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TABLE OF CONTENTSDedication 4 Foreword 6 Introduction 10How are freak shows and Charles Darwin related? 12One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest 16Why would someone want to stay in poverty? 20Winging It 22Conclusion 26Works Cited 30

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DEDICATION

To the students, teachers, volunteers, parents, and sponsors of the College of Adaptive Arts, who truly

prove that actions speak louder than words.

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FOREWORD This year, my friend Leo became a freshman at my high school. His parents have been friends with my parents since we were little kids, so we have grown up side by side and have spent a lot of time together over the years. When I was little, I thought Leo was weird and asked my mother not to make me spend time with him because I did not know how to talk to him. I was always afraid that he was going to break my toys. I remember begging my mother to ask her friends not to bring their son to our holiday dinners in the fear that we would be forced to play in my room and that he would destroy my carefully built Lego structures. When she refused my pleas and Leo arrived at our home in the firm grip of his mother and father, I would lock the door to my room and only occasionally speak to him in front of his parents. I never understood why my mother wanted me and Leo to spend so much time together and I would always ask her why he could not just act “normal”. Leo is deaf. Since he was born with this disability, it impaired his initial development and slowed his ability to progress like a typical child. Despite his difficulties, he has shown unex-pected proficiency in his memory and his creativity and has proved to have a strong interest in his education. I first noticed these changes when we were both in middle school. I had found barely enough motivation to get onto the B Honor Roll; my favorite phrase was: “Colleges don’t look at your grades in middle school, so grades don’t matter yet.” Leo, on the other hand, was enrolled in a special education program where he was showing great potential in his studies. I recall my mother proudly explaining to me that Leo had an almost photographic memory and was training himself by copying down newspaper articles that were generally unexpected for his reading level. Leo’s drive to educate himself at the same caliber as an abled student proved to me that he was fully capable of comprehending his surroundings.

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Leo was born into an unfortunate situation, but he is much more than his disability. I have learned to respect and appreciate him and his abilities. In fact, he was the first person that I thought of when my partner came to me with the idea for this project. Leo began high school this year. Just like any teenager, he builds goals, worries about his future, and wants to have friends. Unfortunately, Leo has the additional pressure of his dis-ability and the stigma that surrounds it. Nowadays, when I see Leo in the hallways, I see a friend that I have known for years. I am comfortable with him and understand his restrictions. Many of his classmates, though, do not acknowledge him. Not because they do not understand his disability, but because just like I used to, they do not know how to approach him or how to communicate with him. I worry about him not having friends and it frustrates me that he must go through great lengths for people to be able to see his potential. It concerns me that throughout high school he will be marginalized by the community around him and that once he graduates, there will be very few chances for him to explore his education further. However, thanks to this project, my worries have begun to subside. Now, I am hopeful that Leo will have the opportunity to expand his horizons with a community that fully compre-hends his disability and its effects; he may have the chance to show others the ingenuity that he has been able to show me.

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INTRODUCTION “There are no baby pigeons in the city. Not one....because you would think that you would find a baby pigeon somewhere. But I don’t see baby pigeons ever.” Most people are familiar with this as the ‘baby pigeon’ joke per-formed by Charlie Day from the film Going the Distance. It simply asks, if none of us have seen a baby pigeon, does that mean that they don’t exist? Obviously, they do exist; pigeons don’t just appear out of nowhere. And as we can see from the enormous populations that flock our cities, they are taken care of, whether it be from their pigeon parents or from the av-erage civilian kind enough to share a bit of their lunch with them. Now, you might be wonder-ing, Is the rest of this essay just going to be about the disputed existence of urban bird life? Unfortunately for the both of us, no. But there is an important theme to consider here. Why is more attention given to a specific population at a certain age? In the pigeons’ case, we see that it is not an issue, since the birds are thriv-ing, healthy, and well cared for by the many people that make up our cities.

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But what about the specific populations in our own species? Even more precisely, minority and underprivileged people? How many of us stop and wonder if the help we give now will last for the years to come? In some cases, sure. The children who receive new books for their underfunded schools may learn to read, an essential skill for any human being today. The kids suffering from cancer may be able to fulfill their dreams of living longer, healthier lives. But this ideology is not totally applicable to all of the underprivileged. Many adults with disabilities are often signed up for day programs or find them-selves restricted to their homes, unable to ex-plore their full creative potential. They become overshadowed by the stigma that claims that they cannot be contributing citizens. Adults with disabilities must have intellectually stimulating communities established once they exit the post-secondary education sys-tem because they deserve equal standards of living to thrive as abled citizens.

