You Too Can Have a Healthy Skeletal System

You too can have a healthy skeletal system, even in old age Announcer: I Just came from the doctor and I am definitely going to start hiking once a week, and am going to bump up my exercise routine to three times a week. I also need to get to the grocery store to buy some calcium-rich foods. Radio Personality: You know, I am so sick of my doctor telling me what to eat and when to exercise. I am naturally in good shape and can eat whatever I want and still have a great physique.Announcer: We both are getting up there in age, and I hope you realize that It Is not serially what is on the outside, but what is happening on the inside that matters when it comes to arthritis, osteoporosis, and injuries from falls. Yes, the fact that you are able to keep a good weight Is a starting point, but I am sure that you have many other risk factors for all of these problems. Radio Personality: What other risk factors could I possibly have? Announcer: Well for starters your smoking Is a risk factor fo r osteoporosis and I am sure that it does not help your overall health In general.Both of our ages will always e a risk factor, and also your fast-food diet and alcohol consumption Is a risk factor for arthritis, osteoporosis, and Injuries from falls. Radio Personality: What can I do? I think the damage may already have been done. Announcer: You can begin by stopping the smoking and drinking alcohol on only special occasions. Exercise regularly, especially bone and muscle strengthening exercises, and eat a healthy diet that Is rich In calcium and Valetta D. Have regular eye check-ups and carefully look at the side-effects of any medications you may be taking.

Classical Music in Pop Culture Essay

There may just be a glimpse of good news for the music front. Recently I’ve heard numerous television commercials using pieces of classical music to display the message. Two of them, it must be stated, were for the same product, one of those so called daily vitamins. One had a piece of Wagner – the theme from Die Walkure – and the other accented a melody from Mozart’s Die Zauberflote. Actual operas, please note. And then another commercial for a table seasoning, set in a restaurant, had Bach’s BrandenBurg Concerto No. playing in the background. Could it be that a couple of advertising people have determined that pop music has lost some of its demand? I am lost in how these people go about determining what music to use, but it seems luminous that they would want whatever they choose to support the product image and not defer the people to whom they are trying to sell it. Yes, it is entirely possible to use music sarcastically , and perhaps thatâ€⠄¢s what is going on here. But to use a piece of Mozart sarcastically is still to expose the audience to a piece of Mozart, which in the normal way of things they may not encounter nywhere else. It’s hard to see how good this is but it can’t be that bad. Except for a single double sided cassette of Beethoven(which I accidently taped over one day) there was no classical music in the house when I was coming up. Whatever of that type of music I heard, I heard from television. And by â€Å"television† I don’t mean the likes of â€Å"Matlock. † No, my earliest introduction to music of the serious sort was from the soundtrack of cartoons. The animation studios of Walt Disney and Warner Brothers, among others drew freely on the library of fine music as background and sometimes even as foreground, as for xample when Bugs Bunny or Elmer Fudd appeared as the conductor of a symphony orchestra. Even when Bugs was the subversive rather than the highbrow, the music came through. I didnâ₠¬â„¢t hear too much in school, either which is a shame. As I recollect the musical interludes in school consisted of taking out little books of songs and singing â€Å"Jack and Jill† and other similar songs. Some kids played in the band and soaked up some music that way; being the class clown and lack of interest at the time, rendered me unfit for that path. But eventually I grew an interest in the drums and arching music, and started watching DCI(Drum Corps International), videos on YouTube. Doesn’t it seem, though, that good music is something that might be included into the school day? It does not have to be studied academically or formally â€Å"appreciated. † Just made available, as one might play little league football. Start early enough, and maybe boys won’t pretend to be sick at the sound of a violin. I’ve seen a couple of new commercials and they do succeed in making me take notice. I’m not going to buy those vitamin or the table seasonings, but I hope those who are inclined to do so wil l form a ositive association with some good music. Writing this paper I was really forced to think about classical music and not only is relevance in pop culture but also its contribution to pop culture. So I started my research and started seeing a lot about classical music and therapy. By the minute classical music is being incorporated into mainstream society. According to a research published in a alternative therapy medicine issue of the Journal of Clinical Nursing, classical music can reduce psychological stress among pregnant women. Researchers at the college nursing program at Kaohsiung Medical University conducted a study in which they randomly assigned a group of women to classical music group and another to a country music group. â€Å"the classical music group showed significant reductions in stress, anxiety, and depression after just two weeks, using three established measurement scales†(Chung-Hey). Followed by â€Å"in comparison, the country music group showed a much smaller reduction in stress while there anxiety and depression scores showed little or no improvement.

The People

Angela Franklin Professor Ginfrida ENC1101 22 April 2013 Neat Vs. Sloppy In Suzanne Britt's â€Å"Neat People Vs. Sloppy People† and Dave Barry's † Batting Clean Up and Striking Out† both author's examine just complicated human relationships can be considering how many types of personalities are out there. They both share certain literary elements, but differ immensely in the realms of tone, thesis and organization methods. Barry and Britt share many similarities in their literary elements.Literary elements are symbols and allusions. An allusion is usually used to refer to a person, place or thing that is common knowledge, it may point to a famous event, a familiar saying or a well-known story or song (734). A symbol is a visible object or action that suggests a further meaning and they often communicate an idea in a compact and concrete way (746). They both use these literary elements to create humor in their essays. Barry for example takes the use of Pompeii say ing that â€Å"men generally don't notice dirt until it forms clumps, large enough that can lead to a tragedy like the city of Pompeii (261).Another allusion Barry uses is the reference to Edgar Allen Poe when he goes on to say that â€Å"they could feel the world series television and radio broadcast rays zinging through the air penetrating right through their bodies, causing our dental fillings to vibrate, and all the while the women were behaving as though nothing were wrong† (262). This enhances his story with suspense. Likewise Britt refers to The NewYorker by saying that â€Å"someday the sloppy people will sit down and read all the back issues of the magazine† because they are intelligent.A neat person she goes on to say: â€Å"would hurry up and get the whole thing over with so they can sit down and watch some good ole ‘rasslin' on TV† (256). Which, is something an unintelligent person would be found watching. As far as symbols (things that have a much bigger meaning behind it) goes Barry goes on to say â€Å"that the women prattled away about human relationships or something it turned out to be an extremely pivotal game† (263). When he made that statement he was trying to say that the referring to the game of love.In the same manner Britt went on to say that â€Å"sloppy people live in what some may call â€Å"Never Never Land† (255). What Britt was inferring with that line is that sloppy people are childlike and immature in a sense. When both authors used these symbols in their work it made their essays more humorous and relatable, it's kind of like you had no other choice but to chuckle while reading. In contrast, both authors use a very different tone towards the people they discuss in their essays. Let's take Britt for example she comes off a little harsh, stereotypical, and extremely sarcastic towards neat people.She goes on to say that â€Å"Neat people are bums and clods at heat† (256), which ca n be very offensive to people who consider themselves to be neat, because that one person feels that their neatness is nothing but them being bums which may not be true. Then when Britt talks about the sloppy people it's like she's for them being the way they are, Britt went on to say â€Å"sloppy people aren't really as sloppy as they seem† (255). On the other hand, Barry is a lot more balanced in his approach of comparing men and women; he doesn't take to one side or even make the other person feel offended as Britt did.He just states the different priorities of men and women, Barry went on to say that â€Å"the opposite side of the dirt coin, of course is sports† (262). Which shows that while women make cleaning priority men on the other, take sports as a priority. As far as thesis goes, Britt's thesis was a bit vague; having little or let's say no detail at all. Britt states that â€Å"the distinction is, as always, moral. Neat people are lazier and meaner than sl oppy people†(255). She never gives detail on that point of why exactly they are considered meaner and lazier than others.Britt leaves her audience trying to figure out where she's going with that assumption of neat people. However, when Barry comes in with his split thesis he states clearly in his first paragraph that † The primary difference between men and women is that women can see extremely small quantities of dirt† (261) which, shows that he is about to go into detail of why he made that statement about women. Then he goes on to say in the second part of his thesis that â€Å"the opposite side of the dirt coin, of course, is sports† (262) and that, he goes on to explain is the area where men tend to feel most sensitive.In that part he goes into detail of why men are the way they are when it comes to the subject of cleaning. With the split of Barry's thesis he gives the reader a reason why he makes the certain statements which, gives his essay a laid ba ck feel where you kind of know where things could possibly be going. In addition to the many things Britt and Barry differ on, they also use a different organization strategy. Britt uses subject by subject organization. When using subject by subject you set forth all your facts about one thing then do the same for the other. Then you some up the similarities and differences between the two (248).Britt goes on and on about sloppy people and their sloppiness and she gives off a sense of being unbalanced when it comes to sloppy as well as neat people. For example Britt goes on to saying â€Å"For all these noble reasons and more, sloppy people will never get neat, They aim to aim to high and wide† (256). Leaving it at that only to go into more bashing of sloppy people. But Barry on the other hand, shows a keen sense of balance when he approached the matter point by point. Point by point is when you compare and contrast as you go, that way you consider one point at a time, taking up your two subjects alternately (249).Like when Barry stated that â€Å"The primary difference between men and women, was that women can see small quantities of dirt and men can't† he brought both subjects up and explained them both, balancing what he was talking about in his essay. In short, it can be concluded that in Suzanne Britt's â€Å"Neat people Vs. Sloppy people† and Dave Barry's â€Å"Batting Clean-Up and striking Out† they examine just how complicated human relationships can be considering how many types of personalities Re out. Although, they share similar points they differ greatly in how they go about doing

A study investigating the mismatch between the course book and the Literature review

A study investigating the mismatch between the course book and the needs of saudi technicians working in air forces - Literature review Example Therefore, new courses were prepared to meet the requirement. In the process of course designing, ESP became the dominant tool in view of its demand by the stakeholders and the employers (Anthony 1997, 2). With the passage of time, it was admitted that such module of learning would attract workforce migrated from all over the world in search of green pasture. In the fast developing economies like India, Dubai, Malaysia, and Eastern Europe such courses are considered as a useful method of learning for the workforce. The learners themselves now realize that English is an effective tool in achieving the empowerment and self-expression. Hence, it should not confine to few situations only (Anthony 1997, 2-3). To further improve the situation in the mid of seventies, the idea of needs analysis was floated. Prior to that, needs analysis mainly focused on linguistic and register analysis. The focused analysis method in 80s was first used by chambers in their articles and tried to remove the confusion that existed about certain terminologies (Astika 1999, 1). In the light of the statement of Iwai, formal needs analysis was the new concept in the field of language teaching. This method was mostly used by the teacher to examine what sort of techniques could woo or influence the students to become master of English language. These experiments were the mother of new approaches to be replaced with the existing. John opined that such analysis is needed to introduce for course designing, which provides authenticity, validity and relevancy for the following courses to be designed in the same pattern (Astika 1999, 2-3). The insertion of subject related pictures in course of English language for Specific Purpose are in fact technological and theoretical assessment of languages that are to be used to satisfy the learner needs and to meet the globalized requirement, where local and global needs are merged. By using ESP with its multiple analytical methods may address the need of a hotel worker at one particular place or situation in a detailed manner than ever before. Now the learners and the workers are started realizing that in different circumstances different methods of learning are to be adopted in an effective manner to cope with the situation. Now the specialists of ESP finding out more ways and means that attracts more and more participants in the courses specifically designed for them to cater to their needs. It is true that without understanding the problems of the course participants, the desired result could be elusive dreams. Therefore, in order to ensure effective participation of the specific participants in basic learner’s academies, at work place and in the communities merits in depth research by the researchers about their needs and how to handle them (Belcher 2006, 134-135). The aim and work of Munby was just to find out the linguistic problems for the initial learners, used in many situations are praiseworthy. The outcome of Munbyâ €™s model is appreciated by Hutchinson and Waters (1987) since it serves the purpose of learners very effectively in a targeted situation. Subsequent model derives their strength from the model of Munby because it provides valuable data banks and target performance (Songhori 2008, 7-8). There are researchers who focus on analyzing target situation needs that followed Munby’s CNP model. We should take into consideration the efforts of Hutchinson and Wa

