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Elizabeth Gannon

Professor Granillo

English 103

Are high schools treating all students equally?

Silverman and Radar talk about what constitutes a good public space in their book The

World is a Text when they say that a public space, “promotes human contact and social

activities” (Silverman and Radar 141). This makes sense because a place that a lot of people

gather is usually a social event where everyone is welcome. What happens when not everyone

can physically get to a public space because of a physical ailment? La Canada High School tries

to accommodate for people with physical disabilities, but analyzing through critical disability

studies anyone can see that the buildings are not very accessible. Looking at this academic public

space through a Marxist lens shows that people who have physical disabilities are wrongly

looked down on by their peers; therefore, schools should include accessibility to make a more

welcoming environment for all students.

La Canada Flintridge is a small town in between the more well-known cities of Pasadena

and Glendale in Southern California. This small city is community oriented and is an exclusive

neighborhood to live in because it is populated primarily by the upper class. La Canada High

School, being at the center of the town, is a fairly large campus for a high school with buildings

that are three stories tall. There are three different elevators that were placed to try to make the

campus more accessible, but that is the extent of the accessibly efforts that were made. The

outside hallways are very narrow and often crowded with people, which makes it hard for able

bodied people to walk through, let alone people with disabilities. The doors are heavy and they

open outward, so it would be difficult to open them and walk through if one has a wheelchair,
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power chair, or crutches. This high school has no ramps or automatic door openers that make it

easier for people with disabilities. La Canada High School can do a lot more to help all students

with accessing the entire campus.

Some critics might say that La Canada High School has done more than enough in

becoming more accessible for people with disabilities. This can be a view that some people

experience because they do have elevators that people with wheelchairs, power chairs, or

crutches can use; however, these elevators are old and not very reliable. These elevators are slow

and make it hard for students to get to class on time. It is true that the high school installed

elevators to try to become more accessible, but campuses can always aim to become even more

accessible. The goal of accessibility should be to help people with disabilities live an

independent life where they do not need the help of an abled-body person. According to

Disability Rights in California, society should, “Treat people as individuals” (Disability Rights

1). It is very hard to treat people as individuals when they are dependent of others. La Canada

High School can always do more to make their students who have disabilities feel more welcome

by making their campus more accessible.

Another counterargument that can be proposed is that making the campus more

accessible would be too expensive and take away from the academic programs that are struggling

to stay afloat. Often times, making a campus more accessible does require money to be donated.

Luckily, La Canada High School is placed in a very affluent neighborhood with a lot of well off

families to support it. Since this is the case, La Canada is blessed with one of the biggest booster

programs that a public school can have. The problem is that the money that is gathered from the

booster programs is misused and spent on things that are not that important. About every four

years La Canada redoes the turf on the football and soccer fields when in reality that turf can last
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an upwards of ten years. Using the money that is spent on unnecessary things, and investing that

same money into making the campus more accessible would benefit not only people with

disabilities, but also benefiting the school by making it look more welcoming.

This school fits Silverman and Radar’s definition of a good public space in terms of

academia. La Canada High School has neutral color paint in order to keep distractions to a

minimum when students are trying to learn. The campus is clean and has a lot of security so it is

safe for the students. The thing that the school fails at as a public space is described when

Silverman and Radar talk about the second rule of a good public space which is, “Welcoming

and accommodating for all users” (Silverman and Radar 141). La Canada High School breaks

down as a good public space when not accommodating for all users. La Canada does a great job

catering to able-bodied people, but does not take others into consideration. This school needs to

be more accessible by adding ramps and automatic doors, so that it can become a more

welcoming public space for all, not just able-bodied people.

There are three common ways that able-bodied people portray people with disabilities.

Most of the time all three of these stereotypical portrayals are not accurate. According to Media

and Disability, “Disabled people, when they feature at all, continue to be all too often portrayed

as either remarkable and heroic, or dependent victims” (Media and Disability 1). The key words

in this quote is dependent victims. La Canada High School has heavy doors so many times

people with disabilities have to wait for someone to open the door for them, making them more

dependent on others. Often times there are stereotypes that surround people with disabilities. One

of those stereotypes being that since people with disabilities might be a bit more dependent than

able bodied people, they are pitied. Just because they are different from able bodied people they

are seen as victims. People who are disabled do not want their disability to be the center of their
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identity. The societal norm is to be able to physically do everything that an able bodied person

can, so when a disabled person tries to fit into that social norm it is hard because when people

look at a disabled person they think they are broken. Another portrayal of someone with a

disability is that they are a hero for living their life in a wheelchair.

