Mayo Clinic researchers have designed a chairless classroom that they say may cut down on childhood obesity even as it helps children focus on learning and being happier in school.
“We know that a major culprit behind obesity is a lack of physical activity,” says Dr. James Levine, a Mayo Clinic obesity researcher who has studied the connection between everyday movement and weight.
Levine wondered if a different type of classroom could encourage movement, and ultimately, reduce the risk of obesity. Earlier this year, Levine and Mayo Clinic colleagues put the notion to the test. They designed what they believe is the first classroom without chairs using a range of creative and mobile tools. Each student had a “standing desk” on wheels that could easily move around the classroom. Apple loaned wireless notebook computers and iPods, which students used in regular learning activities.
My high school chemistry class had high tables and stools for students to sit at. The experiments were done at these tables or at the high counters along the walls. Each student had a table and lab partner — except for me. I sat alone at the front of the class at a low table about a yard from the chalk board.
When we had experiments, I joined some duo, peering at what they worked on with the project at my eye level. There was no way I could participate hands-on, particularly when volatile chemicals were used. A few experiments I could do at my low table. Alone. Where I didn’t have the camaraderie of teamwork that the other students all enjoyed.
Similar to my chemistry classroom furniture, many restaurants now feature tall tables and stools for guests. Some busy lunchtime cafes even have wall-hugging counters with no chairs at all so workers can stand and eat — part of the hurried lunch break of American work culture. By law, these establishments have to provide accessible wheelchair seating. I don’t know what the exact occupancy ratio is, but frequently this means one or two normal-height tables in a corner somewhere for the likes of me — if the place is ADA-compliant. A similar problem exists in bars, and restaurants that have lots of booths.
When an environment is apportioned out so that, by furniture design, wheelchair users are excluded from most of the space and all that space creates a social environment as high or higher than the wheelchair user’s eye-level, the exclusion can be keenly felt. It’s spatial discrimination, really. There’s a place for you, but you can only stay in your place since the rest of the environment is designed in a way that is not usable.
It’s fundamentally different from seating at, say, a stadium or theater where wheelchair access seating must be integrated into the whole floor plan. It may not be optimum seating — in fact, it rarely is, since building owners can make more money keeping the premium seats wheelchair inaccessible — but there’s the potential for everyone present to be seated, more or less equally. (Nondisabled people standing at concerts and giving wheelchair users only butts to look at from their equally-expensive seats is another topic for another day.)
I like the idea of classrooms where the furniture is all mobile and teaching allows for movement and more dynamic and varied gatherings of students, but if classroom furniture begins to be designed for the standing student, the sitting ones will be even more excluded spatially. The mobile part would be excellent — more room for wheelchairs to get around. But furniture for standing students raises the plane of classroom conversation over the wheelchair user’s head.
The ADA doesn’t account for perceptual/conceptual discrimination of this kind so there would be no legal recourse, as far as I know. I’m all for making classroom learning a more comfortably physical experience. Perhaps there’s some way to copy what I’m told is a West Point custom: students who feel in danger of falling asleep during lectures are encouraged to get up and stand in the back of the classroom, promoting activity to focus attention. At least that’s voluntary.
Article via Amy Tenderich at Diabetes Mine
Crossposted at The Gimp Parade.
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wow.
i’m not in a chair, but i do have arthritis. i can tell you that the thing this would have encouraged for me would have been absenteeism. in high school, i was first diagnosed and had a series of very bad flares. there were several times when my mom (who drove me to school) would drive off so we could get breakfast (i have the best mom ever, yes i do) and then drive back home and kick me out of the car and tell me to go back to bed and she’d call me in sick, just because i looked so in pain and awful. i cannot even imagine how many more days i’d have been out of school if i’d had to stand up all day.
“We know that a major culprit behind obesity is a lack of physical activity,”
Sorry, but no one’s mentioned the primary problem here — that way too many people are assuming a genetic characteristic is abnormal, with no evidence. And, they trying to WIPE FAT PEOPLE FROM THE FACE OF THE EARTH. Even though the fat kids are frequently also the school athletes. Even though “activity” makes only a tiny difference in body weights (i.e. about five pounds in adults). Even though fat people aren’t the lazy drains on society they’re basing this program design on. Even though they’ll still have plenty of fat kids around to hate after implementing this phase of the pogram.
Sorry, but I really don’t care whether the gas chamber is accessible or not. What bugs me is that it exists at all. (At least, if they were just shooting at us outright, we could finally fight back in kind and end this hate war.)
How do you read
“Levine wondered if a different type of classroom could encourage movement, and ultimately, reduce the risk of obesity”
and get
“they trying to WIPE FAT PEOPLE FROM THE FACE OF THE EARTH.”
??
