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capri0mniSo. I'm writing a post, right now, for Plato's Nightmare / Aesop's Dream, and I want to make the point that the reason why so many depictions of the Lame, Maimed, Blind and Dumb[*] are written from the P.O.V. of able-bodied privilege is that, often, even in societies that strived for "universal education," the laws only specified that "every able-bodied child be taught... no one seemed to care whether disabled kids could read (much less write), or not.
I know that the United States Congress didn't even address the legal requirement to teach handicapped kids until 1975. I also know that I was "mainstreamed" in my various public school districts as early as 1969. And that I know that (until I got to college campuses starting in 1983) I was always the only disabled kid in any of my classes.
What I don't know, and what I really, really, really (not enough caps lock or underlining or bolding in the world could emphesize that enough) want to know is: What my mother went through to ensure I got all the education I was capable of living up to.
I was 5 when I entered school, I was probably 4, or younger, when she started pushing. I was too young to notice what she was doing. And my dad, well... his heart was in the right place, but he was a man of his time, and probably thought of education and all that as a "woman's purview" (Don't worry, he grew out of it, eventually). Besides, he was an airline pilot, and was gone on trips three or four days out of every week. So really, my mother is probably the only one who could really tell me what the local school district required or expected for me and kids like me (my teachers were also great -- mostly -- it's the higher-up beaurocrats in Administration I wonder about).
But my mom died 20 years ago, this coming October.
*sigh.*
I know that the United States Congress didn't even address the legal requirement to teach handicapped kids until 1975. I also know that I was "mainstreamed" in my various public school districts as early as 1969. And that I know that (until I got to college campuses starting in 1983) I was always the only disabled kid in any of my classes.
What I don't know, and what I really, really, really (not enough caps lock or underlining or bolding in the world could emphesize that enough) want to know is: What my mother went through to ensure I got all the education I was capable of living up to.
I was 5 when I entered school, I was probably 4, or younger, when she started pushing. I was too young to notice what she was doing. And my dad, well... his heart was in the right place, but he was a man of his time, and probably thought of education and all that as a "woman's purview" (Don't worry, he grew out of it, eventually). Besides, he was an airline pilot, and was gone on trips three or four days out of every week. So really, my mother is probably the only one who could really tell me what the local school district required or expected for me and kids like me (my teachers were also great -- mostly -- it's the higher-up beaurocrats in Administration I wonder about).
But my mom died 20 years ago, this coming October.
*sigh.*