People who have physical disabilities can also be portrayed as heroes because they are

able to succeed against harder circumstances than able-bodied people. La Canada High School

often portrays its students with physical disabilities as heroes. There was this one senior student

at La Canada High School who had to permanently use a wheelchair because of a physical

disability. When she graduated high school with the rest of her class, all of the attention was on

her. People were shocked that she was able to be graduate despite her disability, when in reality

she was smarter than over half of her other able-bodied peers, and yet all the attention seemed to

be on her. She was seen as a hero by the crowd and by the school because she was able to

graduate, but her physical disability had nothing to do with her brain function. She was more

than capable to graduate, but she was portrayed as a hero just because she used a wheelchair.

Media and Disability talk about the common portrayal of heroes in people with disabilities when

she says, “The flip side of the victim stereotype is the hero, the character who proves her worth

by overcoming her disability” (Media and Disability 1). People with disabilities do not want to

feel different in the eyes of society. A lot of times they want to blend in to feel as normal as

possible, trying to fit into societal norms.

The last portrayal that able-bodied people impose onto those with disabilities is that they

are villains. Media and Disability describes this portrayal with, “Throughout history physical

disabilities have been used to suggest evil or depravity” (Media and Disability 1). La Canada

does not help with this last portrayal either because there are designated area for people with
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physical disabilities have to go when there are school wide assemblies. This causes people with

disabilities to be isolated from the rest of the student body. Isolation of people with disabilities

makes them feel even more different than their peers. Often time’s able-bodied people try to stay

away from people with disabilities because they do not understand what they are going through

and assume that they are different. This mixture of isolation and view of difference among

people with disabilities and able-bodied people causes a villainous portrayal of people with

disabilities. La Canada should try to integrate students with disabilities in with the rest of their

able-bodied peers. By stereotyping peoples’ disabilities and only putting them into three

categories as people is unethical. There are so many different personalities, physical

appearances, and identities that people can present to the world, so society should not be trying

to fit people with disabilities into only three categories.

Disability studies are a lot more developed and well known in society now than they used

to be. They have come a long way in the development of ramps and elevators. There is still a lot

that society can do to make people with disabilities feel more included in social activities.

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, an esteemed disabilities study advocate, describes the state of

disability studies when she expresses, “Disability studies is now flourishing in disciplines such as

history, literature, religion, theater, and philosophy” (Garland-Thomson 2). This shows that

disability studies are present in a variety of different categories in society, but are not included in

public spaces, which can arguably be the most important subject that these studies should be

involved in. Creating more accessible public spaces has a lot of benefits to society and to people

with physical disabilities. More accessibility can make public spaces more welcoming, creating a

better community environment and it can also make life easier for people with physical

disabilities. Accessibility is not the only problem that people with disabilities have to worry
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about. They are often seen in are particular way by society and that view that society prescribe

on them can be seen through a Marxist lens.

In the book Critical Theory Today, Tyson talks about Marxism and how it questions

repressive ideologies while also pointing out class divides. According to Tyson, “Classism is an

ideology that equates one’s value as a human being with the social class to which one belongs”

(Tyson 56). Society automatically put people with disabilities into a lower class because they are

sometimes dependent on others. Sometimes people with disabilities are not able to support

themselves so they are categorized as the lower class. Another reason that they are put into this

category is because of the stereotypes of being a hopeless victim that cannot help themselves.

Tyson describes the state in which people are placed in the lower class when she says, “The

poor, whose limited educational and career opportunities keep them struggling” (Tyson 53).

People with disabilities have trouble finding jobs and making money because of their ailments,

so this is another reason people with disabilities are automatically placed in the lower class.

Making campuses more accessible will help people who are disabled be able to do things on their

own. This will then allow them to break away from classism and not be considered part of the

lower class. Accessibility might be a hard concept for La Canada to adopt because they are an

upper class town.