I have RSD in my left foot, and this would have probably killed me. The pain from standing all day would be unbearable. Anothe method of this idea, that might be more equal would be to allow kids to sit on those large therapy balls. This would also encourage movement, but put people on a level more accessible to someone in a chair. Kids could bounce, and be more active that way if they chose.
Let form follow function. I like to see things designed for optimal use with the human body. To be sure, the wide variety of human bodies makes this challenging. But mostly the challenge seems to come from convention: “We can’t re-design eating utensils (or whatever)! It’s just not done!” So I applaud the idea of having standing classrooms, if only for its willingness to challenge convention.
Blue notes how making the world taller exacerbates the existing spacial exclusion experienced by people in wheelchairs. Arguably there’s a design problem here. But I can see various ways to characterize the problem. Is the world too high for people in wheel chairs to participate in? Or are people in wheel chairs too low to participate in the world?
Perhaps standing classrooms should also have ramps permitting wheel chairs to get up higher next to classroom work spaces. Perhaps schools could provide “standing wheelchairs.” Alternatively, perhaps standing students could stand in trenches, permitting them to continue to work at 2.5-ft high tables along with their seated classmates.
I doubt that any solution would entirely erase the problems of spacial exclusion here. Indeed, Blue acknowledges that she felt excluded during science experiments at her sit-down school. I merely note that I favor designing classrooms to meet the needs of every body type, including those who are not in wheelchairs.
following up on blue’s comment:
Classrooms (even “sitting” ones) are already poorly designed for the sitting student, from what you have said here. Perhaps having novel redesigns would, as nobody.really notes, provide BETTER opportunities in the long run. The nice thing about big changes is that there’s often less opposition to “adding in” another small change, e.g. increased access for the disabled.
It also may be that some things are not really solvable given limited resources and space. I’ve done a lot of lab work in my day–it used to be my full time job for years. While I imagine it would be possible to create a lab environment which was fully accessible, I can see how it would be difficult as hell. A lot of the standard stuff-fume hoods, protective gear, etc–are already expensive and difficult to modify. I’ve seen some innovative solutions, esp. in the area of fume ventilation. But it’s possible that full participation can’t be acheived on a typical school budget. Of course, there’s no excuse for at a minimum providing everyone with a full VIEW. Even if one can’t personally hold the vial of HSO4, one can participate as note taker, analyzer, etc. There’s usually more available hands than are “needed” in terms of manually performing the experiment anyway.
As for restaurants: well, that’s the old “who do you cater to?” question as usual. things change a lot in my perspective when we leave the school system (which is obliged to cater to everyone as much as possible) and enter the world of capitalism (which is not).
As you note, “It [getting rid of certain types of furniture in order to acheive a less spatially-unequal space] may not be optimum seating — in fact, it rarely is, since building owners can make more money keeping the premium seats wheelchair inaccessible — but there’s the potential for everyone present to be seated, more or less equally.” I don’t want to side track this thread. Perhaps you could start another one to discuss the balancing between “optimum for some” vs. “equal for all” in a non-public setting?
As we all know, back in the days when no one had to endure the sight of slightly pudgy child, all children stood all the time. Just look at TV and movies from the 1950’s.
Oh, wait, I seem to recall them always sitting with desks and what not. Kinda like they still are. But clearly, its school desks that are to blame for forcing people to have to occassionally glimpse a fat youngster.
Like, Blue, I’m all for innovative and modular approaches to classroom design. But forcing kids to stand all day isn’t a weight loss treatment. Its just plain absurd and vindictively punative. IF there is a problem with a lack of physical activity in children (and no, the existance of fat kids is NOT proof of such a problem), then there ought to be a coherent response to that. Don’t force the kids to stand all day. I cannot imagine the resulting fatigue would be condusive to learning. And whatever response is offered needs to stop looking at fat children as the problem to be solved and their elimination as proof of success. Activity is good. We ought to find ways to encourage it in an inclusive manner for ALL children depending on their abilities. I was a thin kid, but I hated most structured sports because I just wasn’t good at them and my inabilities became a means for discouraging me from participating. But I loved to play. We have to lose the one-size-fits-all model of childhood sports and playtime. And we need to stop treating fat kids as a blight on society. Even a good idea, if premised on the eradication of fat children, will be a horrible failure and do far more harm than good. We need to stop teaching body hatred to everyone. Kids and adults alike. Stigmatizing fat people has been the ONLY treatment for decades and what is the result? Apparently, more and more fat people if the whines of “EPIDEMIC!” are to be believed. We need to get out of the weight loss mindset. Its failed. We need to focus on encouraging the health and well being of all people, regardless of body size, composition, or abilities.
