September 1: Phyllis Wallbank (b. 1918)

Born on this date in 1918, English educator Phyllis Wallbank. She worked with displaced children as a young woman in wartime London, and knew she wanted to find a way to make that her profession; a chance to hear Maria Montessori speak became the means to that end. Wallbank is one of the UK's best-known proponents of the Montessori method. In 1948 she opened Gatehouse School on the grounds of a church, and a major feature of the program was the inclusion of disabled children, at a time when few educational opportunities were available. Said Phyllis Wallbank (source):

"We incorporated mentally and physically challenged children at a time when they were normally segregated. We had groups of eight called 'families', each incorporating one disabled child. The child adapted to normality instead of to an institution. We eventually had all kinds of challenged children: children suffering from blindness, autism, maladjustment, thalidomide, Downs syndrome, cerebral palsy, brain damage and epilepsy. We had a social mix too: many children from professional families, some taking Common Entrance and public school scholarships and some local East Enders with parents known to have serious criminal backgrounds. And yet it all worked! Children were assisted and looked after by their friends and became an integral part of their "family". Often parents had no idea that a fellow student who came up in conversation at home was a disabled child."

Wallbank turns 93 today. Just a few years ago she went on an international lecture tour; one of her lectures in the US is on YouTube, in ten parts, here (there's no transcript, however).

January 23 to be designated Ed Roberts Day in California?

I've mentioned before that I find the CDCAN email updates from Marty Omoto invaluable for following what's happening in our state capital that might affect Californians with disabilities (and my own family in that). Of course, lately it's been a lot of frustrating and frightening news about cut programs and languishing bills. So this morning's update was a nice change from all that....

"SB 1256, a bill that would honor every year the life and work of revered disability rights leader Ed Roberts, recognized across the world as the 'father of the independent living movement' for people with disabilities and special needs will be heard in the Assembly Education Committee Wednesday afternoon...SB1256...has already cleared the State Senate without any opposition voted... SB 1256 would provide that the Governor proclaim January 23 of each year as 'Ed Roberts Day,' would designate that date as having 'special significance' in public schools and educational institutions, and would encourage those entities to conduct suitable commemorative exercises on that date, remembering his life, recognizing his accomplishments as well as the accomplishments of other Californians with disabilities. The legislation could pass out of the Assembly and be sent to the Governor near the 2oth anniversary of the passage and enactment of the landmark federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)."

Now, naming a day for Ed Roberts won't enforce any neglected accessibility laws, or improve Medi-Cal coverage, or keep anyone from using ableist language. But maybe schools will invite disabled performers to lead the celebration; maybe scout troops will learn to build good ramps or install clear signage on the day; maybe newspapers will seek out community activists for soundbites or more; maybe maybe maybe.

February 26: John Puleston Jones (1862-1925)

The Welsh celebrate St. David's Day this weekend, so it seems timely to note the birthdate of a Welshman.

John Puleston Jones was born on this date in 1862, at Llanbedr. He was 18 months old when he became blind from an accidental injury. His mother (who wrote poetry as "Mair Clwyd") is credited with insisting that he learn independence skills in childhood. Puleston Jones was an excellent student through school, and after a year at the College for the Blind in Worcester he went on to Glasgow University and Balliol College, Oxford. He graduated with first-class honors in modern history.

Puleston Jones was always interested in Welsh culture and history, and helped to found the Dafydd ab Gwilym Society at Oxford in 1886. In 1888 he was ordained as a pastor. He served in various churches, published his sermons and theological essays, and wrote articles for a Welsh pacifist periodical (Y Deyrnas) during World War I. He is best remembered today for devising adaptations of Braille to fit the Welsh language--adaptations that apparently remain in use today.

Today, a plaque marks the house where the Rev. Dr. Puleston Jones was raised, in Bala.

Cerrie Burnell's Arm

The BBC recently introduced new presenters on their popular children's show, CBeebies: Alex Winters and Cerrie Burnell. They're pictured at left, in a publicity still. Both young, white, conventionally attractive, with big grins for the camera. They're dressed in kid-friendly purple and green sweaters, sitting on a comfy couch with satiny pillows. And Cerrie has a noticeably short arm, ending just below the elbow.

Well, that last detail of the picture is apparently a problem for some parents. They say her appearance is "unsuitable" for a children's show, that the sight of her will "scare" children, even to the point of giving them nightmares. Complaints have been filed. Message boards on the subject brim with panic and ignorance. And it is the parents' problem, not the kids' concern: as Lucy Mangan writes about physical difference in a Guardian editorial on the subject, "To a young child, it is just another element of a large and confusing world that they want to inquire about, no more fearsome or embarrassing than any other."

