PC idiocy

The loopy professor is absolutely right about one thing, at least. In my first class today, at a different university, I had a student with an eye problem, which (of course) I had not been warned about. I did not notice this kid's problem until halfway through the class, at which point I realized he was struggling and I needed to write a lot bigger on the board if he was going to be able to make any sense of anything. I checked with him first to find out whether he could read anything at all (I was worried by the enormous magnifying glass he had), and he said if I wrote big he'd be able to manage. He also told me he needed to sit at the front. I had moved him to a group at the back of class using my usual random counting off method for putting students into groups, and this made me feel like an inconsiderate, insensitive teacher.

But he shouldn't have had to explain all this to me, and the fact that he had to is due to the idiotic notion that seems to have taken hold here that even mentioning a disability is 'discrimination,' and that equal opportunity for disabled people means the disabled should be treated the same as everyone else. This is political correctness gone mad, and what it actually means is that disabled students are not given the same opportunities as other students because the teacher does not know what they need. If I had been warned I could easily have written bigger right from the beginning, and made sure he was seated at the front. Also, I gave students a handout today, and I would have enlarged his if I'd known he was going to have trouble reading it. As it was some idiot had left the lithograph set to 80%, and another idiot (me) did not notice until it was too late, so the poor kid ended up unable to read the handout at all. It was perfectly legible (although rather small) for all the other students, but he was made to feel unnecessarily inadequate because NOBODY TOLD ME.

I hate having to make a big deal out of the whole thing. If there is something I can do to help a student, I will do it. It is not a problem to make larger copies or write bigger on the board. There doesn't need to be all this fuss and singling out the poor kid for special attention. I just need to be TOLD, so I CAN DO MY JOB. His disability is not something that should prevent him learning if his teachers are prepared for it.

In my last class I had another disabled student, this time in a wheelchair. This was no problem at all. All it meant was that when I put the students into groups we moved a chair out of the way first. In that case it didn't matter at all that I hadn't been told, and I wish the PC idiots in the office would learn the difference. I want to know about a disability IF IT MIGHT INTERFERE WITH A STUDENT'S EDUCATION. Why do they insist on making everything so bloody awkward?

Stupid, stupid, stupid.