Invisible Cities: The Arts and Renewable Community

Objectives

The first objective of this curriculum is to frame disability as a social justice issue. This will be achieved through a comparison of the medical model of disability, currently accepted by the majority of mainstream society, and the human centered social minority model that has been adopted by disability rights activists. Because of the widespread acceptance of the medical model most students don't recognize how unjust the segregation of their disabled peers is. Students with disabilities are invisible to the general education population because policy makers have arranged the social and physical structures in such a way that reinforces an unequal and unjust hierarchy. The objective is to dispel the idea of normative hierarchy by reframing for students what it currently means to have access in our educational system and discuss what equal access for all students should mean and look like. To teach young people that it is not the student who is inadequate to perform the task in a particular environment, but that in fact the environment is, because of its lack of accessibility and malleability, an inadequate environment for that student to be successful. To convince them that there is an environment that exists, though it is not yet visible, in which students with disabilities could achieve alongside non-disabled peers. The goal is for students to begin thinking about how we can alter environments to accommodate people rather than how to change people to fit within an environment.

This abstract concept will be best illustrated to the student body through physical examples of built environments and the struggle people with disabilities have in navigating such an environment. Ed Roberts, a quadriplegic activist and student at the University of California Berkeley in the 1960's is the quintessence of someone that disproved the medical model. My second objective is for students to learn about Ed Roberts and the robust, exciting, and largely unknown disability rights movement that occurred in the 1960's in nearby Berkeley. The disability community represents the largest minority in the United States of which 20% of the country is a member, yet their struggle and history is non-existent in public education. ⁴ My hope in teaching this material is not only to give students a concrete example of someone who was successful in navigating both the built and social environments when they were altered in order to accommodate him, and how that success improved not only his life, but the lives of everyone in the community.

My students often need accommodations or modifications to the educational, social, behavioral, emotional, or physical environment. As a special education teacher I hope to teach them that if they encounter an obstacle that they are unable to overcome because of their disability, they need to speak up for what accommodations and modifications need to be put in place in order for them to overcome. To do this they need to become comfortable with their disability. This comfort will allow them to explore the limitations it brings. Students can then explore what their environment can provide to help bypass or overcome those limitations and allow them to stay abreast to the rest of the population. Studies show that students that understand their disabilities are more comfortable speaking up for what they need. ⁵ Ed Roberts was the embodiment of self-advocacy and he felt that it was of the utmost importance to the disability community. ⁶ I want my students to learn from Ed's story, just how powerful self-advocacy and self-determination can be.

Out of the fog of the battle for disability rights and their social justice comes a new type of built environment that exemplifies the independent living movement. Aligned with the social minority model this built environment is designed not for the norm, but to include as many of the outliers as possible. ⁷ This architectural and design movement is called Universal Design, and the thought behind it is that structures and objects built for people to interact with or within should be accessible to as many people as possible. ⁸ In most of this country's built environment there are within each city, two cities. One of these cities is visible to everyone. The other is only visible to those that are unable to navigate the first. This second city is full of barriers and restrictions to those aware of its existence. This city is invisible to the majority of the population and so it continues to thwart those who can see it. Universal design seeks to remove from this invisible city, the obstacles that exist for people who deviate from the norm, and to recreate an inclusive environment that allows for the greatest accessibility without sacrificing aesthetics. The Ed Roberts Campus is the perfect illustration of this concept. I would like to highlight for students the subtleties that make the Ed Robert campus such an inclusive piece of architecture, and push them to think about how this concept of inclusion could be applied to other parts of society.

By contrasting the social and physical structures that were in place before the disability rights movement in with the physical and social structure that is the Ed Roberts Campus I hope to illustrate how effective and beneficial this alternative model is to society. This will lead to more abstract conversations about the non-physical social structures that exist in communities throughout the country and the how applying a universal design like concept can make communities academically, socially, and emotionally accessible to those who deviate from the norm.