Mad at School explores the contested boundaries between disability, illness, and mental illness in the setting of U.S. higher education. Much of the research and teaching within disability studies assumes a disabled body but a rational and energetic (an "agile") mind. In Mad at School , scholar and disabilities activist Margaret Price asks: How might our education practices change if we understood disability to incorporate the disabled mind?
Mental disability (more often called "mental illness") is a topic of fast-growing interest in all spheres of American culture, including popular, governmental, aesthetic, and academic. Mad at School is a close study of the ways that mental disabilities impact academic culture. Investigating spaces including classrooms, faculty meeting rooms, and job searches, Price challenges her readers to reconsider long-held values of academic life, including productivity, participation, security, and independence. Ultimately, she argues that academic discourse both produces and is produced by a tacitly privileged "able mind," and that U.S. higher education would benefit from practices that create a more accessible academic world.
Mad at School is the first book to use a disability-studies perspective to focus on the ways that mental disabilities impact academic culture at institutions of higher education. Individual chapters examine the language used to denote mental disability; the role of "participation" and "presence" in student learning; the role of "collegiality" in faculty work; the controversy over "security" and free speech that has arisen in the wake of recent school shootings; and the marginalized status of independent scholars with mental disabilities.
"A very important study that will appeal to a disability studies audience as well as scholars in social movements, social justice, critical pedagogy, literacy education, professional development for disability and learning specialists in access centers and student counseling centers, as well as the broader domains of sociology and education."
—Melanie Panitch, Ryerson University
"Ableism is alive and well in higher education. We do not know how to abandon the myth of the 'pure (ivory) tower that props up and is propped up by ableist ideology.' . . . Mad at School is thoroughly researched and pathbreaking. . . . The author's presentation of her own experience with mental illness is woven throughout the text with candor and eloquence."
—Linda Ware, State University of New York at Geneseo
"The book is a must-read, with appeal for both general academic and disability studies audiences, and is designed to have maximum impact within university culture. The readability of Price's prose makes hers an important book to put in the hands of university administrators and teachers of all stripes."
—Disability Studies Quarterly
"Price's book was simultaneously humbling for me to read and empowering. Although I felt challenged by her analysis of classrooms that do not accommodate, recognize, or configure themselves to work for and with students with mental disabilities, she also provides sections of the book that guide a motivated reader to consider alternate classroom practices and arrangements."
"Price's audience is not bound to disability scholars alone. Anyone interested in understanding their students and improving the working lives of their colleagues can learn from her research."
"Margaret Price's brave, controversial argument about educational inclusiveness needs to be discussed by anyone who teaches, is concerned about educational processes and academic culture, wants to understand some of their unintended consequences, or thinks about constructions of mental illness or cognitive disability."
—NYU School of Medicine's Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database
Copyright © 2011, University of Michigan. All rights reserved.