I can't remember if I blogged about the assignment I set one of my undergrad classes last semester. It's a class in which I am contractually obligated to talk about the impact of public policy on the lives of children with disabilities, and I was teaching it during the semester when Donald Trump was inaugurated. I watched in disbelief as Betsy DeVos stumbled through questions about IDEA. (A hint for you, BDV: it's a federal law, not a serving suggestion.) In my free time I was making dozens of calls to elected officials. I was setting my children to work making rally posters and writing postcards. I was on fire with the desire to do something about the state of the republic, and it occurred to me: I can encourage my students to be more vocal citizens in a way that aligns with their own political views. Maybe I should do that.
It is a given for me that the students in our program regard it as their duty to promote the well-being of individuals with disabilities. I mean, a very tiny number of them might someday become dialect coaches to famous actors, or voice therapists to famous singers, but mostly they are going to be working hard to help people with disabilities gain or regain a greater measure of independence. And in whatever setting they find themselves, taxpayer dollars are likely to cover a sizable chunk of the bill.
So I invited them to consider the ways in which public policy shapes access to services for individuals with disabilities, and to express their opinion on a policy question to an elected official. I gave them several examples; I offered them a generic script with plenty of room for their own opinions. I was careful to be as neutral as I could be: "students on the left might say that [these examples were easier to generate]; students on the right might argue that [I had to think more carefully about these but DERNIT think I did]." I said explicitly in class: "A lot of the voices in the conversation about disability-related public policy fall on the left side of the political spectrum, and I want to say directly to more conservative students that your views are very welcome here. I do not want you to feel any pressure to voice an opinion that you feel uncomfortable with." I gave them a month in which to make their one phone call, and extra credit for sharing any reply they received, and if they didn't follow instructions I gave them more chances to get it right. I do not usually have much patience for upperclassmen who don't follow instructions, but for this assignment I sucked it up. I really wanted them to know that their voices could make a difference. That their legislators' job is to represent constituents, even the 21-year-old constituents who feel nervous about calling them.
During the semester, I got exclusively positive feedback on this assignment. Every student who commented on it before May offered some version of "Wow, this was so informative!" or "This was empowering!" or "I didn't know it was so easy to make my voice heard!" But when I read the course evals last month, that assignment was the most frequent complaint I got. On about 6 of the evals (in a class of 40, so 15%), that was the thing students wanted me to get rid of. "Keep politics out of the classroom," said one.
I have been mulling this over, especially the split between the direct feedback and the indirect feedback. I am very curious about what those six or so students were thinking. I suppose it's possible that they believe the state has no obligation to citizens with disabilities, in which case there wouldn't really be a satisfactory way for them to complete the assignment. I suppose it's possible that it felt really stressful and hassle-ful to make that one phone call, especially for the students who had to re-do it. (I was genuinely shocked at the number of students who did not understand that you can't ask your state legislator to take action on a bill before Congress, or vice versa. I tried so hard to spell it out clearly in the instructions, but a bunch of them just didn't get it the first time around.) Maybe for some of them there was a moment of cognitive dissonance in thinking, "I am training to provide services to people with disabilities but some of the folks in my political party are moving to limit taxpayer-funded services to people with disabilities." Or is that an arrogant lefty kind of thing to think?
One of the things I wanted my students to take from the assignment is that there are lots of conversations we need to have about how to provide expensive services to a diverse population. I felt like I was bending over backward to welcome a variety of perspectives. But apparently it didn't feel that way to some of my students.
Recent Comments