So, of course kids are going to ask, that's what they do--and they're going to take their cues from how their parents answer those questions. Not just the words, either, but the tone, the body language--I posted some tips here a few years ago.

And think about this--if you're telling your children this lovely young woman is too frightful to behold, what are you telling them more generally about beauty? about perfection? What kind of impossible box are you asking them to fit into, and stay inside, for your approval?

Disability history is getting really popular with the kids...

"I wanted to be Helen Keller, but she got tooken by the very first kid!"
--my daughter Nell, after school today.

The third-graders at her school do a "Living Museum" every year, where they each dress in a costume and prepare a little talk about their historical figure. Then they each wear a "Press Here" paper button on their chests and stand along the walls of the cafeteria; the younger kids can come through and push the buttons to get the biographies recited. It's very cute. There's a standard list of names, the kids have to pick from it, one of each figure per room... and apparently HK was the first draft pick in Nell's room. I should find out when Louis Braille and Beethoven were picked up....

(Nell will be Mozart instead. That's fine, I can make some kind of a powdered wig in the next five weeks...)

November 17: Winifred Holt (1870-1945)

[Image description: black-and-white archival photo of two men seated at a table, in French military uniforms; they have their hands on a small checkerboard; one man appears to have his eyelids closed, and the other has fabric patches over both eyes; behind them, a woman in seated, and has her own hand stretched toward the checkerboard]

Co-founder of Lighthouse International (formerly the New York Association for the Blind) Winifred Holt was born on this date in 1870, in New York City, the daughter of publisher Henry Holt. She was a force in early twentieth-century advocacy --she and her organization worked for inclusion of blind children in New York public schools, for summer camps, vocational training programs and social groups run by and for blind people, for rehabilitation of blinded WWI veterans. She also worked for changes in medical protocols to prevent a common cause of blindness in newborns. She encouraged similar "Lighthouses" to operate in other cities around the world. Many of the projects she started continue in some form today.

In the photo above (found here, in the Library of Congress's Bain Collection), Holt is seen teaching newly blind French soldiers to play checkers in a rehabilitation program in France (Holt received the Legion d'Honneur for her wartime work there). Holt trained as a sculptor when she was a young woman; her best known work is a 1907 bas-relief bronze portrait of Helen Keller, online here. She also wrote a biography of blind English MP and postmaster Henry Fawcett.

June 5: Sophie Bell Wright (1866-1912)

[Visual description: A statue of Sophie Bell Wright, in New Orleans. Against a background of trees, there's a grey seated figure, leaning a bit to her right, wears a shawl and long skirt; she is seated, holding a book.]

Sophie Bell Wright fell, hard, when she was three years old. It was 1869, and in her time and place (New Orleans), there wasn't much to be done for the little girl's injured spine and pelvis. The home solution? She was strapped to a chair for the next few years, in the hopes that immobilizing her would bring healing. At age 9, she was able to get around on crutches and wearing a steel brace; for the first time, Sophie attended school. Five years later, Sophie B. Wright (like a lot of 14-year-olds) was tired of being a student. So she opened her own "Day School for Girls," using some discarded benches to furnish a room in her mother's house. By 18, she was renting a larger space to accommodate all her pupils, and she had opened a free night school for (white) daytime workers, too.

Sophie Bell Wright worked for temperance, playgrounds, and prison reform, and was president of the New Orleans Women's Club. During a yellow fever epidemic in 1897, she suspended classes and turned her schoolrooms into makeshift infirmary. She published a collection of essays based on her advice to students. In 1903 the Times-Picayune made her the first woman honored with their "Loving Cup" for outstanding social contributions. In 1904, she raised funds to build a home for "crippled orphans" in the city, and later raised funds to expand a specialist hospital. In 1912, a city school was named for her, the first public building in the city named for a woman, shortly before her death from heart disease at age 46.

The statue of Wright pictured above was created by Enrique Alferez and erected in 1988, in Sophie B. Wright Park in New Orleans. Her nearby home is also a historic landmark.

Chess Lesson in the Park

[Photo description: In a grassy park on a sunny day, shaded by trees, a man in an orange shirt is teaching a chess lesson to a small group of children--other adults and children are standing nearby.]

All the best things happen at the accessible playground, right? Saturday at Aidan's Place in Westwood, young volunteers from Chess Tutors (a division of People Making Progress) were there to teach a free basic lesson to anyone who would listen, of any age or ability. (My son is the fluffy-haired kid on the hip of one of the tutors, Neisha, at left. I think she's Neisha Ellington, who is also a local unsigned hip-hop artist. She danced him through the songs.)

