning.
It is easy to see how skewed ideas about normality and intelligence are maintained within this elite college bubble, where scholars exist in an isolated world surrounded by similar peers who reflect back to them their own experiences and opinions. It is also important to consider the college application process, which operates as a gatekeeping mechanism that maintains the segregated nature of these elite schools. The process is so tied up in ideas about who is worthy of a college education—who can display their intelligence and their social and economic capital in ways that schools deem acceptable.This is a dangerous system based on the assumption that all people can be fairly compared according to a standard set of measurable criteria. The practice of applying to and attending college is structured in such a way that those who does not match the norms of a typical college student, like people with intellectual disabilities, are barred entry. I wonder about how this well-established conception of elites colleges might be called into question. Incorporating greater diversity on campuses by opening up access to people with intellectual disabilities seems like a major step in the right direction. Could colleges adopt the radical notion that intelligence and talent come in many forms, not all of which can be assessed through tests and interviews? Would they be receptive to policies that challenge the way we think about who gets to go to college and what it means to be a “normal” college student?
Taking a broader perspective, Lennard J. Davis’s thought-provoking introduction got me thinking about the larger concept of normalcy. I was so surprised to read about how recently the ideas of normal and abnormal came into being. Today, these classifications feel so deeply engrained in the way we view ourselves and others, so it is mindboggling to realize how new this perspective actually is. It is also so important to remember the artificial nature of “normal.” Indeed, the idea of normalcy is a social construction inspired by statistical analysis and eugenics-based notions of human improvement (2-3). As a (former) psychology major, I am well-acquainted with the normalcy-focused perspective of this discipline, which Davis highlights in his article. I remember how disconcerted I felt by the way topics like intelligence testing and learning disabilities were discussed in my educational psychology class last semester. Reading Davis’s writing helped me better identify the one-dimensional, normalcy-focused rhetoric that had fueled my discomfort during these conversations.