Multiple good comments here :) I’d like to start by saying that I don’t think anyone opposes rethinking classroom design or space allocations to improve performance or health in general – assuming that’s the goal (and I can see the previous posters point that by trying to reduce “childhood obesity” in general we are also trying to reduce fat people in general, and that IS a problem). The problem really rests in the assumptions that all bodies or most bodies are abled and those few marginal people who aren’t, well, we’ll just deal with it as it comes. The problem with that line of thinking is that a) you end up alienating and ostrasizing anyone who is out of the “norm” and that in and of itself is a problem. b) if you considered or consulted with people who fall outside the realm of normal on conceptual projects like this you just might come up with an even MORE optimal and useful tool. It often irks me when people assume that wheel chair ramps and other phsyical modifications for people in wheel chairs ONLY benefit those in wheel chairs. Please. Anyone here ever taken a child around in a stroller? Have you discovered/thought about how much having ramps and curb cuts enable you to more easily move through the world? Have you ever moved heavy equipment or boxes from one place to another trying to use a rolling cart or dolly of some kind? The exact modifications that are required under the ADA for people in wheel chairs is the reason that doing those things is a little easier. It often irritates me when I see a brand new building that has multiple avoidable architectural design elements that create accessibility issues. Had that architecht consulted with someone who is NOT able bodied in designing the building we might have a more efficient and useful building OVERALL. The privilege of not having to consider the implications for people who are not 100% able bodied results in a tremendous bias and potentially limits the scope of our inventiveness and overall thinking.
As previous posters stated, there are many people who are not necessarily chair users who would suffer from standing all day, and I can think of several reasons this would NOT be an optimum learning environment for children. Not to mention, I wasn’t aware that it was a school systems job to monitor the weight levels of its students. If they were really concerned about health/weight levels of students why not start by modifying school lunch programs? Ketchup should not be considered a vegetable for the purposes of developing a healthy lunch program.
Other considerations may include that making certain children are given reasonable access to recess and the ability to run around the school yard. I’ll never forget how when we moved to Ohio, the teachers in my 5th and 6th grade classrooms used Recess and a privilege rather than a right and would not hesitate to take that time away if people were unruly. The idea was that through peer pressure we could convince other children to act appropriately in order to benefit the whole group. While I understand the logic, sitting at a desk staring at the wall for 30 minutes when you should have been outside playing on the playground was certainly a way to decrease our activity level. Given the pressure schools and teachers are under to produce certain academic results even in very young children, the pressure has mounted to reduce the amount of “extra” time children have at school – cutting art and music programs, reducing recess times etc. THOSE would be the first things I would change if my goal was to enable children to have more periods of activity during the day.
BStu, you talk about “forcing” the kids to stand all day.
The linked article says
Forced? i don’t think so.
I mean, come on. Promoting kids to be more active has, as Blue correctly notes, serious potential consequences for disabled folks, if it’s done in a manner that enhances the differential between ables and disabled experiences. It’s not a wholesale attack on fat people’s personal identity though, unless you make it one.
I just think it’s a pity that Blue’s interesting post about a more active test classroom is being turned into a FA springboard, complete with flying accusations of ending the world for fat people, and fat epidemics and, I expect soon, claims of eugenics and hitler to go along with the “wipe us from the earth” mindset.
Sailerman, your level of rhetoric seems more aimed at expressing your contempt for those who disagree with you, and for turning this thread into a flame war, than at having a civil discussion.
If Blue objects to the direction the discussion here has taken, I hope she’ll say so, and I’m sure other folks will respect that.
It wasn’t intended to be. Go ahead and delete my recent post if you think it reads that way; I won’t object.
Wow. You really can’t see why fat activists would have something to say about “Plan to Eliminate Fat Children #657843”? You clearly don’t respect our position if you cannot see why we see a serious problem with those who treat our bodies as an “epidemic” and something which demands treatment and intervention so that our bodies will confirm to cultural expectations. A discussion about ways to design classrooms that are more conducive to learning is a good discussion to be had. However, a discussion about how to design classrooms to best enforce a punative strategy of physical activity to eliminate fat children is NOT that discussion. Its aims and goals have nothing to do with education, and as Blue notes, such a focus readily ignores the needs and interests of students who are in a wheelchair. The rush to respond to the “epidemic” of fat children is instead providing a very real detriment to children who use a wheelchair. Such is the single-minded folly of the panic over the so-called “obesity epidemic”. To think that fat activists wouldn’t have something to say about that is very pecular, indeed.
I’d been putting off commenting until I decided if nobody.really’s comment was serious or a joke. Anyone?
Universal design. It’s the design concept for architecture, products and services that what is offered should be useable by as many people as possible. This is different than simply “accessible” or “barrier free” design, which may have, for example, wheelchair access to the side of a building, as an add-on, instead of an integrated part of design that is useful and useable for everyone. Fat people included.
