In a message dated 2/2/99 3:25:53 AM Central Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
<< Aren't the students
simply missing the point if they want to 'focus on a specific disabling
condition'? Surely the 'sociology' of disability is concerned with
transcending this kind of individual and medical model thinking? >>
......Mark...could you please be more specific? From a holistic perspective,
I believe that Sociology of Disability should include "individual and medical
mode thinking". For instance, Social Gerontology covers not only the
demography of <the epidemic> of elders in the near future, but also covers
health care and studies of individual diseases such as Alzheimer's....the
implications of the nbr. of probable Alzheimer's cases in the future is
huge!...it will not only affect families, but healthcare programs and
institutions, government intervention, etc...etc...first hand contact with PWD
is imperative in Social Disability...I have used simulations to have my
students role play and experience first hand what an elder PWD
experiences...the insight they gain from this is applied to every and all
other aspects of this particular field of Sociology....but their greatest
surprise was that I,their lecturer for that day, am profoundly deaf...they
were amazed that I could speak...that I had the intelligence to teach them,
and that with a novel approach to the classroom and a sign interpreter to help
communicate, they learned more in that one hour than they had the entire
semester!.....most of all they learned that disability is NOT one size fits
all....that stereotypes are alive and well.......Kathryn
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