Proposal for T560 Course Project

The topic area I would like to investigate for my course project is schizophrenia. I became particularly interested in this disease after teaching a 16 year-old schizophrenic student as a first-year teacher in 1999. Not surprisingly, I was ill-equipped to handle the behavioral problems that accompanied Gavin's schizophrenia. In addition to being unengaged and understimulated in my class, he was also manic-depressive and suicidal. I found that as the school year progressed, my goals for Gavin were less and less about making him learn the subject matter and more about simply making him laugh. Needless to say, the class became very Gavin-centric (it's very hard to ignore a schizophrenic student). After Gavin ran away from home and attempted suicide for the first time that year, I decided to switch gears by taking some of the pressure off of my students and making my Spanish class a more welcoming and enjoyable environment. Completely unaware of any universal design techniques that could have helped Gavin back in 1999, I attempted to make the classroom environment as comedic as possible so that he would want to come back to it day after day.

(While my topic is rather broad right now, I am hoping to narrow it down somewhat to focus more specifically on schizophrenia in adolescents and investigate their predisposition towards depression, outbursts and violence, as well as their tendency to be extremely intelligent and creative individuals. For an interesting article called "The Teenage Brain: Culture and Schizophrenia", see: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/brain/episode3/cultures/index.html.)

Bill's Face Blindness vs. Phineas Gage

I was intrigued by Bill Choisser's web article on Prosopagnosia. Until Tuesday's class, I had never heard of this type of disability. Part of me wondered if people I know suffer from this! And if they do, are they aware of it? How many people in the world live their lives (like Bill did) without realizing that they have this disability?

The fact that the brain can make conclusions about what it sees (ex: determining that blocks on a shaded checkerboard are white when in fact they are black) or recognizes a face out of a bunch of blurry dots is something that I had entirely taken for granted before this class. Bill's disability also reminded of Phineas Gage's story in Descartes' Error; while Phineas did not die from his injury, the part of his brain that was removed from the explosion somehow contributed to his less desirable personality and demeanor. In a similar manner, some regarded Bill to be a rude person because he was incapable of recognizing people and occasionally ignored people with whom he had had lenghty conversations. While it makes perfect sense that Phineas' rude demeanor could be attributed to a missing piece of his brain that affects character, might he simply have been pissed off that he survived such a horrific accident?!?

Since it appears that the brain is so complex that no one knows for sure how individualized it is, could a new kind of blindness be discovered in years to come? Either way (and most ironically--please excuse the pun...), we can compare Bill's disability and Phineas' injury by saying that both of them couldn't see what was coming their way.