This standing classroom seems a step backwards to me. As are the suggestions of nobody.really and Sailorman.
Each student had a “standing desk” on wheels that could easily move around the classroom.
I know some teachers, and the part of my brain that sometimes tries to think the way teachers think immediately imagined a couple of dozen children driving their desks (with wireless laptops attached) madly around the classroom. That doesn’t sound like my kind of learning environment, but fortunately I don’t have to go to school any more.
And what other projects could have been implemented with the resources expended to “redesign all of the science labs and other classrooms”?
I think disabled access is a positive good, and one well worth the investment of considerable resources. But rhetoric that talks about investments of hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars on renovation projects as being isolated from other economic decisionmaking – as though that million would have otherwise gone for chocolate and movie rentals – is to do a disservice to the eternal truth that resources must be balanced.
It’s not a simple question of being accomodating or being discriminatory. It’s also a question of what resources are available and what competing demands are on the institutional priority list.
Yes and no, Robert. On retrofitting existing space, you have a point – though I think that rendering space usable to the widest variety of people possible should be a very high priority indeed.
On new building, or on updating that’s occuring anyway? Not so much. In those cases the spaces have to be designed anyway – they should be designed to permit as much access as humanly possible. a) it’s the right thing to do. b) if it’s done even halfway decently, it makes the space more usable for everyone. c) it lowers the use of resources over time, by permitting more people to use the facility without aid. E.g. in a building with easy chair access to all levels, any class may be held in any room without needing extra accomadation for someone in a wheelchair. If it doesn’t then either you must make sure all classes with students in chairs are held in accessible classrooms, or detail people to ensure the disabled student can get to the class (help someone down a staircase, take notes, record class, etc. etc.) Which costs more to do in the long run?
It actually gets more complicated than that, since you also have to take emergencies into account – in case of fire, can the student get herself out, or do you have to detail someone to carry her out (plus backup), or designate a “safe area” for the fire fighters to check (don’t recommend that one, they often forget).
In short, a host of difficulties can be prevented for the future by ensuring the facilities enable the maximum number of people to do the maximum amount of stuff for themselves. Difficulties can be pretty expensive.
It’s not a simple question of being accomodating or being discriminatory. It’s also a question of what resources are available and what competing demands are on the institutional priority list.
You are ignoring the morality part of the issue. Sometimes morality trumps economics. As an example, it is much more economically efficient to provide food and housing to the chronically homeless. However, many people feel that the chronically homeless don’t deserve that free handout and so programs that would result in us spending less on the chronically homeless are far less than universal. Perhaps people feel that morality trumps economics when it comes to spending the money/resources on accomodation. Or not.
Oh, on new construction there’s no reason NOT to build with universal access in mind. It really does pay for itself – I forget the statistic, but isn’t it something like 80 or 90 percent of the population that will be disabled at some point? My rheumatoid conditions are bad enough that I’m glad most every building built between now and my “golden years” is likely to include some thinking that takes the future me into account.
Jake, the difficulty with letting morality trump economics is that the economic question still remains – only the morality changes. There is no escaping the dilemma of tradeoffs. The moral hazard you allude to re: homelessness does not apply in the case of the disabled; most of us suspect that giving homeless people an easy ride would encourage homelessness, but nobody sane (that I know of anyway) thinks that making society more comfortable for the disabled is going to encourage people to hop into wheelchairs.
I’d been putting off commenting until I decided if nobody.really’s comment was serious or a joke.
Always prudent on the web, and perhaps especially so in my case. I have a friend who asks me to hold up two fingers when I’m speaking facetiously so that everyone can tell. (For what it’s worth, my wife has learned to tell when I’m being facetious, but no one can tell when my brother is.)
In this case, however, I was speaking in earnest. My suggests were in the nature of a brainstorm, intended to provoke unconventional thinking, but I did not offer them in jest.
This standing classroom seems a step backwards to me. As are the suggestions of nobody.really and Sailorman.
I understand Blue’s main point to be that many things are designed without considering their effect on people in wheelchairs – and, by extension, other minority groups. I understand Blue to use the example of a standing classroom merely to illustrate this problem.
While I affirm Blue’s main point, I note that this example may not illustrate the point well. Blue felt spatially excluded by conventionally-designed classrooms as well, and it is not clear to me that the accommodations that would be required to help integrate people in wheelchairs in a conventional classroom could not also be made to integrate them into a standing classroom. Therefore, I see two distinct issues: 1) The need to integrate the activities of both people in wheelchairs and people out of wheelchairs, and 2) the need to design classrooms around the needs of human bodies generally. We need classrooms for everybody and every body.
