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"In my life, I’ve been very blessed with my access to education and what opportunities my education has provided. My education takes place in classrooms, homes, and the outdoors with all my experiences in each providing different types of educations that all inform one another. However without my education in school, I would not be able to relate my experiences to one another and realize their significance. My education thus far has unintentionally been a practice of John Dewey’s philosophical theory on education, which he describes in Education and Democracy: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education as the connections between our experiences and our reflections of them. Dewey implies that education is an endless process in life as we are always discovering these connections by the process of thinking about our past and the consequences of our past on our future. His classed assumptions about education are that with his definition, to be educated, one must have time, energy to reflect on experiences and have access to a school that educates the whole self – mind and body. Within the working class, this access and opportunities are not normally possible. In Anzia Yezierska’s novel, she brings class to the forefront by describing how one from a working-class background feels in an upper-class college setting. Her novel seems to support Dewey’s philosophical stance on education in that her life experiences only had significance once she had the tools to reflect upon them.

I struggled greatly with this paper. The prompt was too board for me and I feel like my paper didn't have substance. I tried to focus on how access and education were connected--stemming off from the idea that experience and thought were connected. I tried to explain that education is useless without access and that it is society's job to ensure that everyone is getting an equal access to education. I am not entirely a sure that I got that sentiment across. Its hard to talk about education and access when the definition is so relative. I cant truly express about education, because I have a personal definition of it that applies, I feel, only to me. I wonder if anyone else is struggling with this and it also makes me wonder about how much emphasis there are on definitions.

I really enjoyed the videos and images we looked at in class last week. After Anne posted the link to "Britain's Missing Top Model" (the source of the photograph of the group of disabled women in pink dresses), I spent a little time surfing youtube and trying to get a feel for the show. The clip embedded in the website didn't play on my computer, but I found a promo for the show (see link at bottom of post). A few things stood out for me. The contestant featured in this clip said, "We're disabled young women, but we're just normal young women at the same time." I was struck by her use of the word normal. In any context I find the word a bit disconcerting, as we discussed in class there are times when we want to be "normal" but others when we do not. In the context of this show I was even more disconcerted because it seemed to imply that for this group of women to be "normal" they needed to be models - to be spectacularly beautiful and sexualized in a way that is not "normal" for most women and doesn't necessarily seem good. It seems that instead of celebrating the people that these women are with their disability, the show asks the audience to see who they can be inspite of their disability. It seems that they are simply being objectified differently, the emphasis being shifted from their disability to their bodies as sex objects (This reaction strikes me as a bit extreme, but to some degree I think its true). I have similar issues with similar shows such as America's Next Top Model, which is not to say that I am above watching them!

I tried to include every single thoughts and concerns in my three pages paper about education and then I realized that it is impossible. I hit the writing center and bothered my tutor, attacking her brain with my ideas on Thursday night; however, I found serendip is the right place to arrange my thoughts.

      In my paper, I argued that equal educational opportunity is essential for individual because education would change one’s thoughts internally and affects one’s behavior and action externally. Education is able to provide theories (even though its intended range includes the praxis part) so one will be able to learn by combining personal experience and positive cognition of objects. Based on this definition of education, theories need a solid base and experiences would be concrete supporting material for those theories; even though some abstract learning process, say studying math, personal evolvement is important: one should study in a critical and positive way instead of memorizing formulas passively.

McDermott and Varenne’s essay on cultural constructions of disability nicely supplements Tuesday’s discussion of how we define “norms” and the ways in which norms come to exist in any given society. The class’s thoughts seem to closely mirror McDermott and Varenne’s claim that disability is best viewed as a culturally constructed concept, and we too attempted to picture whether the concept of disability would exist at all if the socially constructed boxes that confine our thoughts, not to mention our world, were lifted.

Reading terminal market is a buzzing hotspot for locals and tourists to experience the intra-action of the stirring, culinary melting pot that is Philadelphia. I first traveled here on a date last spring and was pleasantly surprised to discover so many foods and beverages that I like easily and cheaply available. Chicken samosas, mango, banana, and pineapple smoothies, Italian hoagies, Thai fried rice… I could go on! Sitting in the food court, in the heart of the market, amidst the hustle and bustle of the crowds of families, couples, friends, tour groups, band troops, and others is quite an experience. 

After reading Culture as Disability, I began thinking about the ways in which spaces of “social interaction” are constructed to create accessibility and/or inaccessibility. I was quick to dismiss the intellectual exercise of thinking about the ways in which these spaces physically create accessibility or inaccessibility, but then realized the mere notion I would consider this a worthless exercise was part of the message of culture as disability that McDermott and Varenne enumerated.

I was in Reading Terminal Market yesterday with my mother, who was visiting me while on business in the area, and found myself observing many ways that the layout and design of the market made itself inaccessible to people with physical disabilities. I’ll flesh some of those thoughts out below, but first want to mention the people I observed who I lumped into this category. 

 After reading "Culture as Disability" and last week's viewing of Josh Blue on Last Comic Standing, I couldn't help questioning whether cultural visibility is always the best way to further understand disability and difference better. When does visibility become exploitation? Eli Clare talked about the freak show and subsequent decline of it today.  Was Josh Blue exploiting himself when he went on national TV and made fun of his disability and the stereotypes surrounding people with CP? Did he inadvertently box everyone with CP into a category they might not want to be a part of? What would Eli Clare think about Josh Blue? I guess I'm trying to sort through the question of whether or not it is helpful to make disability and queerness and other "differences" visible in society or if, possibly, it's just another less obvious form of exploitation for profit. When I read that  the recently trans gendered Chaz Bono was going to be on this season of Dancing with Stars, I thought it was an amazing advancement for the trans community to get mainstream recognition. Then recently there has been a lot of ridiculous press on the apparent controversy of having a transgendered contestant on a "family" show. People have even gone as far as to warn parents not to let their children watch the show in fear that it would confuse the child's own formation of gender identity. These news articles are perpetuating the exploitation (not visibility) of a transgendered person.