Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life

by Margaret Price

"A very important study that will appeal to a disability studies audience as well as scholars in social movements, social justice, critical pedagogy, literacy education, professional development for disability and learning specialists in access centers and student counseling centers, as well as the broader domains of sociology and education."
---Melanie Panitch, Ryerson University

"Ableism is alive and well in higher education. We do not know how to abandon the myth of the 'pure (ivory) tower that props up and is propped up by ableist ideology.' . . . Mad at School is thoroughly researched and pathbreaking. . . . The author's presentation of her own experience with mental illness is woven throughout the text with candor and eloquence."
---Linda Ware, State University of New York at Geneseo

Mad at School explores the contested boundaries between disability, illness, and mental illness in the setting of U.S. higher education. Much of the research and teaching within disability studies assumes a disabled body but a rational and energetic (an "agile") mind. In Mad at School, scholar and disabilities activist Margaret Price asks: How might our education practices change if we understood disability to incorporate the disabled mind?

Mental disability (more often called "mental illness") is a topic of fast-growing interest in all spheres of American culture, including popular, governmental, aesthetic, and academic. Mad at School is a close study of the ways that mental disabilities impact academic culture. Investigating spaces including classrooms, faculty meeting rooms, and job searches, Price challenges her readers to reconsider long-held values of academic life, including productivity, participation, security, and independence. Ultimately, she argues that academic discourse both produces and is produced by a tacitly privileged "able mind," and that U.S. higher education would benefit from practices that create a more accessible academic world.

Mad at School is the first book to use a disability-studies perspective to focus on the ways that mental disabilities impact academic culture at institutions of higher education. Individual chapters examine the language used to denote mental disability; the role of "participation" and "presence" in student learning; the role of "collegiality" in faculty work; the controversy over "security" and free speech that has arisen in the wake of recent school shootings; and the marginalized status of independent scholars with mental disabilities.

Margaret Price is Associate Professor of English at Spelman College.

Genres: Disability, Nonfiction, Disability Studies, Education, Mental Health, Academic, Psychology

293 pages, Paperback

First published November 28, 2010

About the author

Margaret Price is Associate Professor of English at Spelman College and the author of Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life (University of Michigan Press, 2011)."

Reviews

[Lara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was incredibly important to me both as a graduate student and an instructor. It does a wonderful job of laying bare the ways that (often outdated) paradigms of looking at mental health/illness and ideas about cognitive function are entrenched in academic culture, to the detriment of not only individual students but also the academy and society as a whole. I think that those outside of academia might find the chapter about students who turned violent especially interesting and compelling--Price examines the news coverage of these students and the colleges' responses to the violence to show how the narrative of school shooters as quiet, loner freaks often functions to shift responsibility away from institutions that these individuals reached out to (with clear warning signs), but which ignored them.

The book does have some jargon (it is an academic work, after all), but overall it was a fairly quick and definitely engaging read, and one that I would recommend to anyone who is or knows someone who is neuroatypical or who has dealt with mental health issues.

[laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a graduate student with a mental illness who is getting increasingly involved in disability activism, I found this book both helpful and supportive (without being overly academic or overly emotional).

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb. I'll have more to say about it when I can catch my breath; for now, I'll highly recommend it to anyone with an academic interest in disability and (how we talk about) mental wellness.

ETA: I'm not going to put a full, academic summary of the article on Goodreads, so I'll just say what I found memorable and worthwhile about the book, and y'all can choose whether to read it.

In her first two chapters, Price shows how higher education works from a medicalized, diagnosis-forward model of disability, inc. with mental disability (meaning anything we'd call mental illness, developmental disabilities, etc) –– the goal is to figure out *what's wrong* with people, and usu. there's a hard and problematic line drawn between the classroom/learning and mental well-being. She then goes on to describe two areas where people with mental disabilities are particularly excluded: the job market and academic conferences. These two books helped me think about the ways that much of higher education runs on a preference for rational, articulated discourse, and when we fall short of that, we either try to identify what's wrong with people/correct it, or we (accidentally or not) exclude people.

I also really enjoyed Price's last chapter, in which she talks with three of her friends with mental/physical disabilities who work as independent scholars/writers outside academia, either because they prefer to do so or/and because they're unable to sustain academic employment. This one is important methodologically, especially for those of us who do small, qualitative studies.

While I'm in Price's field, I found the book really readable, so I imagine anyone who circulates through higher education and is interested in these questions would find it accessible.

[Rhonda]

This is a book that needs to be read several times in order to digest the multiple layers of information that the author provides. It is an intellectual read and I picked up several key tips relating to cognitive dissonance and kairo space.

[Abby Gottesman · Rating 5 out of 5]

AMAZING. Price came to speak to my class on literature and disability and she's just incredible. makes you rethink how we view academia

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

Margaret Price takes a well-researched look at how mental disability is handled in academics, both in and out of the classroom. While one might not always agree with her conclusions, her book tackles an important subject and adds to the scholarly conversations regarding this topic.

[Sarah]

Lucidly written and important!