The Message of 'Dumbo'

The 1941 Walt Disney movie Dumbo is an example of both cripping and ableism. This popular cartoon film is about a baby elephant born with most unusually large ears which makes him an outcast in the elephant community of the travelling circus. His mother Jumbo comes to his rescue while he is being mocked and abused by a boy who ironically also had noticeably large ears, and she is driven into a rampage which lands her in solitary confinement. Dumbo is heartbroken but is adopted by Timothy Q. Mouse who marches in to scare the other elephants who engage in cripping as they blame the “F.R.E.A.K.” (Dumbo, 1941) for his mother Jumbo’s wild behavior. In a display of ableism the mouse announces that there is nothing wrong with Dumbo, and that his ears will be an advantage for the elephant show. Dumbo’s ears cause him to trip and knock down the great elephant pyramid during the show which causes a major disaster that destroys the entire circus tent and sends the audience out in a screaming panic. In the aftermath the elephants discover that the circus ringmaster in another demonstration of cripping, demotes Dumbo to working with the clowns, and in yet another instance of cripping the elephants swear that from now on Dumbo is no longer an elephant. In an example of ableism Dumbo is welcomed into his new community of clowns and both he and the mouse accidentally get drunk on champagne that spilled into a water bucket. They wake up the next day and find themselves high up in a tree where they meet a murder of crows. Timothy mouse deduces that the only way that they could have ended up in a tree is that Dumbo’s ears enabled him to fly and he simply flew up there. In another expression of ableism Timothy announces that the very thing that held him down will carry him up. Dumbo doesn’t believe that he can really fly until Timothy and the crows convince him that he can fly if he uses a ‘Magic Feather’ to enable his flight. Timothy plans for Dumbo to spring the news on the world during a clown act that has Dumbo jumping from a fiery building and onto a trampoline. Dumbo makes the jump but loses the feather and during this crisis he realizes that the feather was merely a crutch that he didn’t really need.  Dumbo flies gracefully around the circus to everyone’s amazement and he instantly becomes a wild national success. His mother is freed, reunited with Dumbo, and given a favored status which is displayed by being given a private, elegant train car and they all live happily ever after.

The impact that this story has had over the years is to give individuals with obvious variations which made them targets for cripping, a relatable feel-good story which shows that such differences can be overcome and used as advantages rather than disadvantages.

The story opens with the stork delivering babies to many of the circus animals and each of which appears to be a perfect specimen of the animal. Dumbo is too until he sneezes and his ears explode into two giant flaps. The other elephants immediately start mocking him and dub him ‘Dumbo’. This society of elephants reject Dumbo’s obvious departure from the typical elephant ideal and this scene reflects the intolerance of society toward individual differences in the early twentieth century.

The movie also addresses the attitude toward individuals who are different from the standard variety in the World War II era during which a segment of our society embraced eugenics.  The ring master assigns Dumbo to the society of clowns after he trips on his ears and causes a disaster.  This event motivates the elephants to shun Dumbo and is analogous to removing human individuals with disabilities from mainstream society and institutionalizing them or doing even worse.

The movie offers hope and redemption to everyone who has something different about themselves which they would like to change when Dumbo flies during the clown act of the circus and exacts playful revenge on the elephants by machine-gunning peanuts at them. He shows the world that an individual variance which may be viewed as a disadvantage can be used as an advantage once it is embraced.

This is a relatively short, comedic, G-rated movie at approximately one hour in length and easily lends itself to a classroom environment. It evokes empathy as many students own a personal variance which they perceive as negative as were Dumbo’s ears to him. This movie can teach the folly of rejecting others because of their differences such as when the circus elephant community shunned Dumbo and is portrayed as mean and intolerant.

This film can also show that when the perspective about a disability is changed to a view that individuals are not disabled but it is merely their environments that are disabling, perceived disadvantages can be advantages. An example of such a turnaround is the advantage that a blind person has over a sighted person during a blackout situation. In this environment it is the blind person who is better adapted and can navigate in the dark.