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Implementation and Analysis of Public Policy - Essay Example For this purpose, some of the formed U.S. troops will provide support to the Iraqis while targeting ISIS forces by sharing their intelligence and coordinate planning process (Deyoung and Gearan, n.p.). President Obama is giving public announcement of the decision trying to convince American society that American personnel will stay in safety there and that the government is working on the development of comprehensive counterterrorism strategy. Also, he stresses that there is a critical necessity to take active position in the conflict on behalf of the American government and that the government will take proactive actions to provide support to the Iraqis people (Deyoung and Gearan, n.p.). Thus, the American government declares its active position towards the situation in Iraq and is stressing its advisory role rather than combating reinforcement. In my opinion the policy might work in case the objective of the plan declared by Obama is true. In case this policy is only a part of the plan and the president is going to take active combat position on behalf of the American government, then this policy can be perceived as a â€Å"cover† for the real plan. In any case it would be very challenging to ensure safety of the American soldiers in hot spot in Iraq. Provocative behavior on the one part can lead to a great military conflict and therefore, impose risk of greater number of victims. The policy looks more like the ground or cause to enter the Iraqis land. The possible criticisms of the Obama’s decision can relate to the issue that the President is opening a new front in the Middle East despite the official rejections (Deyoung and Gearan, n.p.). People might negatively perceive this decision and view it as continuation of spending money and threatening the lives of American soldiers in another land war in the Middle East (Deyoung and Gearan, n.p.). The fact that there will be soldiers who have already undergone military service on the Middle

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Letter - Essay Example German invasion of Poland and French declaration of war on Germany have resulted in a large number of casualties. I do not know why the main powers of the world have lost patience and have started the war but I believe that our army can lead the world towards peace and stability. We are determined to get victory in the pacific region. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour and Hitler’s declaration of war are such issues which have forced us to participate in the war. We have the aim of helping the countries which are in need. We have to support British in order to stop Germans from conquering the land of Britain. We are the peacemakers, not peace destroyers. My dear sister! Do not get upset because of the situation. We are doing our best for the cause. Our physical condition is also good and we can fight for a long time for the cause of bringing pace to the world. You want, I want, we all want Britain and France to stop German invasion by winning the war against Germany. Our political leadership has given us a lot of support in aiding Britain and helping her win the war against Germans. It is very good to know that both political leadership and general public have the same mindset as they are supporting us in our mission of helping Britain. We want to stabilize democracy in every part of the world. To me, democracy is the best way of governance. When a threat to democracy occurs in any part of the world, its effects can be seen in all related parts of the world. Threat to democracy is also one of the main reasons of this war. The democratic powers have become passive. Here, I would like to tell you some of the main causes of this war in order to make you aware why we have been involved in the war. Some causes include Hitler’s aim to dominate the European countries, aggressive aims of Hitler’s allies, such as, Italy and Japan, failure of the Treaty of Versailles, and inability of the League of Nations to keep peace in the world. In the end, I would say

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Globalization of the clothing industry - Essay Example Moreover, movement of goods, services and capital has been made easy through globalization, and it has hugely influenced different sectors including the clothing industry. Globalization in the clothing industry is defined as the movement of textile products from one part of the world or location to the other through fashion, exhibition, apparel, showcasing or designing (Timmerman 3). It does not necessarily mean physical actions, but sharing of ideas or clothing from different parts of the world. There are numerous debates among scholars, countries, and investors on the beneficiaries and impacts of globalization in the clothing industry. Today, different fashions are available at the consumers doorstep due to globalization. Clothes produced by American firms are available in China, African and every corner of the world. In turn, it has negative and positive impacts on consumers, and domestic clothing industries. This paper will outline effects of globalization of the clothing industry on factories and employees in the United States, as well as on the consumers. Globalization of the clothing industry has provided opportunities for factories in the United States to outsource for cheaper labor from developing or emerging economies and countries. Many US clothing industries are outsourcing their marketing, manufacturing, and other duties to less developed nations, where the currency differences favor them (Timmerman 40). US companies find cheap labor because of outsourced services, and this makes them complete manufacturing at half the home or domestic price. Therefore, most US clothing companies have established manufacturing units in less developed nations such as China, Bangladesh, and India in order to produce goods at low prices. Many US factories have gained from globalization of the clothing industry, because they benefit from outsourcing thus gaining enormous profits. Similarly, globalization of the

Marijuana for Recreational Use Essay Example for Free

Marijuana for Recreational Use Essay Abstract What is a Weed? A plant whose virtues have yet to be discovered. – Ralph Waldo Emerson. Weed the People: From Founding Fiber to Forbidden Fruit. It is the author’s intent to explain why marijuana should be legalized and no longer considered deviant behavior. This paper will show that the United States of America is moving, ever so slowly, in this direction. First with allowing the use of medical marijuana in 14 states and many other states are reducing the severity of punishment for possession of marijuana and now two states have passed laws allowing marijuana to legally consume for recreational purposes. Marijuana has been a controversial issue on our society for many years. Although there have been many negative claims regarding its effects on the human body people are learning the truths. Although due to many years of stereotyping people who smoke pot some would rather believe the untruths. There is a skewed perception of what a pot smoker looks like. Such as how they are portrayed in the movie, Reefer Madness. Pot smokers were automatically considered addicts that eventually turned to criminal activities or they took part in some sort of deviant behavior. It was after this movie that Regan began a â€Å"War on Drugs† in 1960’s which may have helped to brand pot smokers as delinquents or deviants. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028346/ Although we make think so, using marijuana for medicinal purposes is not new. The United States began understanding the benefits of the medical properties in marijuana in the 1800’s. Later there were many papers written by physicians on how marijuana can be used to alleviate a number of medical disorders, ailments such as pain relief, glaucoma and nausea to name a few. It is also a strong appetite stimulant. Recently this has been proven most beneficial for people who have diseases that suppress the appetite such as cancer or AIDS helping them to sustain their appetite and strength. (http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=5441#f2 Accessed on June 5, 2010). Currently it is thought that probably the most significant impact that the legalization of marijuana is that it would re-introduce the use of hemp into our society. This would be very beneficial to our economy. Hemp fibers are impressively strong, making the crop useful in the production of textile based products. This makes it ideal for the manufacturing of products like paper, fabric, and rope. It can also be used as a dietary supplement and has more protein than soy. Because of the higher yield per acre and the shorter growing cycle for Hemp, it is considered to be superior to cotton. According to the U.S Department of Agriculture, one acre of marijuana can produce four times as much paper and can be harvested quicker than an acre of trees. (http://cannabisnews.com/news/14/thread14829.shtml Accessed on June 5, 2010). Another very important benefit of hemp is that it has the ability to produced large amounts of cellulose. It has been recently discovered that the compound cellulose can be converted into a biofuel called cellulostic ethanol. This type of biofuel is able to power anything that gasoline currently does. This type of biofuel is typically produced by means of â€Å"energy crops†, primarily from corn or cotton. An energy crop is a plant grown as a low-cost and low-maintenance harvest used to make biofuels. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_crops) Hemp still reigns champion over cotton once again as it can be reproduced more often and it yields more than four times the amount of cellulose than from corn. A judge recently stated that the current marijuana laws are progressing much like those right before prohibition ended. The laws became more focused on taking down large operations, king pins and the like. It is estimated that the use of marijuana will be legalized in five years time. (http://www.wmur.com/news/national/Pot-advocates-hope-to-rise-from-prohibition/-/9857926/17619956/-/13figx9/-/index.html?absolute=true) As more and more states follow others, like Washington and Colorado and make marijuana legal for recreational use it will no longer be seen as deviant behavior. Well, no more than alcohol or smoking cigarettes. I have known many alcoholics in my lifetime but I have not known very many pot heads. I am not saying I don’t know people who smoke pot. I do, and they use it for recreational purposes and as a sleep aid. Smoking marijuana really is no different than consuming alcohol. There was a time when it was the â€Å"norm† for a man to go home after a long day at work and have a â€Å"high ball† or two. Some would rather go home after a long day at work and relax with a joint. Legalized marijuana should be treated the same as legal alcohol. Only those above a certain age will be able to purchase or use it and it will only be sold in licensed establishments. My question to society would be, do you want users consuming marijuana that has been grown illegally? Smuggled into the United States or would you rather they purchase their marijuana from licensed establishments that are regulated and contribute taxes to their community? REFERENCES http://cannabisnews.com/news/14/thread14829.shtml Accessed on June 5, 2010 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_crops http://www.wmur.com/news/national/Pot-advocates-hope-to-rise-from-prohibition/-/9857926/17619956/-/13figx9/-/index.html?absolute=true http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=5441#f2 Accessed on June 5, 2010

Teenage pregnancy Essay Example for Free

Teenage pregnancy Essay Teenage pregnancy is defined as a teenage girl, usually within the ages of 13-19, becoming pregnant. The term in everyday speech usually refers to girls who have not reached legal adulthood, which varies across the world, who become pregnant. Causes and of teenage pregnancy Teen pregnancies may result for different reasons in industrialized countries as compared to developing countries. Factors that contribute to teenage pregnancies include: Customs and traditions that lead to early marriage (developing countries) Adolescent sexual behavior which may also be influenced by alcohol and drugs Lack of education and information about reproductive sexual health including lack of access to tools that prevent pregnancies Peer pressure to engage in sexual activity Incorrect use of contraception Sexual abuse that leads to rape Poverty Exposure to abuse, violence and family strife at home Low self esteem Low educational ambitions and goals Effects of teenage pregnancy Research indicates that teen pregnancy and motherhood can have detrimental socio economic and psychological outcomes for the teen mother, her child, and her young siblings. A teen mother is more likely to: †¢ Drop out of school †¢ have no or low qualifications †¢ be unemployed or low-paid †¢ live in poor housing conditions †¢ suffer from depression which may result in suicide †¢ live on welfare The child of a teen mother is more likely to: †¢ live in poverty †¢ grow up without a father †¢ become a victim of neglect or abuse †¢ do less well at school †¢ become involved in crime †¢ Abuse drugs and alcohol †¢ Eventually become a teenage parent and begin the cycle all over again The younger sibling of a teen mother is more likely to: †¢ accept sexual initiation and marriage at a younger age †¢ Place less importance on education and employment Disadvantages of teenage pregnancy TEEN PREGNANCY: STIs, HIV AND AIDS †¢ As a result of unprotected sex, young people are also at risk of sexually transmitted diseases and HIV infection. †¢ The highest rates of STIs worldwide are among young people aged 15 to 24. Some 500,000 become infected daily (excluding HIV). †¢ Two in five new HIV infections globally occur in young people aged 15 to 24. †¢ Surveys from 40 countries show that more than half their young people have misconceptions about how HIV is transmitted. †¢ Married adolescent girls generally are unable to negotiate condom use or to refuse sexual relations. They are often married to older men with more sexual experience, which puts them at risk of contracting STIs, including HIV. Prevention FAMILY PLANNING AND YOUNG PEOPLE: CHALLENGES †¢ Many societies, including in Malaysia, disapprove of premarital sex. †¢ As a result, young people have limited or no access to education and information on reproductive sexual health care. †¢ Modern contraceptive use among adolescents is generally low, and decreases with economic status. Fewer than 5% of the poorest young use modern contraception. †¢ Young women consistently report less contraceptive usage than men, evidence of their unequal power in negotiating safer sex or restrictions on their access to services (such as lack of information, shame, laws, health provider attitudes and practices, or social norms). †¢ Young people may hesitate to visit clinics because of lack of privacy and confidentiality, inconvenient locations and hours, high costs, limited contraceptive choices and supplies, and perhaps most importantly, negative or judgmental provider attitudes. †¢ Laws and policies also may restrict adolescents’ access to information and services, for example, by limiting family planning to married people or requiring parental or spousal consent. †¢ A basic challenge in advocacy, especially in traditional societies, is the taboo on public discussion of sexual issues, including the fact that many young people are sexually active before marriage.

