On Competency and Agency

One of the concepts you see referenced frequently in disability writing these days is to always presume competence. It's a straightforward enough principle, and in the world of disability, it goes back farther than you might think, back before most of us even think of disability advocacy being A Thing. Think of the story of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan. Sullivan's success in helping Keller develop the means to communicate with the world hinged on one simple thing: the presumption that Helen Keller's problem came from not having a practical and efficient way to communicate. Introducing her to the construction of language was the key. Given those tools, Helen Keller demonstrated that she had competence, the presumption of which hadn't occurred to many of her earlier teachers. Presuming competence is the beginning, particularly where education is concerned. For teachers, the presumption of competence should be the Golden Rule, or the Prime Directive, or Square One. When we presume competence, we start off by assuming that a student has the intellectual capacity to participate in the world around them, and to be educated in a meaningful way. We assume that even the most physically and/or intellectually impaired student has needs and thoughts and experiences to communicate, and that even the most inscrutable actions and utterances represent forms of communication.It can be difficult for teachers to embrace presumed competence because doing so places the responsibility for findin...
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