Margaret Price (1)

A provocative book about the labels we use without attention to their effects on those with serious mental disabilities. We speak of attending class as a basic indicator of commitment to learning, but what if students (or even teachers) have disabilities that prevent attendance at certain times? Other aspects generally considered important to the professorial role, such as collegiality, are “regularly defined against mental disability”—the good professor versus the “neurotic” one. Price discusses the way that school shooters are pathologized and separated from the rest of us (it’s always assumed that the reader of these works isn’t mentally ill). I was particularly struck by the point at which she discussed how “society (in the form of access barriers) costs people with mental illnesses billions in annual income,” while the research from which she took that conclusion itself used the phrase “costs society,” implying instead that the societal burden is the fault of the people with mental illnesses.… (mais)