Valentine’s Day & One Year of Filming for Coded Generations!
One year, 10 interviews and more than 100 hours of footage! Our adventure into the disability world, and yes, there is such a thing as a “disability world” started on Valentine’s Day 2010. Our little teaser video captures the positive beginning of Marcu’s education story. One year down the road, he is making strong educational and social progress surrounded by caring friends and educators who are making a world of difference in both his and his family’s life.
The idea for Coded Generations started only 3 months earlier with an answer to Olha’s simple question: why did we want Marcu in Ms. Merritt’s kindergarten class and not in the little, 4 student group called the Learning Center across the hallway? She did not settle for my short answer of our belief that Marcu will develop fully only in a regular environment where he would from observing and learning from his typical developing peers. That was how discussion started and continues on topics such as inclusive education, what it means, what it takes, Universal Design for Learning, IDEA, fair choices for children with disabilities to free appropriate education, fair choices for young adults with disabilities to meaningful employment and productive lives and maybe most importantly, on social justice.
John Rawls, the American philosopher and leading figure in moral and political philosophy argued that “the most reasonable principles of justice are those everyone would accept and agree to from a fair position”. When asking people to look at justice, he used the veil of ignorance “No one knows his place in society, his class position or social status, nor does anyone know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength, and the like. I shall even assume that the parties do not know their conceptions of the good or their special psychological propensities. The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance.” That’s certainly an interesting thing to think about with regard to people with disabilities. If you weren’t sure whether YOU were the person with the disability or not, how would you design and develop the necessary support systems for individuals with disability to live as independently as possible? What would you consider a just social environment if it might be you?
Coded Generations will try to show what might be needed for our society to give its population with disabilities fair access to happy and productive lives as per Rawls’ principals of social justice.
