Just When I Thought the Semester Was Going Well, I Was Reminded of What I Do and Why I Have to Do It

I have to vent. I normally reserve such ventings for weekly therapy sessions with my workmates and spouse and, since Simon is lucky enough to be both, he gets it twice. But I've done that already today and I'm just not feeling any better. This semester I am teaching a new course, Disabilities Studies, which is aimed at first year students. This is a relatively new field in the world of academia (it hit the scene about 15 years ago) and is absolutely cutting edge in philosophy departments (which tend to lag behind academic cutting edges quite a bit). Put most generally, the main idea of the course is to investigate and analyze issues relevant to individuals who have disabilities (whether those disabilties be physical, intellectual, psychological, emotional, and so on). This includes not only legal issues (usually created by the American Disabilities Act) but also issues involving education, medical care, employment, housing, and anything in "popular culture" like movies and tv, novels and films, and so on. What's really cool about disabilties studies is that all the literature is written by people who have disabilities, not by "experts" who make a living studying (or "curing") such individuals. Even though this is the first time I have taught this course, it's packed and most of the students have admitted to me (either in class or privately) that they have someone very close to them who has a disability. Their personal experiences have really brought amazing insights into classroom conversations, and I have really been enjoying teaching this class. Until today, when one of our department's part-time instructors, Mejdulene, came into my office to tell me that she saw one of my students in the elevator, carrying the textbook for this class. Mejdulene then asked the student how she was enjoying the class so far. The student replied, "It's retarded." The student explained that the "retardedness" of the course stemmed from the classmates who waste class time with "totally retarded questions."

I was pissed off when I heard this and have been doing a slow burn ever since. How is it possible to sit in a class on DISABILITY STUDIES--a course entirely devoted to analyzing the offensive, obnoxious and dehumanizing assumptions about individuals with disabilities that permeate this culture and the resulting institutional policies that oppress amd degrade such individuals--and then casually (and unreflectively--have I taught her nothing in these past six weeks?) use the term "retard" to express disapproval? Why would such a person take this class? Why is she still in this class? And why, for god's sake, does this person wish to go into elementary education where I am sure she will spread the word "retard" with wild abandon? (I know she's an elementary ed major because I am able to access her student records. Bwahaha!) I am very tempted to turn this course into her private hell. (Repeat: Bwahaha!) Would that be wrong? Would that make me a bad person? I don't think so.

I didn't have an image to include in this post relevant to this issue. So here is this.