They taught some of the history of chess and rap-like chants, some of them in Spanish, to remember how to set up the board, what each piece can do, all that. It's hard to see, but they brought a large-scale chess set for demonstrating--each piece is about the same height as a seated child, but light enough for a child to lift or push into place; and a hanging banner showing the chessboard, with clear pockets for moving the pieces (on cards) around. They did a nice job with making chess interesting, using various media and models, to meet a very diverse group of kids wherever they were.

Hang in there, Alex Barton--and your classmates, too

[Image description: Composite photo of a kindergarten class--mine--captioned "Jefferson School 11 1971-1972 Kindergarten"]

Hey Alex, what happened to you should never, ever happen to any kid, anywhere--you had a right to a kindergarten experience that left you excited about school, not one that left you feeling rejected by peers and your teacher. I know--because I had a pretty awful kindergarten teacher too. It was a long, long time ago, and I'm pretty sure she's gone now; she was on the verge of retirement when I had her. She tried to switch me from lefthanded to righthanded, moving the marker from hand to hand whenever she caught me doing my thing. (It didn't work.) When she saw me reading, she snatched the book and told me my parents had "ruined" my life by letting me learn to read so young, without expert instruction. I went home and stood on my head and tried to forget how to read, figuring she must be right. (That didn't work either.)

But what I remember most was that she humiliated a little boy, made him stand in the middle of the room and take her berating in front of all of us, for the crime of.... leaving the toilet seat up. Did any of us object? We wouldn't have dared. Did any of us reach out to him afterwards? I don't remember. Do any of those sweet little boys in that photo above look like they deserved that? They didn't. They couldn't. A lot of us, including that little boy and me, we graduated high school together--and I'm sure none of us forgot that moment.

Alex, your classmates, the ones who were led to vote against you, will be haunted by this moment. They were asked to be cruel to you, by an adult they trusted. Two of them voted in support of you, by all accounts, and they're obviously great kids, but the others aren't bad kids, just five years old. The adult in this case should be removed from the classroom and disciplined and, if possible, trained out of whatever ideas got her to this place; but the kids are just kids who were put in a terrible situation.

And Alex, you're just a kid too--and you absolutely didn't deserve this. But hang in there-- with any luck, you will also meet amazing teachers and peers, and learn, and flourish. A whole lot of us are watching now, and we expect the best for you.

Why I love biographical dictionaries (#2)

(Here's #1.)

A few sentences from the first paragraph of the entry on chemist Ida Freund (1863-1914), in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online; entry written by Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie:

"During her youth she lost a leg as a result of a cycling accident and the disease that followed. The artificial leg that replaced it was never very satisfactory. Throughout her life she moved about by means of a tricycle worked with the arms."

And I can't find any other mentions of Freund's tricycle anywhere. Anyone know more about it? There has to be an interesting journal article waiting to be written here--she was a chemistry demonstrator and then lecturer at Cambridge, 1887-1912, a gifted teacher, supporter of women students in the sciences, author of two textbooks. Her colleagues or students must have made some mention of her tricycle over the years?

Back to School at Terminator Elementary...

When my daughter was a year old, we were in a playgroup with about ten mothers and their babies. This being Los Angeles County, three of the ten women had "Schwarzenegger stories," tales of working on film sets with Arnold Schwarzenegger. (I laughed. Then he became governor. Then he got reelected governor.)

Now, there will be a whole new genre of "Schwarzenegger stories" among the young families of Los Angeles, because the CHIME Elementary School in Woodland Hills, a charter school that's an internationally-recognized model program of inclusive education, is renaming itself after the Governator, as the "CHIME Institute's Arnold Schwarzenegger Elementary School."

“I am honored to have a high-quality institution like CHIME Charter Elementary named in my honor. The CHIME Institute shares my commitment to educating all children,” said Governor Schwarzenegger.

Wow. And the new school mascot will be... ? The mind boggles.

[Image above: The Governor as Conan the Barbarian, dressed in leather/fur/metal underpants and studded headband, and that's about it.]

Mr. Shardlow's Opus (and Mr. Corey's too)

Kudos to the teachers at Frank H. Harrison Middle School in Yarmouth, Maine, who have set up a Wiki for their eighth-grade students to produce webpages about civil rights--including disability rights. The idea is nifty--a wiki is a great tool for collaboration, and (after registering) parents and community members are invited to join in gathering and organizing information about the history, law, and cultural aspects of various civil rights movements. In conjunction with the online aspect of their study, students are also creating exhibits for a "Civil Rights Museum," which will be open to the public on the evening of June 5. If you can't make it to the exhibit (kind of a long commute for me, from Southern California to Maine), at least tour the disability rights movement pages that the Harrison students are creating:

• Pat, Elizabeth, and Smythe from Rod Corey's class have a page called Rights of the Disabled, which currently features short profiles of Ed Roberts, John Tyler, Jeff Moyer, Gabriela Brimmer, Dorothea Dix, Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah; as well as sections about laws and historical eras.
• Catie, Read, and Alicia from Bill Shardlow's class have a page called Laws Affecting Disabled Americans--section titles include "Disability Discrimination," "Disabled and Sports," "Quotes," and "Quick Facts."