More generally, I join Kate L. in questioning the able-bodied/disable-bodied dichotomy. While Blue notes how a standing classroom might not promote the needs of students in wheelchairs, she makes no mention of the issue that prompted the discussion of standing classrooms in the first place: Do conventional classrooms promote the interests of students (and their bodies) generally? Maybe it’s just a difference in emphasis. I understand Blue to argue that we should consider the needs of all bodies, including those in wheelchairs; I argue that we should consider the needs of all bodies, including those NOT in wheel chairs.
I sense an unstated assumption that conventional designs automatically reflect the needs of “able-bodied” people. And, to be sure, conventional designs are more accommodating to “able-bodied” people than to people in wheelchairs. But I sense conventional designs often reflect the convenience of manufactures, or simple historical contingencies, rather than the needs of bodies; convention oppresses us all. Universal Design is the banner under which we all move forward, whether on foot, on wheel, or otherwise.
You really can’t see why fat activists would have something to say about “Plan to Eliminate Fat Children #657843”??
Again, I favor designing things with a conscious regard for the bodies that will use them. If some bodies would benefit from standing in class, and if there are insufficient countervailing considerations, then we should design a classroom to enable them to do so.
I share Sailorman’s view that the Great Obesity Scare is largely a separate issue. If standing would help obese people, great. If it would help thin people, great. If it would help active people, great. If it would help inactive people, great. If it would help nobody, well, it’s still great that we were able to put the needs of the human body above the demands of convention for long enough to consider the alternative.
It’s not a simple question of being accommodating or being discriminatory. It’s also a question of what resources are available and what competing demands are on the institutional priority list.
Yeah, yeah. I’ve regarded this discussion more as an opportunity to transcend conventional thinking in order to brainstorm ideas for how to integrate the needs of different bodies in a classroom setting; no doubt there are a jillion practical matters to be considered before implementing any of them, including cost.
That said, I would be interested to hear Blue’s opinion about one specific proposal: the standing wheelchair? Sure they’re expensive, but as contrasted with the cost of renovating so much of the world…? Maybe this would be a topic for another discussion.
… but nobody sane (that I know of anyway) thinks that making society more comfortable for the disabled is going to encourage people to hop into wheelchairs.
That’s my point. If enough people feel that ethics/morals calls for the expenditure, it will be done no matter if it is not economically efficient.
You apparently didn’t understand that my example was only an example of how morals can override economics and that it was not meant to be analagous to the question of whether or not to fund renovations to accomodate disabled people.
I’m not sure how a standing wheelchair really addresses accessibility issues. First and foremost, not everyone can use a standing wheelchair. I know several wheelchair users who, for vast and varied reasons, simply would not be able to use that chair in its standing formation. Second, even for those who can use them and would choose to use them within the classroom, there is still the issue of stairs and aisleways and other areas that are difficult/impossible to navigate in a chair. Third, there may be students who are not wheelchair users who have difficulty standing for long periods of time. This classroom will not be an inviting space for these students either.
Also, yes, sometimes people avoid change because “that’s the way it’s always done.” But Blue’s critique of this idea and the fact that the people who came up with it obviously did not consider how exclusive this classroom would be to wheelchair users and students with other types of difficulties does not fall into that vein of criticism. And, while new ideas can be good, if they follow the same old paradigms we already have (in this case, not taking into account the presence and viewpoint of disabled students), then they generally are of little value, in my opinion.
nobody.really: I lke J’s reply, but since you asked specifically:
That said, I would be interested to hear Blue’s opinion about one specific proposal: the standing wheelchair? Sure they’re expensive, but as contrasted with the cost of renovating so much of the world…?
First, are you comparing costs through buying standing chairs for individuals or classrooms? If it’s classrooms, then the chair you link to won’t work for many individuals and you’ve probably got to employ some sort of occupational therapist at each school to make sure the school’s standing chairs are safely fitted to each person who would use them. See, the cost goes up right there.
But more importantly, why try to solve an access problem by selecting out individuals it effects (guess work at best) rather than addressing the actual environmental issue? From a purely economic perspective, it seems much better to find a solution that is collective rather than individual, wherever this is possible.
An additional complication for any classroom use of individualized adaptive equipment is that kids grow–so even if the Mayo classroom had to accommodate just three kids who use wheelchairs each year, buying each kid some highly customized technology for standing would be a bad investment of money and paperwork–some would grow out of their equipment before the year ends, and the next year you’d have a whole different set of bodies to equip.
This experimental classroom was designed by obesity researchers at the Mayo Clinic. Have they ever noticed that all kids aren’t the same height? Did they even talk to a working teacher during the design process? Stef (#14) is right: It’s hard to imagine actual teachers approving “standing desks on wheels”–the very first thing a sensible teacher would do is lock those wheels to prevent a “bumpercars” effect, and that would defeat the researchers’ whole plan. (The very next thing the sensible teacher would do is borrow some chairs from the cafeteria.)