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CHAPTER ONEHOW ARE FREAK SHOWS AND CHARLES DARWIN RELATED? Throughout history, people with dis-abilities have been associated with disobedient actions, or were considered just below hu-manity in general. Education of people with disabilities was not even allowed or accepted until the later 1800s; the first treatise on the education of students with disabilities was published in the United States in the 1840s and was revolutionary for the time because it as-serted that children with disabilities could be educated and were worth education (Jaeger and Bowman 32-33). Generally, people with disabilities were kept to segregated communi-ties and residential institutions away from the rest of the public (Jaeger and Bowman 35). This treatment of people with disabilities ex-tended to social mannerisms and established views on how such people should be treated. In ancient civilizations, a person with a dis-ability could be used as entertainment for a monarch. Later, this translated to the selling of people with disabilities to freak shows and circuses for the amusement of the general public.

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Eventually, public perceptions soon associated disability with a range of degenerate and antisocial behaviors and people began to more seriously question how disability could be contained. Sir Francis Galton (a half-cousin of Charles Darwin) formulated the modern definition of eugenics in 1883. Eugenics is defined as a science that deals with the improvement (as by control of human mating) of hereditary qualities of a race or breed. Basically, Galton created the idea of sterilization of people with disabilities to try and stop future disabled generations from being born. Sterilization was accomplished through many different means, “including removal of reproductive organs, blasting areas of the body with tremendously high levels of X-ray radia-tion, or directly injecting the reproductive organs with radium. Many victims of these sterilization procedures were not even told what had been done to them”(Jaeger and Bowman 36). These methods were especially detrimental to an individual since they were inflicted without consent (it was considered that they could not comprehend what was being done to them), but also caused even more health risks that could lead to life-threatening illnesses. Hundreds of thou-sands of people with disabilities have been sterilized since the modern creation of eugenics. Unfortunately, in many states that had sterilization laws, the laws have never been formally removed from the books or struck down by courts (Jaeger and Bowman 36).

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The 1900s brought a new view towards disabilities due to the changes brought on by industrialization. More than 500,000 members of the working-age population in the United States had a physical disability as a result of their work, more than 123,000 Americans returned home from World War I with a physical disability, and later, medical advances allowed many soldiers to survive World War II who would have previously died from their injuries, helped many people recover from polio, and increased survival rates for many other illnesses and injuries (Jaeger and Bowman 38). The end result was an increase in the number of people who had some kind of disability, as people who would have previously died from many maladies now survived with a disability. Inspired by the civil rights movements for racial and gender equality of the 1950s and 1960s, people with disabilities became very active in battling for legal rights in the 1970s. They were especially motivated by the Kennedys in the 60s because JFK’s sister, Rosemary Kennedy, had a behavioral disorder that made her prone to harsh mood swings. Her father, hoping to equalize these mood swings, ordered a relatively new surgery to treat her, known as lobotomy, or the surgical incision into the frontal lobe of the brain to sever one or more nerve tracts to treat certain psychiatric disorders. Rosemary, like the many others of people who were not told of their sterilization, was not told of her surgery beforehand. The risky procedure left her per-manently incapacitated and she spent the rest of her life in a rehabilitation facility (“Rosemary Kennedy”). The Kennedys addressed disability in a manner unlike the established norm, in which a person with a disability was publicly cared for, even leading the president to sign a piece of legislation that provided funding for the construction of facilities related to the prevention, care, and treatment of people with intellectual disabilities through the establishment of nationwide research centers, clinics, and community centers (“JFK and People with Intellectual Disabilities”). Thus, the 1970s saw a new movement in disability rights.

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In 1971, thanks to ongoing pressure from demonstrations and protests by the disabled community, a federal district court held that the exclusion of children with disabilities from public schools was unconstitutional in the case Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Children (PARC) v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (Jaeger and Bowman 39). In 1973, the federal govern-ment passed the first law to grant specific, affirmative legal rights to individuals with disabilities by protecting qualified individuals from discrimination based on their disability and forbidding organizations and employers from excluding or denying individuals with disabilities an equal op-portunity to receive program benefits and services, known as Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act (Jaeger and Bowman 40). In 1990, Congress passed a second extensive set of legal rights for individuals with disabilities, known as the Americans with Disabilities Act, which prohibits dis-crimination and requires equal opportunity in employment, state and local government services, public accommodations, commercial facilities, and transportation (“Call to Action”). So, after reading all of this history on disability rights, you might be wondering, If people with disabilities have made such great strides in the last couple of decades, why is this still an issue in need of discussion? Well, let’s look at the first question: How are freak shows and Charles Darwin related? It’s easy to say that freak shows and Sir Francis Galton, the half-cousin of Charles Darwin, relate to each other because they were both detrimental to people with dis-abilities. But the specific issue here is that they both created a negative stigma to people with disabilities. Freak shows helped to institutionalize the belief in society that disability should be equated with deviance and created the popular tendency to separate able people and people with disabilities. Eugenics established the idea that this deviance could be cleansed from so-ciety. Even though many laws have been put into place to advance the civil rights of people with disabilities, they may not have been enforced or people have not necessarily grown more empathetic towards people with disabilities.