Pat, Elizabeth, Smythe, Catie, Read, and Alicia, great work! You're learning stuff about disability that most adults don't understand yet, and you're learning it in the context of civil rights--that's terrific. Mr. Corey, Mr. Shardlow, and the other Harrison Middle School eighth-grade teachers are doing fine work. I've taught middle school, and I'm really impressed with this project. Maybe you can drop them a note if you agree.

Intersections

Blue at Gimp Parade has a really good post up this morning about the complicated murder trial of Daphne Wright, a "deaf, black lesbian" whose access to a fair trial in South Dakota has been questioned. For a broader historical discussion of the idea that a "whirlwind of lesbian drama" can drive someone to murder, check out Christine Coffman's new book, Insane Passions: Lesbianism and Psychosis in Literature and Film (Wesleyan University Press 2006--the book's cover is shown at right, a black-and-white image of two young white women embracing). Coffman traces the cultural roots and expressions of the stereotype of the "insane lesbian" across the 20th century, from a murder trial in 1930s France, through film and literature.

And while I'm on the subject of intersections between criminology, GLBTQ history and disability history in the 20th century, I read an old friend's new book recently, Jackie Blount's Fit to Teach: Same-Sex Desire, Gender, and School Work in the Twentieth Century (SUNY Press 2005), in which she follows the struggle of gay and lesbian teachers against widespread employment discrimination in the US. One story (p. 113) is from the world of Deaf education in 1970:

Only a year after the Stonewall riot, a counselor at the American School for the Deaf in West Hartford lost his job immediately after he discussed gay rights on television. The young man, who had served as an officer of the Kalos Society: Gay Liberation, Hartford, had agreed to participate in a televised panel discussion on gay liberation and society. He would attempt to fight his dismissal. However, around this time, the Journal of the American Bar Association released poll results indicated that respondents 'considered homosexuality a crime second only to murder or to murder or to murder and armed robberty.' Despide this considerable public hostility, other educators besides the West Hartford counselor would begin standing up as well, even if termination were inevitable.

Yeah, Wow.

Disability Law blog has this story, with the comment "Wow." Agreed. (My son's IEP was yesterday; so, one more reason to be glad we don't live in Baraboo, I guess....)

California textbook bill already includes disability

Last Thursday, California state senator Sheila Kuehl was interviewed on the radio (the audio is here) about SB1437, "School Instruction: Prohibition of Discriminatory Content," a controversial state bill that would add "sexual orientation" to the list of identity categories to be presented without discrimination in school textbooks. The revised language would read:

No textbook or other instructional materials shall be adopted by the state board or by any governing board for use in the public schools that contains any matter reflecting adversely upon persons because of their race or ethnicity, gender, disability, nationality, sexual orientation, or religion.

Kuehl (once known for her portrayal of Zelda Gilroy on "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis") was one of the first women admitted to Harvard Law School, and is the first openly gay or lesbian person elected to the California legislature. She notes that if textbooks are "silent about the diversity of talented people who were important in California, the impression is that only white, straight men did anything important. That leaves virtually everyone else in school believing their talents may not be sufficient."

Maybe make that white, straight, able men? The disability clause is already part of the current law, and has been since 1987. Has it been enforced? I'm curious if it's ever had an impact. Under the new version (if passed), will California high school students in American history courses get to know that (for example) Hull House founder and Nobel Peace Prize winner Jane Addams (left, 1860-1935) was both lesbian and disabled (from spinal tuberculosis as a young child), and maybe talk about what it meant that she often had to conceal both these central elements of her life? How both might have shaped her work?

Cool.

Charter schools and kids with disabilities

As a public school parent (and former public school student and teacher) I remain extremely dubious about the net overall benefit of the charter school movement, especially for kids with disabilities; but it's only fair to note the exceptions where they exist. The CHIME Charter Elementary school in Woodland Hills CA, which is dedicated to inclusion of kids with various disabilities along with typical peers, won statewide "Charter School of the Year" honors earlier this year. An entry at Eduwonk.com pointed me in the direction of charter schools that serve deaf and h-o-h students; there are quite a number of these, it turns out. Metro Deaf School in Minnesota has been operating since 1993, a long history for any charter school. There are others. I should learn more about them, I guess. Still not convinced on the large-scale, but smaller-scale successes are still successes, worthy of note.