You should feel anxious!
This time Michael Shermer has annoyed his fellow academics.
"Last term I received 3 letters from my uni's disability office excusing students from taking tests in class, participating in discussions, & giving a talk (they all have to do an 18-min. TED talk in my class). Disability? Anxiety. My response: Good. You should feel anxious!" pic.twitter.com/EHPmrEmp1g
— EJ Willingham (@ejwillingham) January 27, 2019
Last term I received 3 letters from my uni’s disability office excusing students from taking tests in class, participating in discussions, & giving a talk (they all have to do an 18-min. TED talk in my class). Disability? Anxiety. My response: Good. You should feel anxious!
That’s so Shermer, isn’t it? Smug, clueless, dismissive, and sadistic, all in one.
It really isn’t that hard to accommodate student needs as evaluated by professionals, and to show some basic compassion toward students and the health concerns they may have.
— Miranda Yaver (@mirandayaver) January 27, 2019
Also, by mocking these students in this way on Twitter, you've created quite the hostile environment for them. A 504 letter for anxiety isn't some bullshit thing for, to use a term you favor "snowflakes." These are students who in some cases would not even be in school wo 1/x
— EJ Willingham (@ejwillingham) January 27, 2019
Is it more of a guy thing?
Of course Shermer has his students do TED talks. Hell, he probably brings in Thunderfoot as a guest lecturer on “how to do shouty YouTube videos for fun and profit.”
Shermer is still “teaching”? What?
Of course, this might not have happened. I deal with disability accommodations every day, and have never had a student excused from taking tests. They are not excused from giving talks if giving talks is a crucial part of the course; if there is a way to evaluate them in some other way, then that would be a possible accommodation, but I’m calling bullshit on him.
The only sort of accommodation we ever give is extended time on tests, or taking tests in a setting that is less stressful or noisy than a classroom or having tests read to them. I have never had any sort of excuse from students participating in discussions, but there might be some accommodation to make the discussion less anxiety-inducing. Such as, maybe they have a service animal. Or maybe…I don’t know, I just know that I have spent many hours with our disability officers to understand how best to accommodate the needs of students with disabilities, and from what they tell me, this is not an accommodation that a student in a college or university setting would ever receive.
But, I suppose it’s more of a guy thing and I wouldn’t understand?
iknklast, thanks for that–I was wondering how it could be OK to sign up for a class, and somehow be evaluated for your work in it, if you were exempted from doing the assignments. When I was teaching I recall getting a couple of disability accommodation forms, but literally don’t remember what they even asked for, as whatever it was was reasonable and nondisruptive enough that I didn’t notice (I think one might have been to allow a notetaker into lecture).
This is a bit of a meander, but I’m writing this comment in hope that someone might share some insight that could help me think about my badly formed question. I’ve recently been told that anxiety (like, it sounds, pretty much everything) can be a symptom of menopause; I’ve never experienced undue anxiety before, but lately have been struggling occasionally. This weekend there were engineering works on the tram line I take into town, which made my route more challenging–on one trip I had to walk about 10 minutes in the dark through an unknown and potentially dangerous neighbourhood to find a bus stop to get a replacement bus, and on another I was given wrong directions, and it took me about four tries (again in the dark in unfamiliar areas) to find the stop for the replacement bus to take me home. Both of these experiences made me anxious, as well as upset and frustrated, as these should have been ‘normal’ trips into town and back. The whole time I was oscillating between ‘I am anxious and upset about the changes in my trip; I need some additional help to cope with this’ and ‘everyone else seems to be managing, what’s your problem?’ So, I guess my badly formed question is, if some situations, like getting around the city or taking a course, are the way they are, shouldn’t we just have to deal with them? I would like to think that a marginal amount of additional thought and effort, like making the physical environment accessible (I did a lot of accessibility design and training in the early days of the ADA, but we seem to have integrated these design principles reasonably well now, at least in my field), or deploying trained helpful staff to direct people to replacement buses, would help everyone navigate the world better, but is there a point at which it’s either unreasonable (call a cab for guest to get her home because she’s having a private meltdown) or unfair (let this student, and only this student, take their exam home because they have a documented disability) to change the rules for one person? (With respect to accommodations in schools, I know this is the result of professional certification…but I’m sure readers will agree that well-off white kids with pushy parents are far more likely to have their disabilities documented and acknowledged than kids without these advantages, which may make the system of accommodation even more unfair.)