Levine is the guy who first studied the notion that a lot of weight differences can be explained by fidgeting or its absence. He is an endocrinologist who studied a small number of people by attaching some sort of device to them that measured their “micro” motions 24 hours a day and discovered that there was a clear correlation between level of unconscious activity (fidgeting) and weight.
He is not the only person who thinks that standing rather than sitting ought to be our default position, not simply for purposes of weight control, but just attentiveness. While it is true that kids have been sitting for a long time in school, it’s also true that many more of them used to walk or bike to get there and back, and so on. Is it wrong to try to build more activity into the day?
I read the Mayo article to identify an interest of most kids in one classroom of 4th and 5th grade students, and by extension, others. I read Blue’s post to identify her interests, and by extension, other people in wheelchairs. According to Getting to Yes, the trick is not to identify which position is right or wrong, but to identify ways to reconcile everyone’s interests to the greatest extent possible.
Many commentors have expressed doubt that the Mayo study could have demonstrated that kids benefitted from standing during class, and others have expressed doubt that a teacher would want to work in such an environment. Honestly, I’m skeptical myself, but for purposes of this discussion I accept the Mayo article at face value.
Again, I question the utility of the able-bodied/disable-bodied dichotomy. Thus I have concern whenever people advance the same old paradigm we already have (in this case, not taking into account the presence and needs of humans).
As Barbara notes, Mayo’s Dr. James Levine is working to find ways to build more physical activity into daily living, based on research suggesting more activity (and especially “non-exercise” activity) has advantages for most people. The standing classroom is merely one proposal for promoting this end.
To be sure, a standing classroom would have both advantages and disadvantages, and different students might derive different advantages and disadvantages. J identifies two categories of people that might derive less advantage than disadvantage from this arrangement: People in wheelchairs who do not use standing wheelchairs, and people for whom long periods of standing would pose a hardship. I don’t gainsay a word of this.
But I cannot help noting that some students do not fall into either category. What about the interests of these students? Limited as it was, the Mayo study suggested that the majority of kids (4th and 5th graders) benefitted from the standing classroom arrangement. Taking this at face value, I have yet to hear a clear articulation why the interests of the majority should be sacrificed for the benefit of a minority. And more to the point, I’m not persuaded of the need to sacrifice the interests of any student for the benefit of another student until we’ve explored all the opportunities for reconciling the needs of all students, a la Getting to Yes. Hence my interest in non-traditional arrangements, including standing wheelchairs.
I was thinking of public subsidizes for standing wheelchairs generally. I presume the spacial exclusion issue arises other places than in classrooms. Sure, one option is to retrofit the world. Perhaps another option is to retrofit wheelchairs under the theory that “it’s easier to put on slippers than to carpet the world.” I wonder that the ADA doesn’t requires a number of height-related accommodations to people in wheelchairs, and that Congress might not conclude (with the urging of businesses and school districts that might be on the verge of incurring large expenses for retrofits) that the cheaper option is to underwrite the cost raising wheelchair people up rather than bringing tables and counters down.
As far as I know, both seated wheelchairs and standing wheelchairs are human inventions. Consequently I cannot tell why a problem created by putting people into seated wheelchairs should be deemed “environmental,” whereas a solution provided by a different kind of wheelchair would be deemed “individual.”
To be sure, I may well be mistaken about the extent of the problem created by spacial exclusion, or the cost of retrofitting facilities to accommodate the needs of people who are in seated wheelchairs, or the cost and utility of standing wheelchairs. Again, these are just further matters that warrant exploration before I could develop an opinion about the standing classroom proposal.
Also, this is a PILOT study. There’s no indication that the goal is STANDING as opposed to EXERCISE.
So you might study standing kids–cheap, easy, lots of data, simple to measure, lots of available test subjects–in order to test the general theory of whether activity improves education.
That was this study.
What comes out of the study as recommendations may be quite different. It is unlikely to be “standing classrooms.”
Again, I question the utility of the able-bodied/disable-bodied dichotomy.
That may be my fault because of how I framed the debate in my post. I kept my objections strictly limited to my experiences as a wheelchair-user. I think other people have filled the gap in with early comments (#1 and #4 and I believe at least one comment at my blog). I agree that the dichotomy is a false one.
Taking this at face value, I have yet to hear a clear articulation why the interests of the majority should be sacrificed for the benefit of a minority. Morally, there are a few laws that cover this. Though I’ve said I’m uncertain such a perceptual problem would actually be covered by the ADA, in an educational setting there are others. But really, who’s saying one group has to benefit at the expense of another? That’s sort of my point.
I was thinking of public subsidizes for standing wheelchairs generally.
There are quite a few administrative problems with this solution. One is that getting a wheelchair through Medicare/Medicaid can easily take a year or more now. Not everyone can use a manual chair like the example linked above, and a power wheelchair with the standing feature is easily a $15,000 investment.
