Re: Sad to read this
@124, I'm glad you took something positive from your experience, but I have to say I found myself strongly reacting to your post with a resounding hell no!
When I was in eighth grade, my English teacher attempted a similar experiment. Keep in mind that the school I attended at that time was primarily comprised of white staff and students, where differences of any kind, whether racial, due to a disability, or pretty much anything else, were not acceptable, to put it mildly. She, however, was one of the few people in that hellhole who could spell the word empathy, let alone know what it means. She did this with good intentions, and I have no clue how she got the rest of the teachers in our section to go along with it, but whatever.
Each student had to choose a "disability" to live with for the day. This mostly consisted of people sticking earplugs in their ears and having to communicate by writing on paper. Note, however, that this was not enforced during lunchtime in the cafeteria. Also, since I didn't really understand until some time later that she was probably doing this for me, to try and make people more tolerant of my blindness, I boldly raised my hand on the day the assignment was given and asked, "I already have a real disability, do I have to fake another one?" To which she kind of chuckled and replied, "no one is exempt." So the day came and I plugged up my ears like a good girl along with everyone else. And, you know what? It didn't teach me a damn thing about what it's like to live with a hearing impairment. Perhaps that's something I never would have given much thought to at all if I hadn't met my partner, who is hearing impaired. In any case, afterwards, we had to write an essay about our experience. We were told we did not have to share our thoughts with the class, but I doubt anybody else learned much of anything from that silly foray into pseudo disability, either. I only found out after I wrote a scathing review of what I thought of her assignment in said essay that I had deeply hurt her feelings, and that she had been trying to help, however misguided she was. I felt bad about that at the time, but if I could go back, I'd react the same way over again.
It's not even the fact that the whole thing was poorly planned. Wearing a blindfold, or earplugs, might scare a person senseless, depending on their personality, which is exactly what you don't want to do when introducing the concept of what it's like to live as a person with a disability. It would probably reinforce any misconceptions a person has in their mind about such things. Also, particularly with teenagers, you know they defied the rules at every turn, and, even if they endured it sullenly, they were just counting down the minutes until the day could end and they could go back to their "normal" lives.
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