The right to learn differently should be a universal human right that’s not mediated by a diagnosis. – Ryan Boren – International Badass Activists
The right to learn differently should be a universal human right that’s not mediated by a diagnosis. – Ryan Boren
My family lives this system, which is why I really appreciate Albemarle County Public Schools’ Seven Pathways, which states:
I like Albemarle’s approach to education technology. I write about them in “Classroom UX: Designing for Pluralism” and “Communication is oxygen. Build a districtwide collaboration infrastructure and an open by default culture.”.
They recognize the structural, institutional, and framing problems Jonathan Mooneydescribes in this great talk on reframing LD and ADHD (which is the source of the title and opening quote in this blog post you’re reading).
I transcribed my favorite moments from the talk in “The Gift: LD/ADHD Reframed”. I’ll conclude with selections making the case for two of my rules of thumb for inclusion.
An essential component of my journey was an identity transformation from being a patient to being an agent.
We’ve built an entire edifice of intervention that’s about fixing people.
We’ve built this whole infrastructure about fixing folks, about turning people into passive recipients of treatment and service, of turning people into patients. But being a patient is the most disempowered place a human being can be.
You gotta fight against this, you gotta be an advocate, you gotta have a voice in your education.
We need to cultivate a sense of agency in people which is the opposite of patient hood.
The most meaningful interventions, the most meaningful people in my life were people who cultivated a sense of agency.
We have a medical community that’s found a sickness for every single human difference. DSM keeps growing every single year with new ways to be defective, with new ways to be lessened.
When all we do is fix people, the message we give to them is that they are broken. Nobody lives a meaningful life feeling broken.
It’s that narrow definition of intelligence, behavior, and motivation that is really my disability. Not dyslexia, not ADHD.
In many learning environments we think good kids sit still. The good kid is the compliant kid.
Young folks like me are given the identity of being bad.
“What is your problem?” If I had a nickel for every time I heard that word in my life.
I was given this identity that I was a problem because of a norm in the environment that good kids sit still.
We’ve built learning environments based on the myth that appropriate and valuable human behavior is about compliance.
I had overcome not ADHD, but I had overcome the feeling of being the defective person morally because I didn’t comply to the myth that good kids are compliant.
That’s agency. That’s somebody who refuses to negate somebody’s humanity because of a label.
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