Measuring the unmeasurable

Michael Bérubé is Paterno Family Professor in Literature at Pennsylvania State University, and the father of a teenage son who has Down syndrome, adn a sometime drummer (according to Wikipaedia). He has written in this week's Times Higher Education Supplement (UK) about how education in the humanities can mould thinking, and how difficult it is for research to measure the effect, arguing in part .....


We believe that education in the humanities consists of training in how to think and in developing a richer language for thought ......

We have some wonderful anecdotal evidence, of course. Here is mine: there is no question in my mind that I was better equipped to deal with the birth of a child with Down's syndrome because of my training in the humanities.

I am less inclined to pathologise disability, more willing to entertain the idea that nothing human should be alien to us, more sympathetic to the argument that many disabilities are disabling chiefly because our built environments and social policies make them so. But I am not sure I can quantify that - and I am pretty sure I do not need to.


Click here to read the complete article online. (Thanks to John Smithies at the DSA in London for alerting us to this link.)

Michael Bérubé's book Life As We Know It - A Father, A Family, and an Exceptional Child (1996) is available for loan to members from the DS NSW library.

Links to his writing and blogging activities on the subject of disability can be found in this post. His Penn State "people" page lists as a current project a new book "Disability and Narrative", something to look forward to. It also has a great photo of Michael with Jamie.