Dear Marian,
As in any other profession, there are average toilers there are the good
and brilliant ones and the ones that should be shot at dawn because the
damage the do is far inexcess to their usefulness. Anyone that doesn't
reaxamine her/his premises constantly, and those of others even more so,
is only playing. It seems to me that in the example you quote the person
who should have been the most important, as it was his life his future,
was marginalize (destroyed) by people who did not give a damn. It
frequently is a amtter of organizational culture, shared believes.
The importance of a good organizational culture can not be overstated.
It is about shared values, it is about what the organisation stands for,
it gives meaning to the organisation and everyone connected with it.
Peters and Waterman observe:
"Without exception, the dominance and coherence of culture proved to be
an essential quality of the excellent companies. Moreover the stronger
the culture and the more it was directed toward the market place, the
less need was there for policy manuals, organization charts, or detailed
procedures and rules. In these companies, people way down the line know
what they are supposed to do in most situations because the handful of
guiding values is crystal clear"
“In Search of Excellence” page 75/76
I think that considering our approaches are from totally different
experience and perspective, we are not too far away from actually
agreeing with each other.
Have a good time, rgds John
"The game of life is not so much in holding a good hand as playing a
poor hand well."- H.T.Leslie
Mairian Corker wrote:
>
> John wrote:
> >
> >I believe that in identification and diagnosis, not only are labels
> >useful, they are essential. In the scheme of things a label on a jar of
> >knowledge indicates what we may find in the jar, it is like a live link
> >on the web. If you are looking for thermo dynamics, you will happily
> >bypass the jar marked psychology. There is ofcourse the problem of the
> >grey areas where there is overlap, and over specialization frequently
> >leads to a blinkered view because too many relevant jars are left
> >unopened. Fortunately I was spared this in my professional life, as a
> >marine engineer is a jack of all trades by definition.
> >
> >Using labels as markers in this way I believe is every bit as legitemate
> >as finding sugar in the sugar jar. What is not acceptable is where these
> >labels are then used as a tool in social organization. It adds a ball
> >and chain where things are difficult enough without it. This of course
> >is not limited to the disability area, many other minority groups,
> >wommen, non caucasians, elderly, indigenous, prisoners, you name it.
> >Wolfensberger may be controversial, which I suppose is good as it means
> >that he has made some impact, but he at least has recognized this and
> >has tried to reverse this marginalization.
> >
> I think I would agree with you about using labels as markers to identify a
> person, but what's wrong with a person's name for that purpose? The case of
> 'diagnosis', however, has nothing to do with identification. How do we know
> the diagnostic label is accurate? As previous discussion on the mailbase
> showed, John Davis and I encountered a disabled young person who had
> already been labelled as deaf, but the label didn't satisfy some people
> because it didn't fully fit their understanding of 'deaf'. He was
> subsequently, and in our view wrongly, diagnosed as ADHD and drugged up to
> the eyeballs. This may well have the desired effect for professionals who
> wished to control his behaviour but the change in his behaviour altered the
> dynamics of relationships and his position in the children's hierarchies to
> the extent that he was bullied and marginalised from his peer group. This
> then provoked a suitably protective response from adults which give the
> peer group another reason to stigmatise him.
>
> I think we also need to distinguish such diagnostic 'markers' (which are
> used as a ball and chain) from between naming a political identity and
> claiming a social identity on the basis of identification with 'like' (both
> of which in relation to disability are processes of emancipation).
> Personally, I think Diana Fuss in her working of 'real' and 'nominal'
> essence in relation to feminism has far more useful things to say than
> Wolfensberger.
>
> Mairian
>
> *********
>
> "To understand what I am doing, you need a third eye"
>
> *********
>
> Mairian Corker
> Senior Research Fellow in Deaf and Disability Studies
> University of Central Lancashire
>
> Postal Address:
> 111 Balfour Road
> Highbury
> London N5 2HE
> U.K.
>
> Minicom/TTY +44 [0]171 359 8085
> Fax +44 [0]870 0553967
> Typetalk (voice) +44 [0]800 515152 (and ask for minicom/TTY number)
--
[InternetShortcut]
URL=http://proxy.networx.com.au/
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|