Michel Foucault In Discipline And Punish Sociology Essay

Michel Foucault In Discipline And Punish Sociology Essay Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality, demonstrates that the tools of disciplinarity (which emerged in the confluence of critical, historical upheavals immediately preceding the modern age, such as geometric demographic expansion, reconfiguring global financial and mercantile apparatuses, the redefinition of territorial boundaries through global explosion and the ensuring establishments of empires, the ad hoc onset of the Industrial Revolution, etc.), upon being brought into proximity to about the only things that presently we are able to bring to it, such as a proclivity towards petty moralizing, our social prejudices, our racial intolerances, the petty agendas of the bourgeoisie empirical lifestyle enclaves, etc., operate what they have been designed to do, namely the re-proliferation, expansion, multiplication, amplification, production of manipulated strategies for administering populations, under the guise of it redounding to the so-called public interest, which on the whole underwrite unconscionable amounts of paralysis, social dissatisfaction and numerous suffering. At the heart of Michel Foucaults epistemic discussions on the reorganization of knowledge in the human sciences is his argument during the 1970s that such reshaping established contemporary arrangements of power and domination. Power, he defines, is the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute their own organization.  [1]  His comprehensive historical analysis on the advent of disciplinary apparatus in Discipline and Punish and discourses on compartmentalization of sex and sexuality, and bio-power in The History of Sexuality postulate an apparent political positioning of power in the sphere of modernity, hence, paving way for a dynamic interpretation of his own understanding of it and the encompassing entity of knowledge. This academic paper aims to expound on the place of power and knowledge in Foucaults historical studies on prison and other modern forms of disciplinary institutions, and scientific discourses about sexuality and its deployments. The paper is divided into two parts and will proceed accordingly. The first part comprises the reiteration of Foucaults claims on tools of disciplinary institutions as polymorphous, hence the interwoven appearance of new forms knowledge and power during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By having constructed the reciprocity in the entrainment of knowledge and power in the context of the penal system, Foucault tries to demarcate the bounds of these two entities, but also ensures that each converge on the confines of modern disciplinarity (such as geometric demographic expansions). In other words, Foucault does not concern himself with distinguishing the identity of knowledge against power, or vice versa, but having and understanding knowledge and power in a mutual reinforcing relation so that each is sustaining the authority of the other.  [2]   This paper also argues that what drove the tools of disciplinarity as new forms of knowledge and power to operate the way they do, as in seemingly paralyzing humanity on its actions, is because, in the first place, they were programmed to act as the antithesis to the utopia vowed by the Enlightenment; hence are hostile to begin with, yet have been stabilized by mans hopeless state to resist them, as implied in the works of Foucault. The second part is a critical analysis on two viz. (1) pedagogization of childrens sex, and (2) socialization of procreative behavior of what Foucault labels as four great strategic unities that formed specific mechanisms of knowledge and power centering on sex at the start of the eighteenth century whence the proliferation of the production of sexuality started to surface and became a historical construct. Their ontological and epistemological position allowed them to function in autonomy by which they imposed an explicit but restricted methodology in the generation and dictums of new knowledge saturated with sexuality through which these deployments asserted their own perilous power.  [3]   I The underlying theme of the reorganization of knowledge in Foucaults works was broadened and highlighted by the introduction of the contemporary prison system in Discipline and Punish. By having the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries explicitly set in the realm of discipline, observation, and chains of restriction, Foucault made it possible in his book to produce new knowledge even as they created new forms of social control.  [4]  The new penal system has [i]ts fateà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦to be redefined by knowledge.  [5]  Davidson argues that Foucaults modern prison also serves as a reference point for his scrupulous analytics of power;  [6]  hence, the horrific revelation and comparison of the spectacle of the early eighteenth century punishment over the subtlety of the new penal structure exemplifying the scope and the measure of steadiness of power throughout its transformations under different circumstances. This is one of the most crucial points that Foucault purports. As mentioned above, the prevailing prison system became his reference point in the analytics of knowledge and power, and it is not hard to deconstruct why. As it were, it can be seen that Foucault was indulging himself in the line that separates the violent yet sporadic carrying out of detrimental force that targeted the body (e.g. public tortures and eventual public executions) and the imposition of a mass of juridical absurdities  [7]  by the modern-day form of discipline: It was a question not of treating the body, en masse, wholesale, as if it were an indissociable unity, but of working it retail, individually; of exercising upon it a subtle coercion, of obtaining holds upon it at the level of mechanism itself movements, gestures, attitudes, rapidity: an infinitesimal power over the active body.  [8]   The imposition of discipline reconstructs power in the manufacture of new behavior newfound techniques, newborn gesticulation, new actions and ultimately, new breeds of people. Now, power is not merely power per se in its traditional sense, but it is a power that involves obedience on influence and exploitation. This is what Foucault meant in his discourse on docile bodies. Indeed, the human body was entering a machinery of power that explores it, breaks it down and rearranges it.  [9]  It is a power that is autonomous, ad hominem and utilitarian. Allen argues that those who discipline, apart from having a hold over the mobilization of others bodies, become compelled in always ricocheting back on specialist knowledge, whence knowledge and power come into a mutual crisscross to finally augment each other. Everything comes in tandem: there can be no criminology without prisons or medicine without clinic for knowledge is only possible in its compromise with the reciprocating patte rns in the exercise of power.  [10]  Borrowing the words of Robinson and Davies, disciplinary apparatuses, indeed, cater to a compulsory captive audience.  [11]  Thus, Foucault says, discipline produces subjected and practiced bodies, docile bodies.  [12]   The above mentioned means of subjection, along with the time cards, bundy clocks, expected movements, documented schedules, etc., operated subtly through the shake-up of space and time by which peoples perform; hence, the formulation of an indirect flow of action, cellular segmentation, and organic control, given by the partitioning and distribution of activities. They served to economize the time of life and to exercise power over men through mediation of time, leaning on a subjection that has never reached its limit.  [13]   The above interventions paved way for the turn-around between power and perceptibility. There was a swing in political strategies from the presentation of power as spectacle to its employment in perceiving the target thoroughly, i.e., to see and hear him, to monitor and evaluate him, even at a distance. Surveillance, or panopticism, which proved to be far more complex than the sheer exhibition of force, became the autonomous impetus that massively drives action. By being everywhere, surveillance forces the target to always stand on attention as he is constantly located; it allows the disciplinary power to be absolutely indiscreet and to be exercised without division: an automatic functioning of power.  [14]   Rouse provided a physical description of surveillance. According to him, surveillance was not only manifest as affixed to the walls or structures of institutions, whose primary aim, again, was to enrich the capacity to perceive, but also in the creation or extension of rituals, particularly examinations such as psychiatric tests, job interviews, meetings, and even military exercise wherein the commander only stands aside to witness the passing of a marching troop instead of actually being its forefront figure.  [15]   Foucaults argument of panopticism and how it is improbable for people to not be observed shows its extent in The History of Sexuality. He argues that with the assimilation of the discourse of the sins of the flesh in the Catholic confession after the Council of Trent (Counter-Reformation), and even just traditional confession per se, the Church created a hold on its faithful by subjugating them to perfect obedience. Even through the screens of confessional boxes, one is compelled to allow himself to be audible, hence perceived, by an authority. Foucault argues: We have since become a singularly confessing society. The confession has spread its effects far and wide. It plays a part inà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦the most ordinary affairs of everyday life, and in the most solemn rites; à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦one goes about telling, with the greatest precision, whatever is most difficult to tell. One confesses in public and in private, to ones parents, ones educators, ones doctor, to those one loves; one admits to oneself, in pleasure and in pain, things it would be impossible to tell to anyone else, the things people write books about. One confesses-or is forced to confessà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦man has become a confessing animal.  [16]   Such manifestations of panopticism and process of keeping records chains behavior exactly by the manner in which it creates more and more access for things and phenomena to be known. Yet, digging more deeply, it must be argued that such new forms of knowledge also assume new sets of constraints, which in turn allow peoples movement to be perceived. Rouse asserts that such more specific knowledge makes room for also a more omnipresent constraint on peoples actions cycling towards the vast probabilities for more intrusive inquiry and disclosure.  [17]   These knowledge and power techniques have two-fold insinuations. First, they operated to control, or, to a higher extent, neutralize, societal factors that are deemed perilous and threat to what has already been established. Second, having controlled such unusual and abnormal elements, they provide an avenue for the enhancement of productivity and utilization of their subjects. By doing so, the use of these knowledge and power that was initially applicable only to quarantined institutions, such as prisons and mental wards in other words, exclusive and extreme entities was slowly emancipated and incorporated into an assortment of new contexts; hence allowing the expansion of their application. Foucault named this as the swarming of disciplinary mechanisms and argues: While, on the one hand, the disciplinary establishments increase, their mechanisms have a certain tendency to become de-institutionalized, to emerge from the closed fortresses in which they once functioned and to circulate in a free state; the massive, compact disciplines are broken down into flexible methods of control.  [18]   He adds that On the whole, therefore, one can speak of the formation of a disciplinary society in this movement that stretches from the enclosed disciplines, a sort of social quarantine, to an indefinitely generalizable mechanism of panopticism. Not because the disciplinary modality of power has replaced all others; but because it has infiltrated the others, sometimes undermining them, but serving as an intermediary between themà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦and above all making it possible to bring the effects of power to the most minute and distant elements.  [19]   These present-day techniques ought not to be understood as a place-over upon prior structure/s. Instead, these practices ought to be realized as constituting wholly different objects for knowledge to be tickled. Amongst these new sets are strategic statistics and inputs, such as geometric demographic expansion, and the redefinition of territorial boundaries according to the continuing progressive development in International Relations; structures that incessantly tackles development, as in reconfiguration of global financial and mercantile apparatuses, or age-group and pedagogical attainments; distribution patterns, like income distribution in households, and a history of familial diseases like cancer and diabetes; and indications of the state of life like cholesterol and sugar count. Consequently, such practices generate redefined, if not new enough, types of human subjects in consanguinity with another phase of production of new knowledge, objects, and power modalities. These political practices constitute a very methodical comprehension of the individual, of course through the assistance of the elements that compose panopticism. Foucault, in Discipline and Punish, argues that such knowledge engraves a barrier that maintains the targets individuality in his very own individuality. Hence, there is a permanence of knowledge, a knowledge by which the progress of the individuality of the target is always under scrutiny and evaluation.  [20]   The more important thing, though, is that this knowledge of individuality, individuating comprehension call it what you may plays a crucial role in the economization and politicization of the population. In The History of Sexuality, Foucault argues that peoples have also been singled-out, i.e., instead of dealing with people or subjects, the government has now shifted its attention and focused on dealing with a population with all its encompassing features that, just like the individual, had also been subjected to surveillance: mortality rates, healthiness, history of diseases, immunity to them, etc. All this individualizing of the people as a population always involve a reflux into the politic and economic in the population, i.e., population as labor force, population and efficiency in resource allocation, etc.  [21]   Foucault associates the above knowledge on individuality with the regulation of the individualized people, or population, with the concept of normalization, which purports mutuality with the knowledge and comprehension of populations by determining distributions. Lorentzen argues that norms occupy the whole of society, yet impose the greatest influence on institutions like church, school, and household;  [22]  in short, the ones that hold specific populations, such as students and families. Hacking, in his book The Taming of Chance, defined normal distribution as something that tries to promote constancy in numbers as implied in the survey of Europeans on their populations.  [23]  Along with certain populations, the individual also aids in the production of knowledge by being listed under a category; hence, he is epistemologically located without degrading into the standard. For Foucault, normalization is individualization because, although it imposes homogeneity, it also ind ividualizes by making it possible to measure gaps, to determine levels, to fix specialties and to render the differences useful by fitting them one to another.  [24]   In conclusion, it can be said that the influx of newly constructed knowledge and power operate today the way they do because they were meant to counter the premise and promise of the Enlightenment. Enlightenment was the advance of thought  [25]  that aims, in this case, to cultivate the prison and/or penal system as humanly as demanded by the modern society, and to emancipate mankind from sexual repression. But Foucault has presented it with a sense of hostility, if not real contradiction. As formerly vastly discoursed in this paper, the civilized prison and liberated sexuality further entangles humanity, and Foucaults presentation of these entities addresses the materializing need to resist them as contemporary modes of knowledge and power. Yet, to go with this, he also insinuates that such resistance has no solid framework to come into existence, hence creating that in-between where there is a shocking paralysis engulfing man, and suffering and dissatisfaction looming amongst t hem. II Some of the increase in child abuse is due to the publicity itself.  [26]   Ian Hacking The History of Sexuality portrays the interrelation between knowledge and power through a historical account of the origin of the context of sexuality. It is not a given, but rather a historical construct of discourse. Its mode of deployments created new power relations parents on their offspring, psychiatrists and doctors on patients, men on women, youth and old, etc. and exercise further control on also extended areas; hence, were able to legitimize the knowledge it purports.  [27]   Foucault discusses four great lines of attack which the politics of sex advanced for two centuries,  [28]  yet are still prevalent in the society today. Two of which shall be discussed shortly, viz. the pedagogization of childrens sex and socialization of procreative behavior. Pedagogization of childrens sex. The convergence of knowledge and power in and on the bodies of children allows the gathering of data on what is medically appropriate for them, in congruence with what is also necessary for their educators and parents to maintain that medically appropriate environment, influence, and other factors in which they are deemed to operate upon. A journal in 2008 by Kerry Robinson and Cristyn Davies regarding the relationship of sexuality with the childhood of Australian children ought to shed light on this first deployment under the scope of this paper. According to Robinson and Davies, the means by which Australian kids ought to acquire knowledge on sexual related phenomenon have been transformed into something controversial by the great debates whether the pedagogy on sexuality ought to occur at home, under the supervision of parents, or at school by the childrens educators. Finally, for various reasons, the school was selected to address sexuality to children, yet Robinson and Davies argues that by the continuous denial of the education curricula on sexuality as an important part of childrens identities, childhood and sexuality become compartmentalized as purely social constructions by which there is a naturalization of heterosexuality as the norm of sexuality and hence strengthening heteronormativity amongst children.  [29]   By having children perceived as docile bodies, schooling became a disciplining state apparatus, whence the knowledge-power nexus operates through the imposition of knowledge-regulating documents, such as Health Curriculum and Health and Personal Development/Health/Physical Education (PH/H/PE), which constitute the heteronormativity of children as subjects.  [30]  The practices involved in these documents gradually become assimilated in the general physical state of children, and whatever knowledge regarding sexuality was allowed to penetrate into the childrens minds was always highly regulated by social norms and religious taboos that depersonalised the processes for both the children and the teachers.  [31]   Earlier in 2007, Philo analyzed a radio broadcast that involved Foucault referencing to childrens games like tents around gardens or those that are played on top or under their parents beds. He argues that, indeed, what these games imply is an attention to the reverberating theme of wider trans-disciplinary field of social inquiries into children, especially with sexuality, although he was apprehensive about some of Foucaults claims.  [32]   Both of the assertions of the above mentioned intellectual studies resonate to the underlying assumptions made by Foucault. On the one hand, Philos article is a proof of half of the assertion of the deployment of sexuality currently at hand that children have the natural inclination to participate in sexual activities; whilst, on the other, Robinson and Davies study constitute the significant other half that institutions, such as, in this case, school and families, are the intermediary entities that limit the dangerous sexual potential immanent in children.  [33]   Given the above assumptions, it is easy to go back to the premise of Foucaults disciplinary apparatus and relate this pedagogization as one of its most influential tools. Putting into context Hackings argument which was cited at the opening of this chapter, it can be said that such pedagogization does not much have of an impact to its intended target in children as much as it does for the people revolving around the target. With the prestigious promise of pedagogical, as well as medical, knowledge about sexuality on children, it has functioned as a regulatory tool in reshaping, and perhaps instilling imaginations that never surfaced until then, the minds of people in the hierarchy of societies that looks onto the childrens. By knowing the constraints of teachers, doctors, and parents on maintaining the childs framework towards his sexuality, it has become easier for other people to imagine otherwise; hence, child abuse became and continues to become increasingly prevalent. In short, though the pedagogization of childrens sex allows children to be oriented in a pre-defined structure, it has had become more of a tool for disciplinarity on the outside audience; therefore, another state of limbo, of paralysis, perpetuates around the surface of human action. Socialization of procreative behavior. As it was scrupulously discussed at the earlier parts of this paper, population is one of the central themes of The History of Sexuality. Knowledge and power also converges on couples, allowing their growth on their circulation through the procreative capacity of the married pair. What could be the perfect example of this deployment other than the components of the current debate on the Reproductive Health Bill? Yet its discussion remains to be written on another academic paper. The issues on fertility, regulating procreation through contraception and abortion, and enhancing human propagation through modern reproductive technologies circumscribe the married pair to function accordingly in this deployment of sexuality. Indeed, often that this deployment of sexuality is understood in the context of the medical field and economic. How, for example, has impotence evolved from being technically uselessness and meaninglessness before to something that can be remedied by the science of medicine today? Having no children before yields into an immediate notion of non-productivity, but today one may think otherwise. Yet, one of the many implications of this deployment that is not necessarily given that as much attention as compared to medicine is sex differences, the very indicator of procreativity. Cook, in her work The Personality and Procreative Behavior of Trial Judges, attempted to look into sex as an emerging concept in the sphere of political participation, approaches, and socialization of men and women trial judges. For example, women trial judges decision on what political arena they would immerse themselves into is affected by socio-cultural factors like obligations at home or with children. Men j udges, on the other hand, have a higher rate of participation in the political sphere, not only because of less pressure in terms of the constraints of household and domestic obligations, but also of less structured functions (i.e., as compared to womens political role being translated from their home-making role, men judges have definite and straight-to-the-point objectives in the realm of politics)

