Tuesday, October 26, 2004
I am so going to hell.
Today, in my Law, Constitutionalism and Culture class, our prof told a heartwarming story about a recent trip he made to Montreal.
He was warned, before getting on the plane, that there would be a woman in his aisle who had an assistive dog, and he was not to talk to/look at either her or the dog.
When he got on the plane, he saw that the woman was there, and had a sign around her neck directing people not to talk to her. On the few occasions when flight attendants did talk to her, she got really flustered, pointed to her sign, and tried to communicate with the use of cards (although I'm not sure if they had words or pictures on them.)
He assumed she couldn't communicate, and engaged in a conversation with the woman sitting between him and the non-communicative woman about issues of language accommodation in education, cultural accommodation in society, and so on.
Much to his surprise, the non-communicative woman joined in their conversation, quite eloquently and at length. As long as nobody looked at her directly or asked her questions, she had no problems engaging with the discourse.
The lessons he wanted to show us was about assumptions we make about people, and also about how relatively simple it can be to accommodate people with different ability levels - and extrapolate that to different languages, cultures, etc.
The lesson I took from his little story? Man, I have got to get me one of those signs!
Today, in my Law, Constitutionalism and Culture class, our prof told a heartwarming story about a recent trip he made to Montreal.
He was warned, before getting on the plane, that there would be a woman in his aisle who had an assistive dog, and he was not to talk to/look at either her or the dog.
When he got on the plane, he saw that the woman was there, and had a sign around her neck directing people not to talk to her. On the few occasions when flight attendants did talk to her, she got really flustered, pointed to her sign, and tried to communicate with the use of cards (although I'm not sure if they had words or pictures on them.)
He assumed she couldn't communicate, and engaged in a conversation with the woman sitting between him and the non-communicative woman about issues of language accommodation in education, cultural accommodation in society, and so on.
Much to his surprise, the non-communicative woman joined in their conversation, quite eloquently and at length. As long as nobody looked at her directly or asked her questions, she had no problems engaging with the discourse.
The lessons he wanted to show us was about assumptions we make about people, and also about how relatively simple it can be to accommodate people with different ability levels - and extrapolate that to different languages, cultures, etc.
The lesson I took from his little story? Man, I have got to get me one of those signs!
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