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Let’s think back to JFK’s disability rights policies. It seemed that he made great strides in establishing rehabilitative communities for people with disabilities, but what did these in-stitutions really look like? They were meant to bring medical aid and support to people with differing disabilities, but instead many patients were forced into prison-like facilities with small, crowded, unsanitary rooms and in many cases were abused and treated like prison-ers, not patients. Medical treatments included lobotomy, electroshock therapy, and a variety of psychoactive drugs (Fuller Torrey, “Deinsti-tutionalization: A Psychiatric “Titanic””). On the outside, many people argued that at least these people were gaining some assistance, whereas before they were almost completely ignored by society. Realistically, though, people with disabilities were not gaining assistance; they were simply being relocated to closed facilities that would treat them the same way that the discriminating public would treat them.

CHAPTER TWOONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST

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Nearing the end of the sixties, the deinstitutionalization movement began to take control of the unjust system of treatment towards individuals with disabilities. Deinstitu-tionalization is characterized as the moving of the mentally ill out of the state institutions, and the closing of part or all of those insti-tutions. It helped create a mental illness di-lemma by discharging people from public psy-chiatric hospitals without ensuring that they received the medication and rehabilitation ser-vices necessary for them to live successfully in the community. Thus, many people were either jailed or abandoned and left homeless (Fuller Torrey, “Deinstitutionalization: A Psychi-atric “Titanic””). The shift furthered the stigma surrounding people with disabilities with the idea that many of these individuals were crimi-nals or below the rest of society.

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The basic resource of a nation is its people. Its strength can be no greater than the health and vitality of its population. Preventable sickness, disability and physical or mental incapacity are matters of both individual and national concern.

John F. KennedySpecial Message to the Congress on National Health Needs

February 27, 1962

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CHAPTER THREEWHY WOULD SOMEONE WANT TO STAY IN POVERTY? It would seem that the deinstitution-alization issue would be the ending point for people people with disabilities. They can only go up from here, right? According to our gov-ernment’s implementation of the welfare and Supplemental Security Income system, that statement is validated. SSI created a program of income support for individuals with disabili-ties (adults and children) and the elderly. Eli-gibility for SSI means that the person with the disability “...either be blind or have a physical or mental impairment that prevents engaging in any substantial gainful activity and that has lasted or is expected to last 12 months or to result in death. Substantial gainful activ-ity is generally defined in terms of specific earnings thresholds and is currently [set] at $810 or more per month.” (Nadel, Wamhoff, and Wiseman). This system seems great, right? The government is distributing money to people in need of a stable income who cannot earn this income themselves. But let’s look at the phrase “specific earnings thresholds” more closely.

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The SSI system is actually more restrictive with its distribution of benefits. I am not arguing that it is not helpful, but it is important to note that if a person receiving SSI exceeds their “specific earnings thresholds” or the amount of money they receive from a job or system that is separate from their SSI, they can lose their benefits. So, if a person with a disability who receives SSI is able to find a job, they have to make sure that their income does not exceed the parameters that the government has decided, otherwise their benefits will be reduced (“How Workers’ Compensation And Other Disability Payments May Affect Your Benefits”). It’s easy to as-sume that their job will pay them enough, or that if they have gained a job like an abled person that they do not need to worry about SSI. The issue, though, is that a person with a disability who is receiving SSI is not able to reach the same career standards as an abled person, nor does it ensure that they will always have a stable job. The work that they find will not completely cover their expenses. In the end, finding a job is more detrimental to them than not having a job. So, living at almost the poverty level guarantees a person with a disability a steady income, but it keeps them from joining the rest of the population as contributing citizens.

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CHAPTER FOURWinging It Let’s see where adults with disabilities stand nowadays. They are discouraged from finding jobs and they do not have fulfilling, ed-ucation based communities. They have become silenced, confined to daycare-like programs or their homes. How are adults with disabilities supposed to make themselves heard in a so-ciety that forgets their social needs once they exit the post-secondary education system at 22 years old? The College of Adaptive Arts is a non-profit organization built “...to provide a col-lege campus for adults with differing abilities where they will have opportunities to learn from a diverse and rich curriculum that will enable them to live a full and empowered life as successful, contributing members of the community”(“CAA Story”). CAA is unlike the typi-cal therapeutic recreational programs that are “...not as academically focused [and] become more vocational, life-skill, independent life-skills, [and] focus less on education” (Pursai).

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It provides a curriculum to teach new skills to adults who are interested in improving in a particular area of the arts and allows individuals with disabilities to channel their passions and achieve competency in an arts discipline. CAA provides for the ideology that individuals with special needs may develop at different rates that than their typically-developing counterparts. Thus, many adults with disabilities self-actualize later in their lives, but still want to learn how they can be of maximum service to the community. Since people with more restricting dis-abilities must limit their in-comes and do not usually have jobs or universities to attend, the College of Adaptive Arts establishes a system of higher educa-tion that empowers peo-ple with disabilities to be contributing citizens, like abled people who educate themselves further in the post-secondary education system.