Reality Television Love?What are These Contestants Thinking?! :: essays research papers fc

Reality Television Love†¦What are These Contestants Thinking?!   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Marriage, it’s supposed to be a once in a lifetime event right? The answer to that is surprisingly no! Today it seems that the media pokes fun of this wonderful occasion in the ever so popular reality T.V. show weddings. They are everywhere today. Many of these marriages don’t last much longer than the show was aired anyway. The contestant chooses a lifetime partner from a group of twenty or so other â€Å"contestants† to miraculously fall in love with. But can this be true love? Marriage should not be rushed in this way, because it usually comes along in a normal life setting. What are these television savvy people thinking? I do not believe that the media should use the sacred act of marriage as entertainment, people on these shows are looking for love for the wrong reasons, divorce rates today are through the roof, and generally all the contestants really want is to â€Å"get their face out there†, to become famous.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Many times these people aren’t even sure what they are looking for or even what they are doing on such a show. On programs such as The Bachelor, Joe Millionaire, and Married by America the contestants are set out to search for their one true love. But how do they know if one of these lucky men or women is right for them? The answer is hard to tell. The show, even though aired for weeks at a time, isn’t even as long as it appears. Each episode is different days put into one episode and it is hard to tell exactly how long they really have been there. In all reality the contestants are only acquainted for about a months time and BAM, they are up at the alter saying their â€Å"I Do’s†, in their to-die-for wedding apparel. I don’t know about you but I have defiantly gone through life with a crush or two for about a month that I thought at the time I could marry and be with forever, but after a while I thought to myself, what was I th inking! This is exactly how many of these couples feel soon after their wedding. Then out of nowhere there is yet another divorce. Some may disagree and say that there have been many love stories with happy endings that were very fast and sudden, and they have turned out fine.

Immortality And Mortality In The Economic Sciences :: essays research papers

<a href="http://www.geocities.com/vaksam/">Sam Vaknin's Psychology, Philosophy, Economics and Foreign Affairs Web Sites Roberto Calvo Macias, a young author and thinker from Spain, once wrote to me that it is impossible to design a coherent philosophy of Economy without accounting for the (sad?) fact that we are mortals. This insight is intriguing. It is not that we refrain from Death in dealing with matters economic. What are estate laws, annuities, life insurance policies - but ways to cope with the Great Harvester? But this, admittedly, only scratch the non-profound surface of the question. The industrial revolution taught us that humans were dispensable. The process of production was reduced to minute functional units that people could learn in minutes. Only the most basic skills were required to successfully endure this learning curve. Thus, for as long as humans bred, the supply was inexhaustible. Humans became entirely replaceable, interchangeable (and alienated, in the process). Motion pictures of the period (â€Å"Metropolis†, â€Å"Modern Times†) portray the industrial worker as a nut in a machine, driven to the verge of insanity by the repetitiveness of his work. Yet, this view of human resources is fast becoming extinct in the rich Western countries. Training periods have lengthened, expert knowledge has taken over, the main value added is information. Humans represent a sizeable investment in education. They are no longer an inexpensive resource .With this realization, there came about a revolution in economic relations. Absurdly, inhuman totalitarian regimes (especially Fascism and Communism) were the first to emphasize the importance of the human factor in the total set of means of production. The concept of scarcity was extended (by virtually all the economic systems today) to apply to human resources. All resources are scarce. Economy is the science of trading off : giving up one resource in order to get more of another. The concept of â€Å"opportunity cost† is the first that students of economy encounter. The classic approach included natural endowments in the group of scarce resources. The human element was barely perceived as yet another natural resource. Now it is. The size of the population, its life expectancy, its quality of life, health, education, income – are all important. Economy is the branch of psychology which deals with behaviour patterns and with mental processes which relate to material wealth, with the opportunities to obtain it (=access to it) and with the processes and mechanisms underlying its attainment. Because material wealth can be expressed quantitatively, this specific branch acquired a â€Å"mathematical† nature, a twist not present in other branches of the human