I believe that Disney’s Dumbo movie contains classic examples of both ableism and cripping. It is certainly kid-friendly and sends a both clear and positive message that individual differences need to be embraced rather than mocked in a modern and more tolerant society.

References

Disney, W. (Producer), & Armstrong, S. (Director). (1941). Dumbo [Motion picture]. United States of
        America: RKO Radio Pictures Inc.

Baseball Blazing the Trail of Individul Differences

                            

My Dad often told me the story of Major League Baseball’s Eddie Gaedel of the 1951 Saint Louis Browns and it can be applied to Special Education Law studies on three levels because it is a tale of an individual with special challenges, it emphasizes the notion that such individuals confront the mainstream with a requirement of focused approaches to their needs, and it demonstrates that those bold enough to assert their demand for civil rights can produce changes in the rules of the system.

At the age of twenty-six, Eddie Gaedel stood three-feet, seven-inches tall and weighed sixty-five pounds (McKenna, 2009); certainly under the average height and weight for men throughout recorded history. A man of such diminutive stature surely had to endure all the psychological and physical challenges associated with navigating in a world universally designed for much larger people.

The interesting thing about baseball is that a major component of the game is tailored to the needs of the individual. Specifically, the strike zone which is defined as: “...that area over home plate the upper limit of which is a horizontal line at the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform pants, and the lower level is a line at the hollow beneath the kneecap. The Strike Zone shall be determined from the batter’s stance as the batter is prepared to swing at a pitched ball”, (Major League Baseball Official Publication, 2011, p.22). Certainly Eddie Gaedel’s official strike zone was much smaller than the average player’s and presented almost impossible target for a pitcher to hit.

Saint Louis Browns’ owner Bill Veeck was a businessman with a flair for entertainment and as a promotional stunt he hired Geadel to jump out of a birthday cake commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the American League between games of a weekend double-header. During the second game Geadel, wearing the number 1/8 on a uniform borrowed from the team’s bat boy, was sent in to pinch hit. The umpire protested but the Browns’ manager produced a valid contract which was filed with the league’s office late on a Friday so that it would be summarily approved before it could be scrutinized. After viewing the contract the umpire continued the game, and of course Eddie was awarded a base-on-balls as the wildly amused pitcher could not offer any strikes to such a narrow target, (McKenna, 2009).

This event caused a change in the rules of major league baseball such that all players’ “...contracts must now be approved by the Commissioner of Baseball before a player can appear in a game”, (Sports Grind Entertainment, 2009). The bold publicity stunt by Bill Veeck in the guise of a yearning for equality of opportunity caused a change in the rules of Major League Baseball.

Ironically, it was the pitcher in the story who resided in mainstream society, yet was required to operate in a restrictive environment as his target was reduced to a zone of merely one and one-half inches of height, seventeen inches of width, while throwing a ball with a diameter of three inches to a crouching Eddie Gaedel (McKenna, 2009). This story strikes home (pun intended) the notion that people aren’t disabled, rather environments are disabling.

The application of this story to the current state of American education connects the concept of a free and appropriate education for all students allowing zero rejections, with that of equality of opportunity for all Americans regardless of circumstance.

The battle for students with disabilities in the field of education is that they receive a free and appropriate education according to their unique needs in the least restrictive environment available in the instruction service continuum ranging from a descending order of: “...Regular class only...Special educator consultative...Co-teaching or collaborative teaching...Resource...Self-contained...Hospital or home bound...Special day school...Residential placement...” (Hulett, 2009, p. 109). This environment is to be determined by a team comprised of the student, her/his parents or guardians, a special education teacher, a regular education teacher, a representative of the Local Education Agency, and other persons with a direct interest in the student’s evaluation, education, and functional development. This team then creates an Individualized Education Program (IEP) which guides the actions of the educators and must include several major components such as the present levels of the student’s performance, both annual and measurable academic and functional goals which address the student’s specific needs, a mechanism for reporting the student’s progress towards those goals, provisions for accommodations, modifications, and support services in the quest to achieve those goals, both the level of restriction from the general education environment and related services if required, a statement of the type of participation in both  state and school district assessments, a statement of both  the frequency and duration of services, and a statement of services for transition into mainstream society, (Hulett, 2009).