I teach first-year writing and have for thirty years. I’ve noticed a definite increase in the pushiness of the disabilities office. I’m not saying you should admire Shermer or anything, but I’m continually being bullied by students and administrators on behalf of “disabilities” I’m not permitted to know about–to permit re-dos of exams, to permit inordinate numbers of absences from classes, to excuses from assignments. This isn’t “accommodation,” it’s coddling.
I know what accommodation is: I’ve seen plenty of student excel despite disabilities, and they are NOT the ones who complain and try to get out of work, etc.
guest, as a biologist (keep in mind, I’m an ecologist, and therefore expert in human biology – see previous thread re PZ), I am aware that anxiety can be a symptom of menopause. As for myself, chronic acute anxiety has been such a reality in my life forever that I have no idea if my current condition is the fact that I am going through menopause, the fact of my ongoing condition, or the fact that D J Trump is our president.
mikeb, I have heard that some schools give students disability accommodations beyond that which is allowed by currently existing law; since I heard that only from students (and parents) who wanted basically infinite accommodations, I have not known whether to believe it or not. I do know that some students (not many, just a few) will attempt to game the system and get more than that to which they are entitled. I know some parents (yes, even in college) are pushy and shouty. I know some people who think disability accommodations are supposed to guarantee success, not just level the playing field so the student has the same chance for success as others. And I also know that schools are anxious to avoid lawsuits, and apparently there were more lawsuits about disability issues in the first six months of 2018 than there were in any full year before.
I also know, because I have walked through hell and back with a student and her shouty mother, that students are not supposed to be excused from assignments, or have the class itself altered in any way, but only to receive those accommodations which would permit them a fair chance. So delivering the assignment in a different format might be necessary, or giving the student extra time to complete it. But they are not supposed to be released from assignments at the college level, so perhaps your disability office is one of those under pressure from the administration to make the students happy. We get a lot of that pressure here, but so far, not from disability, which retains the reasonable accommodation stance. Any time it has been violated, it has been at the level of Associate Dean or Dean.
Shermer still has ACCESS TO STUDENTS?
Sorry iknklast–the reason I brought it up is that _I_ had not been aware anxiety was a symptom of menopause, and it’s because of menopause that having anxiety in unfamiliar situations is a brand new experience for me. So I don’t know, really, how to cope with it.
No problem, guest. I was just trying to be a bit helpful, and you didn’t actually trigger anything for me, so all good, right?
I’m also surprised Shermer still has access to students. Maybe the university has slap droned him?
As for how much accommodation should be made for anxiety, for me that very much depends on the nature of the course and the anticipated profession it leads to. If public speaking is not an expected role in that profession, then I see no major problem with a medically serious anxiety sufferer say recording the presentation for grading. However, if public speaking (that may be presenting to colleagues, bosses, stakeholder groups or general public), then there is no way around it. you have to learn to control your response or you can’t fulfil your role. I speak as someone who used to be terrified of being noticed in public meetings and who nearly passed out (I greyed out and had to sit down), the first presentation I gave when I started work. I practised and practised prior to my first conference presentation and apparently it was good. I don’t remember a thing. Not. One. Thing. I now present routinely to a wide range of groups as part of my job and in many formats ranging from carefully prepared presentations to the ad hoc sort of thing where I’m called on to explain a topic unexpectedly. Anxiety when speaking or performing any ‘risk’ task is expected – to an extent. You learn to control anxiety enough to perform and even use a controlled level of anxiety to sharpen performance.
I think Shermer is a slimey arsehat, but this issue is not clear or cut and dried.