Contrasting the Court of Miracles and Notre-Dame Essay -- comparison c

Contrasting the Court of Miracles and Notre-Dame "No one had yet remarked, in the gallery of royal statues..., a strange looking specter who until then had been observing all that passed... All at once, at the moment that the chief executer's two assistants were preparing to execute,... he strided up to the two sub-executioners, knocked them down, carried off the gipsy girl, and leapt at one bound into the church, lifting the girl above his head and cried out in a formidable voice, 'Sanctuary!'" Notre-Dame, an intimidating edifice in the heart of fifteenth century Paris, bears many different faces for those residing in and near it. Quasimodo, the deformed bell ringer dwells in the church after being adopted by the archdeacon, Claude Frollo, when the hunchback was an infant. The empathetic monster lives in complete servitude to Frollo, his savior, and spends his days ringing his beloved bells which repay his altruism by causing him to go deaf. The highly adept archdeacon, Claude Frollo, also resides within the walls of Notre-Dame, and after filling his head with every piece of knowledge he can find, he begins to dedicate his life to alchemy. The two men, besides their relationship and common habitat, have one other item in common. They both have fallen in love with La Esmeralda, a compassionate, orphaned gipsy girl who earns her living on the streets with her fluid dancing and droll tricks her goat, and best friend, Djali performs. Quasimodo's love is pure and fresh and he lives in awe of La Esmeralda after she offers him a drink of water when the townspeople deny him this request while he is being tortured as punishment for the sole crime of being deaf and not understanding the judge. Frollo's... ...ts walls are not as strong as the building. The archdeacon, Claude Frollo, a holy man, gives way to the sin of the flesh and tries to rape as well as kill La Esmeralda. Phoebus, a man who worships God within it's walls, single-handedly could save La Esmeralda's life, but chooses not to because of his own vanity. The entire town closes its eyes to the truth, and condemns an innocent girl to death without any proof, just for the fact that she is different from them. The structures of the Court of Miracles and the Cathedral of Notre-Dame are very different structures. Notre-Dame is a symbol of strength and God while the Court of Miracles represents the filth of the Earth. Yet, as Hugo's theme suggests, one cannot judge places, or men, by their appearances and the Court of Miracles proves to be the stronghold, while Notre-Dame houses the iniquity of the city.

