Privilege: (noun) a special advantage or authority possessed by a particular person or group based on perception of status.
There is a spirited challenge to systemic privilege taking place in contemporary culture. Like so many, I've been educating myself using the wealth of resources which have proliferated this year. What's so innovative, so promising, is the shift away from a discrimination model towards a privilege model. This shift focuses on the subject rather than the object, drawing attention away from the recipient of disadvantage to the advantaged agent. This is a critical step in dismantling privilege, because privilege thrives when we focus on vulnerability rather than accountability.
When we talk about privilege, we ask individuals to look at the advantages they enjoy at the expense of someone else. What constitutes unwarranted advantage? It is unearned, even accidental. Much of the privilege we question is no more than the odds of biology: race, gender, sexual orientation, and ethnicity. This is equally true for cognition, another spectrum governed largely by chance. I don’t mean to say that genetics don’t tamper with the odds – they do. But neither typical nor atypical cognition are earned.
What is neurotypical privilege? The unwarranted advantage afforded to those who fall in the majority of cognitive expression. Historically, our culture has viewed learning differences as a disability - these children are not able to perform the same as their peers. This 'disadvantages' them, and so we create services to support them, to make things fairer, more equal. This is the essence of all discrimination models - to focus on the recipient of disadvantage rather than the systemic and institutionalised advantages enjoyed by the higher status party.
Before you shake your head at the notion of status in education, note that during the inter-war period, official terminology categorised children with SEND as ‘mentally defective’ or ‘retarded’. Post-war, pupils with learning difficulties were ‘ineducable’ and ‘educationally subnormal'. It was only the 1978 Warnock Report which changed the language around educational difference, inaugurating the term 'Special Educational Needs'. While this removed the most offensive labels, it has done little to challenge the institutional bias which perpetuates privilege.
Let’s consider one example of institutionalised privilege: the timed test. Neurodiverse pupils process information differently than their neurotypical classmates; the process of visual, verbal or motor perception is often slower. Perception isn’t damaged or impaired, mind you, it is just slower than the norm. When time constraints are removed, these kids demonstrate what they have learned. When time constraints are present, these kids demonstrate how badly they are affected by time constraints. Current legislation awards 25% additional time to ensure a level playing field; 25% being roughly how much lower a student must score on assessments of processing speed to earn exam concessions. This is the essence of a discrimination model - perceiving a difference as something which we must compensate rather than looking at who is benefitting from timed assessment.
Who benefits from timed assessment? Neurotypical pupils. These pupils are granted an unwarranted advantage on the perception of being higher status. We have linked the notion of majority - here of information processing - with better. Why is it better to go faster? Why is it necessary to respond to assessment under time pressure? If one is studying first aid, law enforcement, perhaps sports, response time is a critical component of success. But really, does it matter how quickly you can describe an estuary? Does the speed at which you diagram a cell demonstrate anything more than the speed at which you diagram a cell? Timing performance awards unexpected benefit to those who thrive under these conditions - without a clue it's happening.
Many young people do not want to receive privilege that is unearned. They want to live equally, and to question barriers to that equality. They want to be allies to communities turning the discussion away from disadvantage and towards privilege. Equal rights must extend to those who learn differently, or we perpetuate the myth that these people have less value. Ask any young person who learns differently if they feel of equal value in the classroom and the answer will be no, because the odds are stacked against them. We need to ask ‘by whom?'