In summary, every American student is entitled to a free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment possible. If the student has special needs then this is to be accomplished by the efforts of a team assembled to create an individual education program for students with special needs.

These rights have been established by the American legal system via the avenues of Constitutional law using Article 1, and both the Tenth and Fourteenth Amendments, statutory law using Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, the Individuals With Disabilities Act, the Americans With Disabilities Act, and the No Child Left Behind Act, regulatory law which develops regulations associated with statutory laws, and finally case law which emerges from court decisions that interpret detailed meaning through arguments by aggrieved parties such as the Board of Education of Hendrick Hudson Central School District v. Rowley Supreme Court decision that interpreted the vague term ‘appropriate’ as being associated with a student’s specific educational and functional needs, (Hulett, 2009) .

In my opinion based on both observation and personal experience, many parents/guardians of children with high incidence disabilities seem weary by the time the student is in high school; having sat through proper yet lengthy IEP meetings during elementary and middle school settings. As long as the student is passing and progressing, then they seem satisfied that their child is receiving adequate services. It is the parents/guardians of students with low incidence disabilities who appear more involved and fight hardest for their children’s rights because they understand that their offspring need skills to survive after they are sent into mainstream society.

We can afford the equality of opportunities to teach skills to our students, but it is up to them to apply their education. Skills are important in both society and baseball. Even though Eddie Gaedel was employed as a publicity stunt in 1951, baseball accepted both him and the skill sets of other players with unique challenges such as Pete Gray who lost an arm in a childhood accident yet both enjoyed a successful career in Major League Baseball as an outfielder for the Saint Louis Browns in 1945, (Historic Baseball, n.d.) and served as an inspiration to disabled soldiers returning from World War II.  Another shining example of baseball’s acceptance of people who rise above their challenges is Jim Abbot who was born with one hand yet led the United States baseball team to a gold medal in the 1988 Summer Olympics and pitched a no-hitter as a New York Yankee in 1993, (Biography of Jim Abbott, n.d.).

Through the decades of both crafting legislation and deciding court cases involved with individuals with disabilities, our Great American Past-time has always been in the background leading the way to acceptance of both individual differences and individuals with disabilities. I expect that that baseball will continue to do so through the twenty-first century and beyond, because the game is never really over until the final out. Play ball!

References

Biography of Jim Abbott. (n.d.). Jim Abbott biography. Retrieved from
        http://www.jimabbott.info /biography.html#Anchor-Ji-3003

Historic Baseball. (n.d.). Bringing baseball history to center field. Retreived from
         http://www.historicbaseball.com/players/g/gray_pete.html

Hulett, K. (2009). Legal aspects of special education. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson  
        Education, Inc.

Major League Baseball Official Publication. (2011). Official baseball rules (2011 ed.).
        Retrieved from http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/downloads/y2011/Official_Baseball_Rules.pdf

McKenna, B. (2009). The baseball biography project: Eddie Gaedel. Retrieved from
        http://bioproj.sabr.org/bioproj.cfm?a=v&v=l&bid=2661&pid=4810

Sports Grind Entertainment. (2009). The Eddie Gaedel story: Tonight on MLB network.
        Retrieved from http://www.sportsgrindent.com/blog/the-eddie-gaedel-story-tonight-on-
        mlb-network/

A Thumbnail Sketch of Special Education Law

Four major pieces of legislation are the foundation for the current state of special education in America: Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Of these laws IDEA has been the keystone in the structure of American special education, (Hulett, 2009).

IDEA first appeared as Public Law 94-142, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 with the purpose that all children with disabilities should be afforded both a free and appropriate education and that their rights are protected. Another function of the law was to support providers of special education, and to both monitor and assure its efficacy (Hopkins, 2011).

