I have a class in ten minutes–and so I’ve got to be fast. I’m 53 years old and went to public school and then to college in the years before the ADA. Like all pwds in my generation I can report that geting an education was quite hard and that accordingly I found myself working even harder than my classmates.
Nowadays I see many students in higher education who, knowing they have accommodations and rights, will appear to use disability as a factor when explaining why they are doing less work.
Obviously this is a dreadful generalization. But I swear I’ve been watching this development over the past 8 years and I see that pwds who are teachers and professors may have to stand for renewed rigor in new and unexpected ways.
In haste this morning I’m hoping to start a little dialogue with burning sticks…
S.K.
Planet of the Blind 
Based on my experience as a teacher, I see very few if any physically disabled students. Students with learning disabilities are far more common but still out of the norm. In short the number of disabled students I am exposed to is severely limited. Given this, I am not sure if they resemble non-disabled students.
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…or students are so overloaded with debt and work that they’ll use whatever they can to lessen their workload? Or there’s more disabled people at university, rather than just the super-motivated elite, and the more disabled students you get, the more they just resemble…non-disabled students?
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Oh no, you are starting to sound like an old fart. Complaining about the lazy youth of today and how hard you had it is not helpful. Kidding aside, I get what you are saying. I think there are now two groups of disabled people: pre-ADA and post-ADA cripples. We are the pre-ADA cripples, bad asses that worked our tails off because we had no choice. If we failed, other disabled people would not be admitted to college or hired by a corporation. Today, students with disabilities assuming the ADA is embraced by all teachers who are happy to accommodate them. They are also not afraid to use the system to their advantage. I for one think students work less today because they are working more–that is they are working on average 20+ hours a week to pay for an education that is beyond their financial means. They arrive to class at night in record numbers because they are tired from working all day to pay for an education they are too sleepy to absorb. Teachers like you and me are frustrated and students looking to use any excuse to get by. It makes me long for the olden days when I was in college and could commiserate with my friends about who was the most hung over person that made it to a morning class.
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