As mentioned earlier La Canada is a small, but very affluent town. It costs a lot of money

to live there, so it is predominantly occupied by the upper class. Since people with disabilities are

often seen as part of the lower class, La Canada High School might not want to attract people

with ailments by adding accessibility to their campus. People in the upper class like to keep their

town as exclusive as possible. Being able to stay an exclusively upper class town, La Canada

High School won’t add more accessibility to be more welcoming to the lower class. As stated in
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the Communist Manifesto, “Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great

hostile camps, into two great classes, directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat”

(Marx and Engels). In this case people with disabilities are seen as the Proletariat class, while

able-bodied people are seen as more of the Bourgeoisie class or upper class. This view of people

with disabilities being part of the lower class just because of their disability needs to end. In this

Communist Manifesto quote, it says, “Two great hostile camps,” there should not be hostility

between able-bodied people and disabled people. La Canada High School should make a more

accessible campus so it is a more welcoming public space, and decrease the hostility between the

two classes. Since the campus is not inclusive because the lack of accessibility makes it harder

for people with disabilities to live with rugged individualism as an ideology.

Rugged individualism is an ideology in America that is associated with success. Tyson

defines it best when she states that it, “romanticizes the individual who strikes out alone in

pursuit of a goal” (Tyson 57). This is a very favorable ideology for able-bodied people. Being

that they can do things on their own and are usually more independent, it is easier for them to

follow rugged individualism to succeed. If people believe the only way to succeed is to become a

rugged individualist that does what they can to succeed on their own, then people with

disabilities have a disadvantage. If someone with physical disabilities is dependent on others,

then it would be very hard for them to succeed as an individual without anyone else’s help. La

Canada High School makes it difficult for people with disabilities to pursue the rugged

individualism ideology because of its lack of accessibility. If students with physical disabilities

have to ask other students to help them with opening the door or to get from one place to another,

it is going to be strenuous for that person to succeed as an individual. It will especially be hard
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for people with physical disabilities in an emergency situation if the campus is not very

accessible.

La Canada High School has no realistic action plan when it comes to people with

disabilities in emergency situations. If a person in a wheelchair was on the third floor and there

was a fire, there is no way that they can get down on their own because they wouldn’t be able to

take the slow elevators. There are no ramps on campus that they could use to get down so they

would need the help of someone else. Tyson explains this concept when she says, “Haven’t we

learned from science that nature demands the “survival of the fittest”’ (Tyson 55). People with

disabilities needed help of other in an emergency situation implies that they aren’t the fittest, and

in terms of Marxism will not survive. The fact that a person with a physical disability cannot

help themselves survive in an emergency situation reinforces that they are categorized as

helpless victims and need to assistance of others. La Canada High School needs to be more

accommodating for people with physical disabilities so that they can feel more welcome on

campus and be more independent.

Even though La Canada High School has implemented elevators to move forward with

accessibility, this is just a small step towards full inclusion of people with disabilities. People

with physical ailments have trouble with a lot of things in their lives. It would make society

better if they did not have to worry about whether they can get to class on their own or not.

Building accessible ramps, elevators, doors, and hallways will make it so people with physical

disabilities can be more independent, not needing the help of others. Hopefully making it easier

for people with disabilities to be more independent will allow them to feel more confident. This

will also make it so no one in society looks down on them as if they are broken. There are so
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many steps that can be taken to increase accessibility in school, raising awareness that there is a

problem with accessibility is the first step in make schools more welcoming for all.
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Works Cited

“April Is World Autism Month.” Disability Rights California, www.disabilityrightsca.org/.

“Common Portrayals of Persons with Disabilities.” MediaSmarts, 22 Aug. 2014,

mediasmarts.ca/diversity-media/persons-disabilities/common-portrayals-persons-

disabilities.

Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory. 2013,

www.ces.uc.pt/projectos/intimidade/media/Integrating%20Disability,%20Transforming%

20Feminist%20Theory.pdf.

Engels, Friedrich, and Karl Marx. “The Communist Manifesto.” Gutenberg, 1 Nov. 2018,

www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/61/pg61.html.

Silverman, Jonathan, and Dean Rader. The World Is a Text: Writing about Visual and Popular

Culture. Broadview Press, 2018.

Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide. , 2015. Print.