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The College of Adaptive Arts was founded in 2009 by DeAnna Pursai and Pamela Lindsay, who both have experience in perform-ing arts and special education. The college has served over 100 students since its opening, all of whom have been ages 18 and up. It fea-tures a wide variety of classes like Filmmak-ing, Speaking With Confidence, Healthy Lifestyle Choices, and Ceramics. The school also makes an effort to expand its students’ horizons through networking sessions and a system that co-founder Pamela Lindsay describes as: “...designed to plug them into the community...[with] collaborative workshops that [CAA puts] together for the graduate students so that they can take their skills out to the streets, so to speak.” Student Denae Prosser, for example, says that her “dream is to become a cartoonist” and has already sold some of her artwork to be featured on an animated children’s show. An-other student, Kim Rains, dreams “...to reach out to other people and make [her] own ministry for signing...sign language is [her] first language and [she] want to reach out to other people and share [her] own ministry...”

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The arguably most important aspect of CAA is its way of opening adults with dis-abilities to a community and support system that allows for them to thrive in their education. Co-founder DeAnna Pursai says, “It’s really about camaraderie and it’s about working together. They learn the term ‘ensemble’, ... they Facebook each other all the time, they text; they have their college, their collegiate identity and their confidence goes up so much and being able to connect with the community and have continuous opportunities to go and perform.” The par-ents of the students are also given an outlet and a place to “band together and learn from each other and share resources and share stories and think about the opportunities...”(Pursai). The College of Adaptive Arts’ vision and mission is to “…build a college campus for adults with differing abilities where they will have opportunities to learn from a diverse and rich cur-riculum that will enable them to live a full and empowered life as successful, contributing members of society...[and] to provide an environment where adult students with differing abili-ties can flourish and thrive and continue to push the boundaries of their potential”(“CAA Story”).

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“It takes a lot, it takes a lot of people who really be-lieve in them and who really encourage them and are willing to do what it takes to pave the path for them

so that they can step out and be successful.”Pamela Lindsay

Co-Founder of the College of Adaptive Arts

“We call ourselves the “Mountain Movers” because for adults with disabilities we are not going to give up on them and we are doing the impossible by bringing this arts conservatory to life. We’re moving mountains for

[them] every day.”DeAnna Pursai

Co-Founder of the College of Adaptive Arts

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CONCLUSION Adults with disabilities deserve intel-lectually stimulating communities once they exit the post-secondary education system so as to have the chance to be contributing mem-bers of our society. The educational model demonstrated by the College of Adaptive Arts demonstrates that individuals with disabilities are more capable than they seem from their setbacks. The negative stigma that adults with restricting disabilities hold no functioning posi-tions in our society should be eradicated, as it is obvious that through the proper educational programs these adults can learn the same skills as abled adults. As a nation, we could only be more prosperous if we were to utilize all the talents offered to us by our citizens. It is necessary that we do not forget the pres-ence of the disadvantaged or we may lose our valued standard of democracy, where theoreti-cally, all voices are heard and taken into ac-count.

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WORKS CITED“CAA Story.” Home. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Mar. 2013.“Call to Action.” The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2013.Fuller Torrey, E. “Deinstitutionalization: A Psychiatric “Titanic”” Out of the Shadows: Confronting America’s Mental Illness Crisis. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997. N. pag. PBS. PBS, 10 May 2005. Web. 14 Mar. 2013.Going the Distance. Dir. Nanette Burnstein. Perf. Charlie Day, Drew Barrymore, Justin Long, Ron Livingston. Warner Bros., 2010. DVD.Jaeger, Paul T., and Cynthia Ann Bowman. Understanding Disability: Inclusion, Access, Diversity, and Civil Rights. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005. Print.“JFK and People with Intellectual Disabilities.” John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, n.d. Web. 14 Mar. 2013.Lindsay, Pamela. Personal interview. 19 Mar. 2013.Prosser, Denae. Personal interview. 4 Mar. 2013.Pursai, DeAnna. Personal interview. 4 Mar. 2013.Rains, Kim. Personal interview. 4 Mar. 2013.“Rosemary Kennedy.” John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, n.d. Web. 14 Mar. 2013.United States. Social Security Administration. How Workers’ Compensation And Other Disability Payments May Affect Your Benefits. N.p.: n.p., 2011. Web. 12 Feb. 2013.United States. Social Security Administration. Office of Policy. Disability, Welfare Reform, and Supplemental Security Income. By Mark Nadel, Steve Wamhoff, and Michael Wiseman. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Mar. 2013.