Oral Presentations 4.28.10

I had never really considered the aspects of disproportional special education until the presentations on Wednesday. I found the quote, "you cannot have a disability on your own", intriguing because it is basically definable by judgement in terms of disability. A disability doesn't exist until a student is recognized for it, because how is the student to know that they are different unless someone tells them so? Deaf communication and expression was also an interesting topic. The functioning of the human brain has so much to do with how anyone lives their life, whether they have a disability or not. This presentation made it clear that deaf people start life by learning hand signals in similar ways to hearing children. I found the presentation on the treatment of student athletes to be interesting as well. I didn't realize that the only programs to generate money are men's basketball and football. I also had never considered the treatment of athletes in comparison to art, dance, and music students on scholarship. I found the analogy of an art student being paid for selling their paintings in a gallery compared with a football player not earning anything for a tournament (for example) to be intriguing. All and all, our oral presentations went quite well and I enjoyed hearing everyone's topics!