Curriculum Access for Students with Low-Incidence Disabilities

NCAC Curriculum Access for Students with Low-Incidence Disabilities: The Promise of Universal Design for Learning This report was written with support from the National Center on Accessing the General Curriculum (NCAC), a cooperative agreement between CAST and the U. S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), Cooperative Agreement No. H324H990004. The opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of the U. S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs, and no official endorsement by the Department should be inferred. ———————————————— Curriculum Access for Students with Low-Incidence Disabilities: The Promise of Universal Design for Learning Written by Richard M. Jackson, Director of Practice and CAST’s Liaison to Boston College for the National Center on Accessing the General Curriculum â €”———————————————- Edited by Valerie Hendricks ————————————————- This report addresses the following questions: * What is Universal Design for Learning (UDL)? * What are low-incidence disabilities? Why are schools and communities particularly challenged in serving students with low-incidence disabilities? * What are the needs of students with low-incidence disabilities? * What curricula and instructional practices are currently used with students with low-incidence disabilities? * What planning models are in use for students with low-incidence disabilities? * How can IEPs ensure greater access to the general curriculum for students with low-incidence disabilities? * What approaches exist for enabling students with low-incidence disabilities to participate in state- and district-level assessment systems? How can the UDL framework increase access to the general curriculum for students with low-incidence disabilities? Acknowledgements When one completes a writing project of this size and effort, there are many to recognize and thank. Foremost is CAST’s Valerie Hendricks, whose editing skills remain unparalleled. Valerie’s critical review, suggested reorganizations, and detailed edits in the final stages of the writing proved enormously helpful, contributing greatly to the overall quality of the work.I am also indebted to Kelly Harper and Lisa White, OSEP-supported research assistants based at Boston College, for their careful and extensive library research and literature summaries. Additionally, I want to recognize and thank other Boston College research assistants who helped with earlier editing and reference checking. They include Xiaoxia Chen, Jennifer Hawthorne and Randall Lahann. Finally, I want to express my gratitude to Chuck Hitchcock, NCAC’s project director at CAST, and David Rose, NCAC’s principal investigator at CAST, for their patience, encouragement, and commitment in seeing this project through to completion.Table of Contents Introductionvi Overviewviii I. What is Universal Design for Learning (UDL)? 1 Origins of Universal Design1 Universal Design in Architecture2 Universal Design in Education4 Universal Design for Learning (UDL)5 II. What are low-incidence disabilities? 9 Alternative Systems for Classification9 A Focus on Incidence9 III. Why are schools and communities particularly challenged in serving students with low-incidence disabilities?†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. 12Insufficient Numbers12 Finding the Le ast Restrictive Environment13 IV. What are the needs of students with low-incidence disabilities? 15 Special Education is Not a Place15 Categories and Characteristics15 Addressing Intense and Complex Needs16 Clusters of Low-Incidence Disabilities17 Blind/Low Vision18 Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing19 Deaf-Blind22 Significant Developmental Delay23 Significant Physical and Multiple Disabilities25 Autistic Spectrum28 Considering Generic Needs29 V. What curricula and instructional practices are currently use with students with low- incidence disabilities?†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. 1 Curriculum and Instructional Practices31 Toward a Definition of Curriculum33 Facing the Challenge of Curriculum Access35 Blending General and Specialized Curriculum37 Blind/Low Vision38 Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing42 Teaching Approaches43 Inclusion of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students45 Deaf-Blind49 Communication50 Orientation and Mobility50 Individualized Education51 Transition51 Inclusion in Family51 Teaching Strategies and Content Mod ifications51 Significant Developmental Delay52 Curriculum54 Instructional Adaptations56 Significant Physical and Multiple Disabilities60Autistic Spectrum61 Sensory-Motor Therapy63 Communication Therapy64 Social Skills Training64 Applied Behavior Analysis65 Multi-Treatment Programs65 VI. What planning models are in use for students with low-incidence disabilities? 67 The Evolution of the Individualized Education Plan (IEP)67 Person-Centered Planning69 Group Action Planning (GAP)69 Making Action Plans (MAPs)70 Planning Alternative Tomorrows with Hope (PATH)71 Circle of Friends73 Collaborative Planning and the General Curriculum74 Planning in the Context of the General Curriculum76 VII.How can IEPs ensure greater access to the general curriculum for students with low-incidence disabilities?†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. 78 Expanding Roles and Functions of IEP Team Members78 Origins of the IEP79 Purpose of the IEP80 Limitations of the IEP82 IDEA ’97 Challenges for the IEP82 Addre ssing the General Curriculum with the IEP85 VIII. What approaches exist for enabling students with low-incidence disabilities to participate state- and district-level assessment systems? 91 The Role of Assessment in Standards-Based Reform91 Broad-Scale Assessment Systems92Standards-Based Assessment and Students with Disabilities93 Participation of Students with Disabilities in Assessment and Accountability Systems94 Changes in Assessment Systems for Students with Disabilities96 Accommodations98 Modifications99 Alternate Assessment Systems99 Massachusetts Alternate Assessment102 Issues Remaining with Alternate Assessment108 IX. How can the UDL framework increase access to the general curriculum for students with low-incidence disabilities†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. 113 Universal Design Revisited114 UDL and the Curriculum116 UDL Components117 Goals119 Methods120 Materials121The National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS)123 Assessment124 Curriculum Flexibility for Students wit h Low-Incidence Disabilities125 References129 Appendices145 Appendix A: Tips for Universally Designed Teaching145 Appendix B: Principles of Universal Design for Instruction (UDI)147 Appendix C: Design Principles for Lesson Adaptations148 Appendix D: Expanded Core Curriculum for Blind/Low Vision Students149 Appendix E: Six Core Principles153 Appendix F: Alaska’s State Recommendations154 Appendix G: Six Guidelines for Inclusive Programs155 Appendix H: Alternate Assessment Approaches157Appendix I: Five Best-Practice Steps for States158 Introduction Twenty years ago, the publication of A Nation At Risk instigated two decades of educational reform in the United States. Yet improving our educational system remains a national priority. Today, various school reform efforts brought about by enabling legislation and funding streams are converging on the goal of providing a single high-quality education for all of America’s students. Expectations of excellence and equal access, a s well as a focus on outcomes, are driving the effort to â€Å"leave no child behind. The goal of much of this reform work is to ensure that children of color, children living in poverty, children learning English as a second language, and children with disabilities encounter no barriers as they receive the best education possible in order to become independent, productive, and participating members of the communities in which they will live as adults. Once, the â€Å"factory† model of schooling in America viewed all children as mere â€Å"raw material† to be measured and then either mainstreamed or side-tracked, with children disadvantaged by color, poverty, language, or disability automatically winding up outside the mainstream.This system of sorting and then tracking children institutionalized inequality and denial of opportunity. Reform efforts of today are directed toward eliminating this ad hoc marginalization of groups of children, such as those listed above, w ho are viewed as â€Å"at risk† in America’s schools. Reforming education, improving schools, and raising student achievement are noble and socially just pursuits, but by what means are these lofty goals to be accomplished?Many of the diagnostic and prescriptive approaches of the past have resulted in practices where presumably the least capable receive significantly less curricula. An alternative approach to understanding student learning difficulties becomes available when assessments are applied to a school itself, or, more particularly, to a school’s curriculum, instead of to students. Measurement can then proceed with the following questions: How accessible and user-friendly is the curriculum? To what extent does the curriculum permit multiple entry and exit points?To what degree does the curriculum allow for wide participation? How accurately and fairly does the curriculum assess student progress? In order to make a single high-quality public school educat ion available to all, the curriculum itself must be examined. The typical lecture-and-textbook curriculum, made accessible only to those who could demonstrably benefit from it, implies that any failure to grasp the material calls for the student him- or herself to be examined for flaws, as has traditionally been the case.Failure to examine the curriculum and to consider modifications to it presents a crucial question: are the problems confronting public schools today rooted in the students or in the curriculum? In the following pages, we take the position that the challenge of educating students with disabilities or students who are not achieving rests with the curriculum, not with the student. In particular, we posit that the problem resides within the static presentation of typical curriculum, which is unresponsive to the many and varied ways in which individual learners differ.In order to begin addressing not the deficits of students but rather the barriers erected for them by tr aditional curriculum, a framework is required for examining the curriculum as it is and for suggesting ways in which it may be made most accessible to all students. One such framework is Universal Design for Learning (UDL) (Rose & Meyer, 2002). UDL takes a trifold approach to assessing curriculum as it examines, first, the ways in which content can be represented; second, the means by which students can respond; and third, the conditions under which students can engage in the learning process.UDL anticipates an increasingly digitized information source for curriculum, which allows a UDL framework to guide the development of future digital media, delivery mechanisms, and technology tools for use in education. Today, an object as static as a textbook can be transformed in seemingly limitless ways when presented digitally (such as audio, CD-ROM, HTML). As schools become more inclusive and democratic institutions, and as technology develops exponentially, unprecedented opportunities lie ahead for all students to reach high standards in their learning and to experience a high quality of life in adulthood.In the discussion that follows, we present practices that hold promise for increasing access to the general education curriculum for our nation’s most vulnerable populations of students with disabilities. It is the general curriculum that prepares children to take on independent, responsible, and productive roles as adults. The general curriculum—delivered through publicly-funded schools (and therefore by or through democratic institutions)—affords a central opportunity for all to pursue the American dream.For students who are blind, deaf, multiply disabled, or significantly developmentally delayed, equal opportunity to pursue that dream is out of reach without advances in how we prepare and employ our teaching force, how we set policy that raises standards and expectations without discrimination, and, above all, how we deliver a curriculum tha t is flexible and widely accessible for all learners. Equal access to the general curriculum implies that all students have the right to strive for the same educational goals.Equal opportunity implies that accommodations are in place to remove or minimize the impact of disability on authentic performance, thus leveling the playing field. Equal opportunity also implies that modifications to entry points to and benchmarks of the curriculum can be made so that students with disabilities are enabled to make progress to the maximum possible extent. The central question at hand is how communities and state and local education authorities organize to provide the best education possible for students with low-incidence disabilities.One answer is that public education, equally afforded to all, can be accomplished through collaboration among stakeholders, including families, educators (both special and general), administrators, and policy-makers. We will demonstrate how adherence to a UDL fram ework for curriculum reform can yield a flexible and accessible curriculum for all students, including those with disabilities. Overview When Congress reauthorized the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1997 (IDEA ’97), conditions were set for profound change in the ways disability is viewed in the broader context of schools and society.Originally, in the mid-1970s, Congress acted to ensure that no child, regardless of extent of disability, could be denied a free, appropriate, and public education (FAPE) in the least restrictive environment. At that time, an â€Å"appropriate† education meant a special education—one that would be individually designed to address the needs that result from disability. Now, more than thirty years later, the law states that no child may be denied access to the general education curriculum—specifically, that curriculum which schools and school districts make available to all non-disabled students (IDEA ’04) .Currently, the general curriculum consists of core subject areas plus varying elective subject options. Broad frameworks for core content areas are more or less determined by individual states, which also set requisite standards for grade advancement and graduation. In the larger, national effort to reform education in general, students with disabilities are not to be denied access to the same opportunities afforded their non-disabled schoolmates.In this way, Congress seeks to align opportunities for students with disabilities with those available to the non-disabled student population. Using broad-scale assessment systems, states now measure the extent to which all students, and the schools they attend, achieve intended outcomes. There is less emphasis on analyzing the discrepancy between what schools actually provide and what they intend to provide (inputs) in favor of greater focus on results as measured by standards attainment (outputs). Better results for schools presumably le ad to better adult outcomes for students.Just as schools are held accountable for student learning through standards testing, so too will schools be held accountable for supports and services they provide for students with disabilities in order to allow them to access the general curriculum. Accordingly, students with disabilities are now compelled by IDEA ‘97 and subsequent amendments to participate in all state- and district-level assessment systems. Today, the touchstone of special education law remains the Individualized Educational Plan (IEP), which is a document detailing the range and intensity of services and supports intended for each eligible student with a disability.Unlike in the past, however, the IEP now formalizes the collaborative relationship between general and special education and also aligns the general curriculum with specially-designed instruction and other support structures necessary for enabling access to the curriculum. Some support structures relate to how instruction accommodates a student’s disability without altering standards (e. g. , extra time allotted for task completion, Braille in place of print).Other supports may involve curriculum modifications that adjust performance levels or entry points but continue to address standards’ content domain or framework. Accommodations or modifications stipulated in an IEP to adjust instruction or adapt curriculum for a student also apply to the administration of state- and district-level assessments. For students with significant developmental delays, accommodations alone may be neither sufficient nor appropriate. Alternatively, states and districts may employ alternate assessments to ascertain the extent to which students meet goals delineated on their IEPs.Alternate assessments in these cases are modifications of state standards, but they nonetheless follow the broad frameworks identified for each state’s core knowledge areas. Alternate assessment procedures can be authentic and performance-based. In frequent use are portfolios, evaluated according to rubrics that reveal the depth to which students meet standards. Alternate assessment procedures are labor intensive both to design and to carry out. Scoring by state authorities is also laborious and time-consuming.Presumably, however, the use of alternate assessments is limited to 1–3% of school-aged children, thus minimizing the extent of onerous time and effort. Moreover, time spent by teachers in initially documenting alternate assessments is well invested, as procedures become more routine over time with an IEP’s implementation. To many, this adherence to states’ curriculum standards for students with significant developmental delays appears unrealistic, but, clearly, Congress’ intent in IDEA ’97 and IDEA ’04 is to remove barriers that historically limit access to the same curriculum taught to non-disabled students.This amounts to a zero-rejec t from the general curriculum so that all students must participate in and make progress within the general curriculum to the maximum extent feasible. If one conceives of the general curriculum as the vehicle through which all students can achieve adult outcomes—outcomes understood in a broad sense as independence, participation, and productivity—then, in a just and democratic society, opportunity cannot be denied for students with disabilities.In the discussion that follows, we examine practices intended to improve access to the general curriculum for students with low-incidence disabilities. For many reasons, this population presents unique and daunting challenges for all committed to meeting IDEA ’97’s mandates. We follow a question-and-answer format in order to address key issues and to arrive at basic understandings concerning students with low-incidence disabilities. Since much of this report refers to a UDL framework, UDL will be defined.Low-incide nce disabilities are then contrasted with high-incidence disabilities to uncover some distinguishing characteristics of this population. Next, particular challenges confronting schools and communities that endeavor to serve these students and their families are examined. We then concentrate on identifying the needs of students with low-incidence disabilities. We also present disability-related needs that are unique to a particular category of specific disability and other, more generic needs that cut across categories.The reason for this is the fact that IDEA retains the use of specific disability categories for eligibility determination and classification. Over the past few decades, however, both professional literature and actual practice have supported alternative approaches for defining and classifying students with low-incidence disabilities. Thus, in order to provide students with low-incidence disabilities with appropriate and effective services, supports, and ancillary aids, it is necessary to examine alternative frameworks, differing from those traditionally in place, for understanding needs.Specialized curricula and instructional practices that hold particular promise for students with low-incidence disabilities are presented. Just as it is important to understand need from multiple perspectives, so too must curriculum and instructional practices be understood as meeting both unique as well as shared needs among students with low-incidence disabilities. We focus on curricula and practices that are highly specialized as well as those that address more typically shared needs.Because IDEA requires access to the general education curriculum for all students, it is necessary to examine ways in which specialized curricula and instructional practices can support or otherwise connect with broader approaches for improved access, participation, and progress for students with disabilities. Curriculum is highly complex. Historically, it has been examined through many different lenses. The complicated nature of curriculum theory and practice makes it difficult to envision innovative ways of making it accessible for students with disabilities.Thus, we will also examine and attempt to demystify some of that complexity. Instructional practices presented in the context of our discussion are intended to bring an effective focus to eliminating or reducing curriculum needs associated with low-incidence disabilities. As with the consideration of need, curricular options and instructional practices can also be both highly specialized to a specific disability and highly generic across disabilities. For example, approaches for engaging students who are blind or deaf can be quite unique to those disabilities, given the varieties of existing communication modes.Other approaches can be quite generic, involving, for example, applied behavior analysis or systematic instruction. After grounding in student need, curriculum, and instructional techniques, we e xamine models for collaborative planning. Students with low-incidence disabilities require services and supports beyond the classroom. These may intensify at various transition points throughout a life span and broaden out to include an array of community agencies. We examine the IEP in turn as a tool for pulling services together in support of access to the general curriculum.We then focus on approaches for enabling students with low-incidence disabilities to participate in state- and district-level assessment systems. Finally, we conclude with a consideration of how access to the general curriculum can be improved for students with low-incidence disabilities through the application of principles of universal design. I. What is Universal Design for Learning (UDL)? A major premise of this report is that access to the curriculum for students with low-incidence disabilities is greatly enhanced by universal design.Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a particular framework that appli es to education. More specifically, UDL is an approach that can guide curriculum reform. A universally-designed curriculum includes multiple means of representation (to allow various ways of acquiring information and knowledge), multiple means of expression (to allow alternatives for demonstrating knowledge), and multiple means of engagement (to challenge appropriately, to motivate, and to allow learners to express and participate in their interests). A number of current contrasting approaches to universal design will be described.We conclude with an explanation of UDL. This will allow the reader to keep UDL in mind while progressing through subsequent sections until UDL solutions for curriculum access are more closely examined in our conclusion. Origins of Universal Design Architecture reveals the extent to which humankind can establish dominion over the natural environment by harnessing resources that it has to offer. Architectural design can be subjected to all manner of criteria , including beauty, convenience, utility, durability, safety, and even exclusivity.Only in recent times has the criterion of exclusivity been successfully challenged. As populations grew, built environments afforded travel and facilitated commerce. The need for standards in architectural design became apparent as built environments became interconnected. Architects needed to consider the preferences and capabilities of those who would access built environments. In more recent times, users of built environments were living longer and, therefore, functioning with less mobility and stamina. Notions of democracy and community were transforming views of belonging and participation.During the 1960s, social movements that began in Europe around such concepts as normalization, deinstitutionalization, and communitization were beginning to have a profound impact upon those who would advocate for the disabled in the United States. Thus, the needs of people who would potentially access the buil t environment were beginning to be understood as complex and diverse. Universal Design in Architecture The passage of the Vocational Rehabilitation Act of 1973 essentially outlawed discrimination on the basis of disability.So far-reaching was this piece of federal legislation that it took nearly three years for a beleaguered Congress to write the regulations that would ostensibly remove architectural barriers from all publicly supported buildings and properties. During this era, universal design in architecture was born. Like the dream of building inclusive communities for all to enjoy equally, universal design is an ideal with a process to ensure maximum participation for all. The challenge of removing physical barriers and retrofitting solutions to barriers proved to be a costly and cumbersome process, often yielding unsatisfactory results.Universal design sought to embed solutions into features at the design level—features that would benefit all, not merely accommodate the few. Curb cuts intended for wheelchair users, for example, were also found to be helpful for users of baby strollers, shopping carts, skateboardes, among others. In 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) extended the prohibition against discrimination on the basis of disability to the private sector, requiring all entities doing business with the public to make every reasonable accommodation in providing access.Accessibility standards, while necessary for guidance and compliance monitoring, can appear onerous or threatening in light of the fact that they are government regulations, particularly when coupled with the public’s misperceptions regarding disability. Universal design, as envisioned by Ron Mace and his colleagues at North Carolina State University’s Center for Universal Design, was intended to promote the design of products and environments that would appeal to all. North Carolina State’s Principles of Universal Design are listed below in bri ef form (without associated guidelines). PRINCIPLE ONE: Equitable Use The design is useful and marketable to people with diverse abilities. PRINCIPLE TWO: Flexibility in Use The design accommodates a wide range of individual preferences and abilities. PRINCIPLE THREE: Simple and Intuitive Use Use of the design is easy to understand, regardless of the user’s experience, knowledge, language skills, or current concentration level. PRINCIPLE FOUR: Perceptible Information The design communicates necessary information effectively to the user, regardless of ambient conditions or the user’s sensory abilities.PRINCIPLE FIVE: Tolerance for Error The design minimizes hazards and the adverse consequences of accidental or unintended actions. PRINCIPLE SIX: Low Physical Effort The design can be used efficiently and comfortably and with a minimum of fatigue. PRINCIPLE SEVEN: Size and Space for Approach and Use Appropriate size and space is provided for approach, reach, manipulation, and use, regardless of user’s body size, posture, or mobility. † Principles of Universal Design, version 2. 0 (Center for Universal Design, North Carolina, 1997).Application of these principles has established a framework for developing design standards in architecture, as well as for creating consumer products, that permit the greatest degree of access and usability for the widest possible range of individuals. Today, millions of Americans with disabilities enjoy access to buildings, restaurants, movie theatres, sporting events, transit properties, walkways, commercial vehicles, and bank teller machines—to name only a few venues that were once inaccessible to them.Wheelchair users, once limited to home instruction or restricted to special school buildings, now attend their neighborhood schools alongside their non-disabled agemates. However, although physical access to classrooms and other education facilities is an important first step toward educational equity for the disabled, it is not sufficient to ensure that all students with disabilities have equal access to the general curriculum or enjoy comparable opportunity to derive benefit from what school curriculum has to offer.Additional changes in the classroom environment and in the curriculum itself are also required in order for full equity to be achieved. Universal Design in Education Universal design in architecture recognized the importance of building environments that were more in line with the needs of an aging population and the requirements of those persons with disabilities who were being welcomed into the general community during the 1970s.In the 1980s, attention was brought to bear on the rapidly increasing diversity of America’s students through the publication of A Nation At Risk, a report presented to the U. S. Department of Education by the National Commission on Excellence in Education. According to this report, our nation’s schools—particularly in urban centers—appeared ill-equipped to prepare a diverse population to compete successfully in an increasingly global economy. The findings of the Commission spurred a wave of reform initiatives ith enabling legislation aimed at raising standards and outcomes for our nation’s most under-served students. More recent federal legislation, such as No Child Left Behind (NCLB, 2001) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, 1997; 2004), seeks to build one education for all students, improve teacher quality, align curriculum with standards, measure outcomes at multiple points, and hold schools accountable for student performance.For no child to be excluded from—or left behind by—the general curriculum, the curriculum itself must be examined and re-designed from a fresh perspective, much in the same way that buildings, environments, and products were critically examined by the original advocates of universal design in architecture resulting in im portant and lasting changes in building standards. Colleagues at the University of Connecticut’s National Center on Postsecondary Education and Disabilities have developed a set of principles building upon and extending the principles originated at North Carolina State’s Center for Universal Design.Note that their educational design principles are essentially the same as those outlined by North Carolina State for architectural and product design (with the addition of principles 8 and 9—community of learners; instructional climate). Their new principles address more educational constructivist perspectives regarding communities of learners and a climate of high expectations and social interaction. Together, these principles set a framework for what Scott, McGuire, and Shaw (2001) call Universal Design for Instruction (UDI).Application of these principles allows postsecondary institutions in particular to dramatically widen the accessibility of course offerings by designing accommodations into course structures rather than retrofitting a series of educational work-arounds to try and meet the specialized needs of individual students after course materials have been prepared. UDI principles are listed and defined in Appendix B. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Calls for critically examining curriculum from a universal design perspective have come from many quarters (King-Sears, 2001; Hitchcock, 2001;Nolet & McLaughlin, 2000; Pugach & Warger, 2001; Rose & Meyer, 2002; Turnbull, et al. , 2002; Wehmeyer, et al. , 2002). The principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as put forth by the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST, Inc. ) were first presented in an Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) Topical Brief (Orkwis & McLane, 1998). Currently, typically taught curriculum in schools is a â€Å"one-size-fits-all† curriculum, best exemplified by the ubiquitous textbook.It generally lacks flexibility in how it presents inf ormation to students, how it permits students to respond, and how it engages students in the learning process. In order for typical textbooks and other curriculum materials to become accessible to many disabled students, they must undergo numerous time-consuming transformations and interpretations, to the extent that the student’s participation in classroom activities is often fragmented or delayed.Several projects supporting universal design and access approaches to the general curriculum were reviewed in Research Connections (Danielson, 1999), a bi-annual review of OSEP-sponsored research on topics in special education. Prominently featured were projects underway at CAST to create a universally designed early literacy curriculum (Scholastic’s WiggleWorks) and a universally designed document processor (CAST’s eReader).Also featured in the review was a framework advanced by the University of Oregon’s National Center for Improving the Tools of Education (N CITE) for designing the ‘architecture’ of effective instructional practices (Kameenui & Simmons, 1999). (Their design principles for lesson adaptations are available as Appendix C. ) CAST’s work is important because it demonstrates how flexible and malleable curriculum can be with the use of digital media and digital technology tools following a UDL framework.The NCITE’s work on the architecture of instruction is important because it draws upon the current knowledge base regarding effective instructional practices and illustrates how instruction can be tailored to learners depending on the degree of explicitness required. Over the years, many proposals have emerged to counter the old factory model approach to mass education begun in the 19th century with graded education.Approaches to individualized, personalized, or otherwise differentiated instruction have made enormous contributions to thinking about teaching and learning processes. What might distingui sh UDL from other efforts to improve instruction in general—or other perspectives on universal design in particular—is that UDL establishes a framework for curricular reform in education (Rose & Meyer, 2002) yet also recognizes the need to maintain a balance between curriculum and instructional practice (Hitchcock, 2001).Moreover, a UDL framework provides a perspective for collaborative teams of special and general education personnel to provide access to the general curriculum while addressing disability-specific needs in multi-level or inclusive classroom situations (Jackson & Harper, 2002). While UDL anticipates the coming digital curriculum with its inherent potential for flexibility and built-in options, it is not wholly reliant upon technology. UDL can ensure accessibility with new media and technology tools, but it depends upon the application of evidenced-based teaching practices to yield desired results (Hitchcock, 2002).To achieve these results, a UDL framewo rk relies upon three guiding principles—multiple means of representation, multiple means of expression, and multiple means of engagement—for the development of flexible teaching approaches and curriculum resources. These principles emanate from analyzation of available research on the brain and new conceptualizations of how neuroscience informs our appreciation of learning and knowing (Rose & Meyer, 2000).Areas in the brain that contribute to learning can be grouped roughly into three interconnected networks, each with a fundamental role in learning: (a) â€Å"recognition† networks, specialized to receive and analyze information (the â€Å"what† of learning); (b) â€Å"strategic† networks, specialized to plan and execute actions (the â€Å"how† of learning); and (c) â€Å"affective† networks, specialized to evaluate and set priorities (the â€Å"why† of learning) (Rose & Meyer, 2002).New insights into neurological systems worki ng within these three regions of the brain connected with learning has led to the formulation of the three guiding principles of UDL: 1. To support diverse recognition networks, provide multiple, flexible methods of presentation. For example, when introducing students to a new concept or unit, a teacher may provide multiple structures to present that information, such as a lecture, a digitized text, an activity-based exploration, a demonstration. 2. To support diverse strategic networks, provide multiple, flexible methods of expression and apprenticeship.For example, when a teacher requests student responses to demonstrate understanding and knowledge, he or she could provide a range of tools that allow students to respond in various formats, such as in writing, orally, with a slide show, with a video, with a drawing. 3. To support diverse affective networks, provide multiple, flexible options for engagement. Allow students to select an area of interest within a topic or concept to r esearch or study. For example, allow students to select one of the natural resources in a geographic area under study to research rather than assigning resources (Rose & Meyer, 2002).UDL also establishes a framework for providing access to, participation in, and progress within the general curriculum as first mandated by IDEA ’97. Hitchcock, Meyer, Rose, and Jackson (2002) have defined four main components of the general curriculum: 1. goals and milestones for instruction (often in the form of a scope and sequence), 2. media and materials to be used by students, 3. specific instructional methods (often described in a teacher’s edition), and means of assessment to measure student progress.Each component can be transformed for accessibility and participation by all students by adherence to the principles of UDL. UDL offers new ways to think about teaching and learning. Students with sensory challenges, for example, require curriculum that contains alternative approaches for presenting information. Students with motor challenges, on the other hand, may require curriculum that provides alternative ways of expressing what they know and can do, while students along the autism spectrum may require curriculum that contains alternative ways to become engaged in or connected with the learning process.Broadly stated learning goals may allow students who are cognitively challenged to enter the curriculum at points where appropriate levels of challenge and support can yield both tangible and measurable results. Methods and materials with designed-in supports may permit wider access and greater participation in the general curriculum by all students, including those with disabilities. Instructionally embedded assessments may provide more immediate feedback and more frequent data points for progress monitoring and instructional decision-making.These are some of the promises of UDL. II. What are low-incidence disabilities? Alternative Systems for Classification Students with disabilities can be classified in many ways. IDEA ’97 continues to recognize disabilities in the form of more or less discrete diagnostic categories, such as mental retardation, specific learning disabilities, or emotional disturbance. Other approaches to classification include categorizing disabled individuals by degree of severity of their needs, or by how atypical an individual may be when compared to a norm.Still other approaches may emphasize the level of intensity of supports necessary for an individual to function optimally in home, school, community, and work settings. Each of these approaches has advantages and disadvantages. The categorical approach taken by IDEA may emphasize learner characteristics for each disability, but, in so doing, it could also foster a self-fulfilling prophecy in which all members of a group sharing a categorical label, in a sense, become that label.A severity approach may