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Crisis vs statis in learning?

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 1 Oct 2012, 11:28

We are this nation, this community as a consequence of crisis set on an island (or two or more).

Mess in a bubble. Historically change has been elastic and ultimately plural and accommodating. In relation to my current module H810, we are currently looking at 'reasonable adjustements' that institutions and employers should make for people with disabilities.

There's just so much tweaking you can do.

I'd like to see a greenfield campus, along the lines of the Olympic Village reconfigured for the Paralympics. Take a venue for wheelchair basketball and turn it into a lecture hall - only then can you reasonably cater for students, personal assistants and note takers and support for the lecturer to provide alternative versions of their slides and notes. They had better be good. Release it as a TED lecture too.

My criticism of the schooling I had was that, like a sausage machine its modus operandi was to cut me into a shape that they required during schooling and expected as an outcome - with parents in cahoots. There was never room for anything but the mildest of disabilities and even here asthmatic, hearing and learning difficulties were, at best tolerated, at worst a label that staff and pupils used to set this person apart as an 'alien'.

There is a need to accommodate differences, the uniqueness of each of us and how to develop the best from each person without dogma or coralling everyone down the same path.

Across education institutions need to see parents and students as customers or clients, who directly or indirectly are paying for the good or poor service they recieve in equal measure. Far more effort by people needs to be put into listening and ubderstanding in an informed and educated way.

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