IDEA is organized in four parts covering general provisions, assistance for the both pre-school and school-aged children/young adults, and activities associated with providers of special education. This law is reliant on six pillars of support which interact to accomplish its goal of ensuring that children with disabilities have an equal opportunity to receive a public education as every other child in America. The six essential elements include an individualized education program which is tailored to an individual’s unique needs, and the guarantee of a free and appropriate education. Also incorporated in the structure of the law are the requirement of a least restrictive environment in the delivery of educational services, and the employment of appropriate evaluation of individual needs. Finally the statute provides for inclusion of the child and associated guardians in the formulation of educational goals, and procedural safeguards ensuring due process of law for both providers and recipients of educational services (Hulett, 2009).

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 is essentially a general civil rights law which prohibits any entity that receives federal funding from discriminating against individuals with disabilities. This law preceded Public Law 94-142 and its implementation is unfunded, (Hulett, 2009). This flaw led to the detailed crafting of IDEA as a law specifically designed for public education. There are both similarities and differences between the two laws, but there exists a synergism when these laws are used in a complementary fashion to the benefit of the education of American students. Basically, students with disabilities have these two sources from which they can draw support in their quest for an appropriate education that will prepare them to function in society.

The Americans with Disabilities Act is another general civil rights law similar to Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, but with a broader defense from discrimination for individuals with disabilities. Specifically, instead of merely applying to entities which receives federal funding, the ADA both includes and affects the private sector and prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in areas of employment, public accommodations, public services, transportation, telecommunications, and other important areas of American life (Hulett, 2009).

The No Child Left Behind Act is focused on achievement and progress of American education. The concept of accountability of the education service providers for the learning of students is the driving force behind this legislation. Educators are required to meet educational standards set by the individual states and close gaps between subgroups of students with regard to racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and disability differences. The law is objective oriented in several stratified areas beginning with students reaching proficiency goals on standardized assessments, schools making annual yearly progress, and ultimately having all American students reaching a proficiency goal in both reading and mathematics by the close of the 2013-2014 school year. Failure on the part of the educators to meet the various standards results in such sanctions as the withholding of federal grants and the requirement to pay for tutoring services of their students, or transportation to better performing schools, (Hulett, 2009).

As a special education teacher in a public school I have firsthand experience in observing the achievement gaps between the sub groups of students, evaluating students, writing individual education programs, and teaching students with disabilities. These four laws under discussion have affected both my work on writing IEP’s and teaching in the classroom. I have felt the anxiety of accountability and have adapted my teaching of science to incorporate reading support within my lessons by having students derive meanings of words by their context within sentences. Also, while writing IEP’s I have had to be mindful of these laws and have been pressured to carefully craft them to meet the students’ needs without writing goals and offering services that I wasn’t certain that I could deliver.

For the most part I feel that the guidelines set by these laws were being kept by school to which I was assigned. The school’s special education services featured three observable levels in terms of restrictive environments. The most restrictive environment was the Life Skills setting. This was a self-contained classroom which housed students with low incidence disabilities diagnoses such as intellectual disability and hearing impairment. The next level was a group of students from each of the four high school grade levels with diagnoses such as specific learning disability and emotional disturbance. This group was taught all strictly academic subjects by special education teachers and was included in the mainstream of the student body for such class periods as gym, health, art, and lunch. The least restrictive environment was a situation where students who were diagnosed with a specific learning disability would only have difficulty with either English or math classes. These students were involved in one of two situations: one where they would have only one or two academic classes with the group that received instruction by only special education teachers, and the other where they received all academic instruction in the general education setting, but were closely monitored by their special education teacher case manager. 

We have come a long way since the days of institutionalizing the intellectually disabled and ignoring the learning disabled. My own children have benefited greatly from skilled special education teachers, and I aspire to be a positive influence on my students as well.

References

Hopkins, H. (2011). IDEA: Special education law [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from
        https://blackboard.arcadia.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab tab group id=
        2 1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3type%3DCourse%
        26id%3D_78128_1%26url%3D.
Hulett, K. (2009). Legal aspects of special education. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education,
        Inc.