How much of this is a terminology problem—that the word “disability” serves this blanket purpose for statutory reasons rather than to signal the type or severity of impairment?
Like, at the end of the day, these students still have to perform or not. I get the impression that a lot of these accommodations are kind of just a formal way of not being a dick about obstacles tangential to the actual learning.
I wouldn't be surprised if most of these Stanford cases are people gaming the system. But I would be equally unsurprised if screening all students of elite universities revealed that over 50% of them had some condition listed in the DSM-5, with clear correlations between condition and field of study
It's not a major disability but it was a barrier to me performing at my best so I filed the paperwork and got some minor accommodations. It was basic stuff like letting teachers know during periods when I was struggling and they would allow me to take tests in a separate room (same time limit, just by my self in a quiet room) or allow me an extra 24 hours on certain assignments provided I requested it X amount of days ahead of time.
Certainly they provided a minor "advantage" but not substantially. And these were things that most teachers are already generally willing to accommodate regardless of disability but the disability system provides a formal framework for doing so and avoiding the justifying yourself over and over again (vs just getting it cleared up at the start of the semester).
Disabilities come in many shapes and sizes. Most of them are small and it's way easier to deal with an office that deals specially with disabilities to come up with accommodations that make sense for you and keep them consistent across your entire time at university than it does to try and negotiate terms with every single professor or TA.
As Scott Alexander opens his essay:
>The human brain wasn’t built for accounting or software engineering. A few lucky people can do these things ten hours a day, every day, with a smile. The rest of us start fidgeting and checking our cell phone somewhere around the thirty minute mark. I work near the financial district of a big city, so every day a new Senior Regional Manipulator Of Tiny Numbers comes in and tells me that his brain must be broken because he can’t sit still and manipulate tiny numbers as much as he wants. How come this is so hard for him, when all of his colleagues can work so diligently?
https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/12/28/adderall-risks-much-mo...
I view it similar to the ability to throw, kick and catch balls. Today it doesn't say much about a person ability to learn, but in the old times I can see the argument that it would be a hindrance in going through the education system. Not a learning disability per say, but a schooling disability.
Of course, understanding what disability actually is requires considering each learning disability separately, which is something this article unfortunately fails to do. We can do this though:
- Anxiety and depression: I see no reason why this should decrease somebody’s intelligence, so the fact that there are elevated rates of such people at top universities does not seem odd. Since these are treatable conditions, they won’t necessarily affect the ability for a student to become an effective researcher.
- ADHD: This condition is marked by a lack of ability to focus, which is a property unrelated to intelligence. Some very famous mathematicians like Paul Erdős likely had ADHD, demonstrating that it’s not necessarily true this condition makes one a worse researcher.
- Autism: Does not necessarily reduce intelligence. We can look at professional mathematicians and see that a lot of them are autistic.
- Chronic pain, migraines, etc: Unrelated to intelligence. It’s possible this will decrease one’s ability to be a researcher, but if one is able to complete University at all, it’s likely not that severe.
I mean, I could go on, and of course there will be a couple of counterexample. However, it is still the case that generally speaking, “learning disability” and “stupid” are different things, and therefore there is no reason to expect that there would be lower rates of learning disabilities among those who are highly academically skilled.
According to your definition, you can be far superior to your peers at learning and still be learning disabled. If you are looking for stupid people, you have found one, because I don't understand that.
Because of all of the ways that students can be disadvantaged at learning, every student needs accommodations. There are no students who can't benefit from a highly responsive learning environment. Being able to benefit from that does not make any student learning disabled, just different, and they are all different.
But if you're just different, and not disabled, you lose victim cred, preferences and funding.
> Learning disabilities don’t affect intelligence and are different from intellectual disabilities. People with LDs have specific issues with learning but have an average or above-average IQ (intelligence quotient).
I acknowledge that I was including autism as a learning disability, but I see this isn’t the case. Still, however, I hope you would acknowledge that autistic people are not inherently less intelligent than others, and neither are people with depression nor anxiety.