Obedience to authority: Who is the school system serving? (Guest Blog)

Recently, I spoke with a parent of a student I tutored this summer about their fight to get their dyslexic son services and supports in the public-school setting. This parent explained how, prior to getting the actual dyslexia diagnosis, the school would suggest dyslexia as a possibility for their son’s learning struggles, followed by the teachers giving general answers such as, “He will grow out of it”, “I don’t know much about dyslexia, I’m sure he’s fine.”, or “He’s on grade level”. 

Comments like these, perhaps well intentioned, can leave a parent suspicious and struggling for answers, or believing the professionals to the potential detriment of their child. I couldn’t help but think, “Why do some parents take what teachers or administrators say without questioning their reasoning?” This situation really got me thinking about the idea of professional authority outside of education. This situation also sheds light on the idea of obedience to authority, and how it plays out with parents in the public-school system who are fighting for special education rights and services for disabilities such as dyslexia. 

 

Over the last ten years, I’ve worked with many families who are in the early stages of their dyslexia journey, hoping to find what would work best to suit their child’s needs socially, emotionally, and academically within the American school system. While working with parents in the public-school setting, the common theme I found involved parents having a gut feeling their child had dyslexia and required supports and accommodations. However, it seems few teachers believed, understood, or heard them enough to do anything about it.  There is a myriad of reasons for this, from a paucity of teacher understanding to willful ignorance in order to avoid costly trainings and services; however, those reasons and motives are not the focus of this blog post. 

 

Class, education, and race play a huge role in why this is a continued concern for families without cultural capital. In my professional experience, I have worked with mostly white middle to upper middle-class families who could afford expensive outside testing, tutors (such as myself, who employ a specialized time intensive Orton-Gillingham approach), and/or a private school experience for their child. But what about brown and black working-class families who may not know or understand special education services, the process, the law, or that their child is owed a free and appropriate public education (FAPE). What about the working-class families who value education but aren’t as knowledgeable or educated about dyslexia? Usually, those students fall through the cracks because the families trust the education system to do right by their child. 

 

In some cultures, it’s typical for parents to trust the educators of their child(ren) because educators are revered as highly as medical doctors. However, some of these families have the economic and cultural means to provide for their children when this trust becomes problematic. This isn’t always the case with a working-class family who may be balancing several jobs and trying to maintain Maslow before Bloom. If you aren’t familiar with this saying, it is referencing the importance of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs over the educational framework of Bloom’s Taxonomy.  In other words, getting basic needs met such as food, clothing, shelter, before worrying about higher levels of academic cognition. 

 

I think about these families who  are trusting their child(ren)’s teachers and the school staff to: do their jobs to the best of their abilities; possess a certain pedagogic and content expertise regarding their child(ren); and have access to other on-site staff with specific expertise in recognizing and diagnosing any potential learning disabilities. There is an expectation that teachers can adroitly meet their child(ren) before and after diagnosis, and provide appropriate accommodations. However, that’s not always the reality, because all too often teachers lack the requisite expertise.  Too often, the system or institution would rather treat the symptoms than the underlying disability because disability treatment is expensive and requires significant training and time. 

 

In 1961, Stanley Milgram conducted a social psychological experiment that studied obedience to authority. While this experiment was unethical because of a lack of informed consent, it showed people from various demographic groups deferred to the authority of the “objective” scientist with a clipboard and a white lab coat.  The experiment had participants inflict electric shocks to a person on the other side of a wall whenever they incorrectly identified a word pair, with the voltage increasing with every incorrect answer.  The participants (person administering and person receiving shocks) met before the experiment for a seemingly random assigning of roles. In reality, the person getting shocked was an actor who was working with the researcher in the lab coat, and no shocks were actually administered. 

 

The participant inflicting the shocks reported being bothered by the fact they could not see the person getting shocked. Despite being bothered, most of the participants decided not to stop on their own volition.  They would ask permission from (and make comments to) the authority figure relative to whether they could stop or be more lenient. In response, the authority figure would make general comments such as, “The experiment must go on” or, You have to continue”. The participant would follow instructions no matter how uncomfortable, or brutal their actions were. In fact, they often complained or expressed disagreement/frustration with the experiment but did not stop.  This study revealed the significant capacity humans have to obey authority, even when they may disagree with said authority.  It did not take much prompting for the participants to finish their assigned role.

 

In education, teachers and administrators should not, hopefully, inflict electric shocks to parents in the community, by not properly serving the families of (and students with) dyslexia. Families and students with dyslexia often are not receiving the supports, accommodations, services, and diagnoses they need in order to be successful and feel seen in American public schools. This can only change with better training for our teachers and school administrators about dyslexia, so the needed educational supports can be given to our children in school, where they need it the most.


Dr. Lauren McClenney-Rosenstein, 

Special Educator & Dyslexia Advocate

Instagram

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Unpacking Systematic Barriers for Black Boys with a Learning Disability in Special Education

Image
Special Education classrooms are a melting pot of students who are creative, innovative, and waiting for an opportunity to shine. These are the generalized qualities the students come with as their hard-wired gifts. Students all still need to learn how to read through direct, explicit and systematic instruction, and that will only happen through effective  literacy instruction that is culturally responsive  and teacher training. Literacy should be the great equalizer for students to become academically independent. Not every student will get exposed to quality literacy instruction which pushes them to reach their full potential or positions them to achieve their freedom. However, it should be at the top of the list for educators, policymakers and administrators to train teachers to excel in literacy instruction.  Although the demographics of classrooms are changing to reflect increasingly diverse students, what remains unknown in Special Education is why there is a persi...
Read more

Learning to Read – The Key That Opened The Door

Image
As a young kid, I had always struggled with reading and avoided it at all cost. Reading should be an activity that one does for pleasure and opens their mind to endless dreams. However, reading was not an activity I enjoyed. I was engaged in behaviors that were destructive in order to avoid it. I had to attend an alternative program for two years of high school because I could not control my temper. I was angry for many reasons, but the main one was that I was not able to read.   I was not diagnosed until the age of 18 and graduated from high school reading at an elementary level. My options were very limited. Yet, my life changed in 1996 when my mentor, an angel, Dr. Robert T. Nash literally saved my life and gave me HOPE as a student who was in Special Education. He and his colleague Dr. Kitz told me I was one of the most illiterate students they had meet, but that it was not my fault. They both said the system failed me. Dr Nash saw talent in me, told me I had a gift, b...
Read more

Balancing Resources for Literacy: How Policy Impacts Literacy Quality and Modern Illiteracy Rates

Image
The Science of Reading (SoR) has become a central focus in education, emphasizing evidence-based practices for teaching literacy skills. However, alongside these instructional methods, the role of policy in shaping literacy outcomes is often overlooked.  Understanding how resources—both public and private—are allocated can shed light on why certain literacy disparities persist, even with advances in the SoR.  This piece explores the balance of resources and inequities through the lens of the equation  LQ = R {Pub + Priv (M)} - I , which highlights how policy decisions impact literacy quality and modern-day illiteracy rates. Figure 1 : A black and white vector illustration depicting the balance of resources for literacy, showing books and coins on a balanced scale, symbolizing the relationship between educational resources and funding. Created by an AI illustration tool. While instructional approaches are critical for improving reading skills, how resources are distributed...
Read more