But this analogy occured to me: Let’s say the counters are too high for shorter people, anyone under 5’5″, let’s say. Should we subsidize platform shoes for every person of limited height, or just address the fact that the counter isn’t very functional if everyone present can’t do their work? Why should tall people be given the advantage of a better education through participating more fully in classes?
Because tall people are disadvantaged by short counters. We can’t bend over constantly without hurting our backs, so we have to sit down.
If it’s right for us, it’s wrong for short folks,and vice versa. If you’re talking about a single-height fixed counter, for example, there IS NO solution that will allow everyone to get equal access: Someone will always get screwed at the expense of someone else.
This is pretty much always going to happen at some point. In general, for a given expenditure, the more specialized an environment is to serve a certain category of people, the better it will serve that category–and the worse it will serve everyone else.
Blue, how about a paradigm shift? Your definition of disability (or at least the concern that you are actively discussing) relates to physical impediments. But what if I told you that at least in terms of IEP/504 purposes, there are many more people who are cognitively than physically disabled — many more kids “on the spectrum” as we now say, with ASD, ADD, ADHD, than in wheelchairs, and that such children are positively advantaged by being in an environment that facilitates standing and greater activity (people are less attentive when sitting or lying down)? I mean, I could argue pretty convincingly that it’s unfair to show movies in a classroom that includes blind and deaf people, because they obviously experience movies differently than most of the other students. We could just prohibit the use of film in classrooms, or we could try to accommodate such that everyone can participate more fully, understanding that we will never totally compensate so that the experience is identical.
If something really is better for the majority of students, then I believe we should adopt it and figure out how to accommodate those for whom it is not necessarily a positive adaptation. But with all due respect, we should not judge every innovation only in terms of how it affects those who can’t enjoy it as is.
although Sailorman makes a good point that often, in order to accomodate one group you screw another and that’s just the way it is, I don’t think we have to be limited to that. In some ways it is more difficult to find ways to benefit multiple (sometimes conflicting) needs, but I don’t believe it is impossible. We absolutely need to get away from the thinking that in order to accomodate one group, you have to inconvenience another – it does NOT have to be a zero sum game if you are creative, innovative and flexible. There have to be ways to include more activity and flexibility in a classroom that do NOT disadvantage people in chairs. It’s not EASY to do, and our paradigm is to build what’s best for most and do individual accommodations for those it doesn’t, but that’s not such a great model. Rather, why not get a broader group around the conceptual table brainstorm better ways to accommodate everyone. The idea that we need “special” circumstances for people with disabilities is exactly the problem with this whole discussion. Why not include people with various perspectives at the table and maybe we’d come up with an idea that is overall even more productive!
Kate, again with all due respect, it is a problem to think that there is a one size fits all solution or that “the disabled” are monolithic — “the disabled” are outliers in the sense that, while most people can adapt to a variety of physical or sensory conditions, it is not so easy for the disabled depending on the nature of the disability — there may be disabilities that are more or less common, so sure, we should be capable of viewing those more common disabilities as a variant of normal that is simply provided for, sort of like we do now for differences in height. And there may be practices that are considered “normal” that are counterproductive for everybody — for instance, imposing time constraints on tests. Why not let everybody take as much time as they need, unless timing is in fact an important element in what is being tested (for instance, providing emergency services)?
It isn’t simply “non-disabled” (for lack of a better word) versus “disabled”, but accommodations for one disability might be problems for another — you will never be able to get away from the individual, not totally, and that’s good, for the disabled and non-disabled alike, because to the degree possible, education should accommodate all individual differences, not just those that are the result of physical impairment.
Kate: Sure. But there really is no free lunch (or free classroom).
When you say:
This is absolutely correct. But the “it’s not EASY to do” part is important. I think there is sometimes a tendency to undervalue the cost of just figuring the stuff out. The school system is already pretty strapped for time and money; people who work there are generally already pretty close to their limits. If you want them to spend a lot of time and energy figuring out, agreeing on, and implementing a new paradigm, you must acknowledge that this time is going to cut into other things.
In the end, it’s still going to be a transfer of benefit.
It will be a transfer of benefits in the SHORT TERM. If you do the work for the overhaul, bring more brains to the table and really get a good workable system – yes, that is a LOT of work. However, it should considerably lower the amount of time and energy spent in the long run.
Yes, schools are particularly strapped, but most of the educators I know would be willing to put in a little extra time and effort in the short run in order to create a better overall system and have it be LESS time consuming in the long run. Think about how much effort is put into developing IEPs and customizing everything to a T. If you redesigned the whole program to be more productive for everyone, it would considerably cut down on the time spent developing, changing and ahearing to IEPs. You’d still have SOME degree of that, because the reality is that there will always be people with needs that need to be accommodated, but you can drastically reduce it. I just think we have to stop thinking with such short term short sighted frames.