emphasize developmental milestones at the expense of i gnoring strengths in functional skills. An intensity approach may meaningfully focus on levels of needed support, but, at the same time, limit opportunities for an individual to move to a less restrictive setting. None of these systems of classifying individuals with disabilities are either entirely satisfactory or entirely lacking in merit.For educators, it is important to be aware that several systems of categorizing students with disabilities exist simultaneously, because eligibility criteria, placement alternatives, intervention strategies, and teaching credentials may all vary substantially from school to school, depending on which system of classification is currently being employed. A Focus on Incidence When the issue at hand for students with disabilities centers on the provision of services in local schools, the availability of qualified personnel and the technical sophistication of necessary resources must be carefully considered.In order to provide students with disabilit ies with a free and appropriate public education, it is useful to classify learners in terms of incidence, or how many students with any particular disability or combination of disabilities reside in a community. Under such a system, students with the most commonly-seen disabilities may be more appropriately served by local public schools while students with relatively rare disabilities may not find adequate resources or highly qualified personnel.High-incidence disabilities include— * communication disorders (speech and language impairments) * specific learning disabilities (including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder [ADHD]) * mild/moderate mental retardation * emotional or behavioral disorders Low-incidence disabilities include— * blindness * low vision * deafness * hard-of-hearing * deaf-blindness * significant developmental delay * complex health issues * serious physical impairment * multiple disability * autismNone of the disabilities listed under low-inc idence disabilities generally exceed 1% of the school-aged population at any given time. The relative rarity of students with these disabilities in public schools often poses significant challenges for local schools struggling to meet their needs. Since they encounter these students so infrequently, most local schools have little if any knowledge of how to best educate these students, of what technologies are available to assist them, and of how to obtain needed and appropriate support services from outside agencies.All students with low-incidence disabilities thus experience a commonality: they are difficult to serve in current local public school programs. III. Why are schools and communities particularly challenged in serving students with low-incidence disabilities? Insufficient Numbers Students with low-incidence disabilities are difficult to serve in today’s public schools because none of the low-incidence categories alone can form a group large enough to warrant the pr esence of full-time, school-based, and highly specialized personnel, except in the largest of big-city school districts.Therefore, students with low-incidence disabilities are more likely to be served in less inclusive settings (such as in special classes, separate schools, and residential facilities) than are students with high-incidence disabilities. Local schools that do attempt to provide maximum inclusion most often support these efforts through the use of itinerant personnel, usually teachers/consultants who travel from school to school as needed, often crossing district lines to serve the needs of their students.Each variety of low-incidence disability brings its own unique challenges to a local school system. When intensive, specialized instruction is required, such as the learning of Braille for blind students or American Sign Language (ASL) for the deaf, teacher consultation models of intervention can prove woefully inadequate for the delivery of specially-designed and car efully-targeted intensive instruction.Similarly, when faced with students who present with complex healthcare needs, local schools frequently lack the capacity to respond appropriately to medical emergencies or to provide required routine intensive care. Each group of students with a low-incidence disability has its own set of specialized needs, requiring specialized supports and specially-trained personnel to maximize their educational opportunities. While some generic support services are of use to nearly all students, most are specialized to one group.For example, a deaf or autistic child is unlikely to need to learn Braille, while a blind student will not need the level of constant medical support that a quadriplegic child or one under medical treatment for leukemia is likely to require. The low-incidence nature of these disabilities also makes it extremely challenging to maintain an adequate supply of qualified professionals to serve them. The skills and knowledge sets of these professionals are highly technical, requiring a significant commitment of time and effort to acquire through professional preparation, typically at university centers.Yet the caseloads of these professionals are small and likely to change in composition from year to year. Further added to this supply challenge is the paucity of university-based, professional preparation programs to prepare sufficient numbers of practitioners to adequately serve these students. Moreover, administrative supervision and mentoring of new inductees to the field are frequently inadequate. These professionals are mostly isolated from colleagues, limiting their opportunity for collaboration and shared growth.Opportunities for targeted professional development may be extremely limited. In sum, it is difficult to attract qualified individuals into these fields to begin with and perhaps even more difficult to nurture, support, and retain them once employed. Finding the Least Restrictive Environment Often, the least restrictive environment for students with low-incidence-disabilities cannot be found in their local public school.While IEP teams must presume that a student is to be placed in the public school closest to her or his home, a team may be compelled by assessment findings to urge placement in a specialized setting where highly-trained personnel and appropriate technologies can be concentrated and unique needs can be appropriately targeted for intensive instruction. Although students with low-incidence disabilities are required to have access to the general education curriculum, that requirement does not state that the only way in which such a condition may be met is in a full-inclusion setting in a general education classroom.An IEP team may determine that an alternative and highly specialized setting is the most appropriate, and therefore least restrictive, placement available for meeting the specific needs resulting from a student’s disability(ies), particularly if thei r local public school is not sufficiently equipped to provide a safe and successful educational experience for that student. Thus, in many cases of students with low-incidence disabilities, the true path toward greatest access to the general education curriculum may be pursued more appropriately in a separate setting (for example, in a school for the deaf or a residential school for the blind).However, in some cases, appropriate program planning for students with low-incidence disabilities in local public schools is possible and may be the preferred placement according to the IEP team, which includes the student and the student’s family. Adequate provision for these students in inclusive settings requires broad community engagement and significant systems change. Collaboration and commitment among stakeholders at the local, state, and federal levels are necessary to effect such change.With thoughtful and appropriate approaches to planning, such as those to be described, willi ng communities can amass the supports necessary to ensure high-quality educational services for even those students with the most significant cognitive disabilities or complex healthcare needs. IV. What are the needs of students with low-incidence disabilities? Special Education is Not a Place With the enactment of IDEA ’97, special education is no longer considered a place but rather a network of services and supports designed to enable students to derive full benefit from a public school education (Heumann & Hehir, 1997).As stated earlier, this does not mean that students with disabilities cannot be appropriately served in specialized settings. Rather, the intent of the law is to emphasize that â€Å"placement† or location of services is the last decision an IEP team makes during a team assessment and planning process. In earlier times, a disability-specific label itself would dictate placement, and that placement would define the treatment or nature of interventions for students. Today’s approaches use comprehensive and holistic assessments to reveal the extent of need in suspected areas of risk associated with a student’s disability.Their team then determines the setting in which needed services can best be provided, selecting from a continuum or array of placement options ranging from full inclusion in a general education classroom to residency in a hospital setting (Drasgow, Yell, & Robinson, 2001). An IEP team always starts with the presumption that a student will be placed in the same setting in which he or she would be educated if disability were not an issue, namely, a regular public school classroom (Turnbull & Turnbull, 1998).Thus, in order to place a student in a less inclusive setting, this starting presumption must be rebutted by assessment data before such a placement outside a general education setting can be made. Categories and Characteristics IDEA designates categories of disability with which specific learner ch aracteristics have been associated in the special education knowledge base (Hallihan & Kaufman, 2002; Hardman, et al. , 2002; Heward, 2003; Turnbull, et al. , 2002).These characteristics are correlates of particular disabilities and not necessarily connected with a particular disability—that is to say, they are characteristics that are commonly found in students with these particular disabilities, but for which there are often exceptions, such as cases where a student has a particular disability but not one or more of its expected associated characteristics or behaviors. â€Å"Learned helplessness,† for example, is associated with specific learning disabilities, but not all students with learning disabilities have acquired this psychological adaptation.Rather, they are at risk for acquiring learned helplessness. While there are often litanies of learner characteristics described as unique or disability-specific, the extent to which these areas of risk are observed in a n individual student can vary widely. Careful assessment and observation of an individual student and his or her needs must be undertaken to document actual need for initial intervention and not merely expected need. Such an assessment establishes a baseline of educational need(s) against which progress can be measured.Students with disabilities often become â€Å"handicapped†Ã¢â‚¬â€unnecessarily or unfairly restricted—not by their disabilities in and of themselves, but by the environment in which they live, learn, and relate. Consequently, extent of need cannot adequately be assessed without consideration of broader contexts in which an individual lives. This context includes family, community, and the local public school which would be a student’s default placement location.Thus, a team’s determination of the least restrictive and most appropriate environment for a student must take all these factors into consideration when judging the capacity or prep aredness of home, community, and local school to support and nurture a student in areas of assessed need and in assuring a student access to the general curriculum. It is imperative that any set of disability-specific needs not serve to stereotype a student, to lower expectations for a student, or to contribute to negative self-fulfilling prophecies for a student.So-called unique or disability-specific needs should be taken only as possible areas of risk for IEP teams to investigate, not inevitable features automatically conjoined to a specific disability in question. Addressing Intense and Complex Needs Identified needs of students with low-incidence disabilities are frequently complex and multiple (Browder, 2001). Addressing severe and complex needs of students is challenging for family, school, and broader community.Since the ultimate goal of education is community inclusion and high quality of life, an appropriate education must contain opportunities for each individual to achie ve independence, enjoy community participation, and increase productive and rewarding work to the maximum extent possible. Most children identified by IDEA categories as having low-incidence disabilities possess sensory, motor, or neurological deficits, and, consequently, they are typically identified and managed early in their lives through a medical model.Families of infants and toddlers with established risks receive early intervention services, most generally under the auspices of state departments of public health. Such services prepare a family and their local community to understand and cope with the impact of a child’s disability on their lives. Such services also prepare a family to actively participate in the planning and decision-making processes that accompany transitional events throughout the child’s life. Thus, early intervention and early childhood education can be effective in preventing or minimizing many long-term and predictable consequences of disa bility.Because of the possibility of mitigating many of the consequences of disability early on in a child’s life, possibly to the point where a disability essentially vanishes, IDEA encourages states to withhold disability categorization until age nine. The more generic term developmental delay is used instead, to avoid the stereotyping and lowered expectations that follow disability-specific labeling. However, states still have the option of using, for example, the terms â€Å"blind† or â€Å"deaf† if preferred.According to IDEA ’97),decisions made about a child with a disability must be informed by â€Å"persons knowledgeable about the disability† or by â€Å"qualified professionals. † States must â€Å"qualify† professionals through certification or licensure. Thus, for blind students to receive specially-designed instruction in Braille literacy, deaf students in ASL, and motor-impaired students in augmentative communication, stat es must ensure that an adequate supply of appropriately prepared professionals is available to support such students in educational programs.The need for the specialized knowledge and skills possessed by these professionals is often cited as a basis for retaining IDEA’s system of categorical labeling, as well as states’ systems for categorical teacher certification (Hallihan & Kaufman, 2002). Clusters of Low-Incidence Disabilities Hereafter, low-incidence disabilities are defined and described under the following headings: * Blind/Low Vision * Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing * Deaf-Blind * Significant Developmental Delay * Significant Physical and Multiple Disability * Autistic SpectrumNote that some of these headings do not match with IDEA’s current categories, being more general. Where appropriate, legal categorical definitions are quoted from IDEA ’97 in the text so that readers will note congruence with federal law. Blind/Low Vision According to IDEA ’97, Visual impairment including blindness means an impairment in vision that, even with correction, adversely affects a child’s educational performance. The term includes both partial sight and blindness. Authority: 20 U. S. C. 1401(3)(A) and (B); 1401(26)Historically, students with visual impairment have been referred to as blind, visually handicapped, visually disabled, visually impaired, partially sighted, partially blind, visually limited, or sight impaired. To understand the needs of students with visual impairments, the following factors must be taken into account: age at onset of visual impairment, degree of impairment, site of impairment, prognosis for improvement or degeneration in condition, day-to-day stability of condition, individual tolerance for visual fatigue, nd the extent and complexity of any co-existing additional impairments. Blind children are particularly challenged in understanding and moving about in physical space (Blasch, Wiener, & Welch, 1997). Withou t opportunity to directly observe space during locomotion, blind children have difficulty mentally representing and manipulating spatial concepts. They are also challenged in obtaining, manipulating, and producing many types of information, such as text, graphics, facial expressions, and gestural cues (Swensen, 1999).Achieving self-esteem is also difficult for blind children since self-awareness in the social context of school is often affected by such factors as social isolation, low expectations, and over-protection (Tuttle & Tuttle, 1996). Classroom instruction typically exploits the visual/motor channel of communication and relies upon social mediation for student achievement. Because blind students cannot partake of the visual channel of communication and are often socially isolated, they generally have limited opportunities for incidental learning.This places them at a disadvantage when attempting to participate in classroom activities. Often gaps exist in concept development, making it difficult for classroom teachers to activate prior knowledge, or leading them to make false assumptions in regard to the fundamental understanding these students have of the world around them. Moreover, the need for Braille as a necessary alternative to print creates a challenge for general education classroom teachers to provide invaluable corrective feedback, as very few general education classroom teachers can read and write Braille.Lack of eye contact and the impossibility of visually-based social recognition can have a profound impact on a blind student’s opportunity to form meaningful and cooperative relationships with peers. Such barriers must be carefully examined and skillfully addressed by practitioners in order to provide genuine and valid access to the general curriculum for blind students. Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing According to IDEA ’97, Deafness means a hearing impairment that is so severe that [a] child is impaired in processing linguistic informat ion through hearing, with or without amplification, that adversely affects a child’s educational performance.Hearing impairment means an impairment in hearing, whether permanent or fluctuating, that adversely affects a child’s educational performance but that is not included under the definition of deafness in this section. Authority: 20 U. S. C. 1401(3)(A) and (B); 1401(26) Needs of children who are hearing impaired must take into account factors such as age at onset of disability (in particular, pre-lingual vs. post-lingual deafness), audiometric hearing status (particularly in speech range with amplification), type of hearing loss (conductive, sensorineural, mixed, central) and possible presence of concomitant disabilities.The needs of children who are deaf and children who are hard-of-hearing must be understood as quite distinct when considering communication use. The native language of deaf children is American Sign Language (ASL), but children who are hard-of-hea ring may understand speech with amplification and may not identify with members of Deaf culture. Severity of hearing loss is measured by decibels (dB) or units of loudness. A hearing loss between 15 and 20 dB is considered slight. A person with a hearing loss of 60 dB has difficulty hearing conversational speech without amplification.An individual with a hearing loss of 100 dB is not able to hear a power lawnmower without amplification (Kirk, Gallagher, & Anastasiow, 2000). Children and adults with hearing disabilities characteristically confront significant issues with regard to social and intellectual development, speech and language development, and edu