I'm Terry Dobbs, Associate Professor of Music Education
at the University of Wisconsin Madison at the School of
Music and Department of Curriculum and Instruction. I'm also the co-director
of Disabilities Studies at the University.
Today I'd like to talk to you about disability.
When it comes to thinking about disability
and the context of our classrooms, teaching,
and research, many of us think of it as a problem or
challenge, particularly as a problem to be solved. But does it have
to be a problem? Music educators are
human, so let's think about that. I propose that as
music educators, disability can be thought
of in ways that embrace it.
Disability is opportunity for all of us, and in this way,
I theoretically can see disability as
variations on the theme of inclusion. In education,
we typically approach disability from a rehabilitative or
therapeutic perspective. It's something outside the
norm that must be fixed. What must be fixed
lies within the body of the child or the
student in front of us. That's focusing on
ability - what someone can do or
can't do. By doing this, disability
is treated as a deficit. This is the
problem to be solved. In music education, it's very
similar, especially since so many of our music making
experiences focus on performance: singing, performing
instruments, dancing, even listening.
So consider the concept of auditions. Who is in and
who is out? So what I suggest is a change of
perspective: looking at the glass as half
full by asking two questions. Where does the disability exist?
Second, what can each one of us learn from disability?
To sort out my questions, I turned to theories from disability studies,
and emerging trans-disciplinary field within the
humanities. I found four theories to be particularly helpful for me.
Able-ism is the first,
and that's the preference of the so-called non-disabled or
normal bodied over the disabled bodies. Able-ism creates
a hegemony of normativity. The second is
the social model of disability. This is
constructed as part of one's identity. Disability
is considered to be a rich and complex meaningful component
of people's lives. Social attitudes and
institutions determine, far greater than
biological fact, the representation of the body's
reality. Three principles
taken from social construction are key here.
The first is that knowledge is socially situated. Identities
are socially constructed, and third,
some bodies are excluded by
dominant social thinking. The third
model is that of complex embodiment, and that
conceptualizes disability as cultural and minority
identity, but it encompasses the spectrum of human
variation across and within the human lifespan. This definition
embraces race, gender, sexuality,
class, aging, and illness (particularly chronic illness),
and it creates a nuance understanding of peoples'
lives. The fourth model is that of
cultural disability. This model interrogates disability's
cultural locations: where disability interacts
with non-disability. The locations are spaces of daily
interaction, including schools, music classrooms,
stores, restaurants, wherever people gather, and wherever disability
is managed and treated as a problem to solve.
In my work, I employ these models of disability to
push against a model that I suggest is prevalent in North
American culture, and indeed, many cultures, but specifically
education in general, and music education in particular.
That's the medical deficit model. This
model situates an individual with disabilities as
outside what is accepted as the norm or normative.
Any deviance is defined as an embodied deficit:
it strictly resides when in the body.
Disability is all too often considered to be a personal
issue, and stigmatizes individuals who are
marked as different. Individuals are seen as needing repair
and they are perceived from what they can't do as opposed
to what they can do. Further, disability is seen
as a tragedy. My work in disability studies leads
me to conduct discourse analyses of multiple texts, including
publications of music education research that address disability.
A preponderance of the discourse, and that is, the overarching
messages, indicate that
one, that research participants with
disabilities are often subjected to deep disclosure. We want to know
is, what exactly is wrong with that person?
Are they deaf? Do they have ADD? Are they blind?
Do they have cognitive disabilities? Second,
disability is typically described or implied
to be a bodily impairment. Third,
the normative body, that is, the so-called able body,
is presented
as preferred, and we know that the able-body
needs the disabled body in order to exist.
Framing the disabled and non-disabled bodies as
bipolar opposites negates the complexities
that lie between them, just like an interval of a perfect
fifth: rather than the first note and the second note being the most
important, most of the information lies
between those notes, creating that interval. So more than
simple binaries, disability and ability are
muddled. They overlap with each other and they're contingent
upon culture and context.
By becoming familiar with alternative humanistic models of disability,
I encourage us to consider a
more ecological approach in both our music
research and pedagogy. First, consider where the
disability is located: the physical environment,
our beliefs or attitudes and those of our colleagues and students?
Consider who gets to define disability.
Those of us who are, for the most part, normative and nontypical
or those whom we considered are not normative?
Naming difference is powerful, and all too
often, it's those who identify as non-disabled
who get to do the naming. What can we learn from
disability? What new ways of thinking and sound might we
discover? What new pedagogical strategies might we create
that will benefit multiple students within the musical
experience? What about disability might be
transformative for each one of
us, but most importantly, our students? How might we employ these
theories of disability to create music classrooms that serve as
cultural and equitable locations of music
experiences. Theories from disability studies challenge
us to rethink disability and help us move beyond
therapeutic perspectives to understanding it as a
complex, interactive system that includes human relationships, 131 00:09:16,660 --> 00:09:10,130 perceptions, and beliefs. Thanks for listening.