Kate, you are an optimist! No kidding, it seems to me that much of the IEP/504 stuff (okay maybe not much, but a significant amount) has to do with the raw fear of parents that their children need special accommodation in order to succeed, and no amount of assurance that the “regular” school has already built such accommodations into its program will satisfy them. Perhaps if there were greater overall faith in the competence of schools to educate even the conventionally unteachable this fear would diminish.
Barbara,
I agree completely. I’m not suggesting one solution, and I deeply regret if my post came across as lumping all disabled into one category. As I said, people often have different (and competing needs), that’s why flexibility is a key part to what I was describing. Individual flexibility is absolutely necessary, it always will be, but to say we shouldn’t spend time coming up with more productive solutions for all involved is also unacceptable. At a conceptual stage, the more representation and thinking you do from multiple perspectives can only serve to increase the productivity of the solution overall.
Right, Kate L.–a more flexible space benefits all students, not just those with obvious physical disabilities. The ideal classroom features for any individual kid are fairly fluid anyway–day to day, month to month, project to project. And there’s also the benefit of diversity to consider. There’s the potential for all kids learn more when their classroom peers have a wider array of experiences–including different experiences of perception, mobility, and cognitive style.
I mean, I could argue pretty convincingly that it’s unfair to show movies in a classroom that includes blind and deaf people, because they obviously experience movies differently than most of the other students.
“Experiencing movies differently” doesn’t seem like a problem to me — as Penny notes it can even be a learning asset. But there are easy (and, alternatively, expensive) accommodations to give blind and deaf people the information they would otherwise miss in a movie. But they won’t fail to experience it altogether because of some new “improvement.” Whatever general school accommodations they have arranged to cope with other visual or audio situations would serve equally well with a movie, I would think.
I agree wholeheartedly that children with cognitive impairments have a variety of needs that won’t match children in wheelchairs. I’m really enjoying how this discussion is taking so many perspectives and needs into account.
The American way… too many rights make a wrong.
I feel the author is unfortunately biased and bitter. People getting up at concerts is natural and is their right, such as it is yours as well. You argue they should sit down in order for you to see, but what if it TAKES AWAY from their experience? Why should 100 people downgrade their experience just so that you have yours? Is this your idea of equality? On the other hand, there is no equality to begin with (I know, it’s sad, ugly, but that’s it), we’re talking _equalizing_ here.
Some things you may never be able to do. Should people at a marathon slow down so that you keep up and not feel excluded and left alone? Should we redesign all chem labs so that you can work in one? And the list goes on. And the answer is NO.
Kint:
Whoever let you through mod was not me.
On this site, we attempt not to be assholes. If you have questions about what that means, check the moderation policy.
Please make a greater effort not to be an asshole in future comments or I’m afraid we’ll have to ask you to leave.
Kint Verbal:
Kint, several points.
First, Kay expressly said that the concert question was not the topic:
So I won’t address it specifically any further, and you shouldn’t either. If you want to discuss it, the etiquette here is to bring it up in one of the open threads, where anyone is free to talk about anything as long as it does not violate the general site guidelines.
Second, to the more general point of whether 100 people should “downgrade their experience” so that someone who is at a disadvantage in a given situation can still participate, the answer is often resoundingly, “Yes, of course.”
Easy example: most jurisdictions have parking spots reserved for people with walking disabilities. I do not have a walking disability, and the existence of those spots means that I have to walk farther to get where I’m going. However, for me the inconvenience is extremely minor, and for many people with walking disabilities, it is not a matter of inconvenience, but a matter of whether they will be able to participate meaningfully AT ALL.
So, for an easy first-pass at issues like these, consider: is the difference in experience quantitative, or qualitative? If one group has to change slightly (quantitative) in order to enable another group to participate meaningfully (qualitative), chances are good that the ethical choice is to make the accommodation.
And, when judging whether something is quantitative or qualitative, it’s polite, and arguably ethical, to give great weight to the actual lived experience of the person who is most affected by the judgement. In my example, above, that would be the person who has to deal with a walking disability every minute of every day, in a world mostly not designed for them.
A shared learning environment is not the same thing as a shared audience environment, and neither of those is the same thing as a shared competitive environment. The cases you cite are not parallel, and they are OBVIOUSLY not parallel, which is one of several reasons why what you wrote is making you come across like a jerk.
Grace
That was me. I did not, on first pass, read Kint’s post as a personal attack on Kay. After some offline discussion, I understand how Kay and others could experience it that way, and might have. So, Kay, if you did, then I apologize, and I’m working on recalibrating my approval standards so that I can do it better in the future.
Grace