A Call to Work on New Understandings of Learning Disability

When I first came to Syracuse to start my master's degree in Cultural Foundations of Education, I had to register with the Office of Disability Services to get accommodations, because my dyslexic body has been systematically excluded from educational design, and this is what the law provides me. When i went in, I picked up a brochure written by the Association on Higher Education and Disability (AHEAD) - an organization which works to increase the inclusion of people with disabilities, the brochure was titled "College Students with Learning Disabilities." It offers about three pages of information describing various problems, difficulties, troubles, inconsistencies, lack of expediency, and unintelligibility that defines the learning-disabled student. It also makes suggestions on requesting reasonable accommodations, self-advocacy, and study habits.

 

I could not believe how much information there is on how horrible learning disability is, and how this defines it. Nor could i believe how little information it had about all those things that makes me believe that I would never trade my 'disabled' body for an able-body, or how it said nothing about confronting the stigma of being a self-advocate and requesting accommodations. For these two reasons, I have decided that we need some new information, some new propaganda that recognizes the abilities of disabled students, so that we can learn new ways to define ourselves in empowered ways, so that we can learn how to confront stigma and demand a better education.

I have been obsessed with figuring out how it is that i do learn and how i do read in really meaningful and valuable ways. I should not have to be continually working on reaffirming these capabilities, i am actually making it through graduate school, but i do. What is one person, obsessed with thinking about how they think about things? How weird is it to have one brain rationalizing it's self, trying to understand it's self? I just go in circles. I cannot do this on my own.

We need new information, new propaganda, but I cannot do it on my own because all of this negativity that has defined our bodies is powerful. This brochure was written with the help of someone with a learning disability. I am starting to think that our cards are so stacked up against us, we can't even know it... it's so easy to say 'i can't read' but imagining how i do is so much more difficult.

One day, I met this other dyslexic women, and we started talking about how we write papers. I'm starting to think that we were really talking about how we learn. She said to me, "I write papers like I'm putting together a jig-saw puzzle, or playing with a rubrics-cub," and i have heard another dyslexic man refer to rubrics-cubes as well, and I've said these exact same words. There is something important about that, and I wonder if we need those stories to make our propaganda, to help us remember how there is so much to appreciate about our bodies, so that we can become more powerful self-advocates who know what and how to demand a better education that recognizes our capabilities like never before.

This is one description of my learning process, it's an excerpt from a paper titled "A tribute to my body, as I travel in the form of a ghost," and I have it in audio form:

What they, and often times we do not know is that the only possibility we have is to learn: not memorize, not cut corners. I have to know my stuff well enough to take it apart, look at it's pieces and reassemble. This is my process of appropriating knowledge and making it my own, in doing so, I'm doing work to create something new as i incorporate it into the old and begin to embody it.

I see ideas taking shapes of webs, marble sculptures, jigsaw puzzles, and rubrics-cubes that are always evolving in their own contexts... When I learn some thing new that challenges my current conception of things, there is a slight shift in the environment that begs me to turn the rubrics-cube over, to make adjustments elsewhere, or a new shape will become present in the marble that contains clues to understand the implications of these environmental shifts that go beyond the present environment. My spider webs have just been disrupted by a passer-by, and rebuilding must take place, sometimes with a different design.

I prefer to learn the details, the particulars, the small things about someone's argument, the way words and ideas ignite my senses and have text-ure that help me to find the fissures, the points of disconnect, and the unexpected points of connection.

***

Anything new that i learn, changes how i already know, or what i already know. Some people think that i'm distracted when i ask questions about something seemingly out of context, but they didn't turn over the rubrics-cube, they don't know about what i just saw. Those questions, seemingly out of context, are often just beyond the context the able-body is firmly planted. I have a dyslexic friend who told me, 'I think it would just be so boring to be them, they don't know that all of this is going on' - and it think she is right.

I have no doubt that many of you readers will be thinking the same thing as well, but i need to hear from you, because i can't do this on my own. If anyone would like to contribute to this discussion, please email me and I can post your response and keep your identity confidential with your request. You can contact me at dagrange@syr.edu

dene granger