Teaching mindfully.

Disability, Education and Empowerment: From Silence to Finding a Voice. Students with physical, learning, or emotional disabilities often face extra challenges in completing university coursework, including integration with peers, obtaining and receiving accommodations, educating faculty about their disabilities, and receiving proper diagnosis and treatment. Both students and faculty with such disabilities struggle continually with the additional stresses of uncertainty about how their disability will affect their performance and whether or how much to disclose about a disability that is not physically obvious.

Moses, a central figure in the scriptures of the Hebrew, Christian, and Muslim spiritual traditions, provides an excellent example of this struggle. In the Koran, as in the Torah, God calls Moses to confront Pharaoh. Even after God has wrought two transforming miracles, changing Moses' staff to a serpent and back, then changing the color of the skin on Moses' hand without hurting him, Moses reminds God of his disability and asks for help:

   Lord, ... put courage into my heart, and make my task easy. Free my tongue
   from its impediment, that men may understand my speech. Appoint for me a
   counselor from among my kinsmen, Aaron my brother. Grant me strength
   through him and let him share my task, so that we may give glory to You
   always and remember You always. You are surely watching over us. (20:24-26)
   [1]

In another surah's version of this conversation, Moses expresses his anxiety about others' reaction to his disability and asks that someone seemingly more able be sent: "I fear [the people of Pharaoh] will reject me. I may become impatient and stammer in my speech. Send for Aaron." (26:12) [2] Elsewhere, he explains, "Aaron my brother is more fluent of tongue than I; send him with me that he may help me and confirm my words, for I fear they will reject me."(28:29) [3] In the Torah, Moses actually tries to argue God out or this call, starting with the question, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?" (Exodus 3:11) [4] After raising several other objections, Moses attempts to draw God's attention to his chronic disability: "O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue." (Exodus 4:10) [5] God pointedly reminds Moses that he is speaking with the very Creator and Empowerer of all people with disabilities. "Who gives speech to mortals? Who makes them mute or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the LORD? Now go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you are to speak." (Exodus 4:11-12) Even then, Moses asks plainly, "O my Lord, please send someone else." (Exodus 4:13) [6] Moses' lack of self-confidence angers God, who reminds him of his brother Aaron's eloquence and promises to send them together. In the Koran, God reassures him, "Have no fear .... We shall be with you and shall hear all." (26:14) God expands on this promise in another surah: "We will strengthen your arm with your brother, and will bestow such power on you both, that none shall harm you." (28:35) [7]

God reminds Moses in several places in the Koran and Torah that in spite of his own doubts about his ability and disability, God had chosen him for this prophetic task even before his birth. In the Koran, Moses is called "the Apostle of the Lord of the Universe."(7:105, 43:47). [8] He is the intercessor for his people, "a true believer," and (along with Noah, Abraham, Jesus, and Muhammad) one of Islam's five prophets. (40:38; 2:137, 33:7) [9] Moses had a unique conversational relationship with God: "God spoke directly to Moses."(4:165) [10] He received God's revelation and proclaimed it to others, giving all succeeding generations of "People of the Book" (Jews, Christians, and Muslims) an understanding of "the distinction between right and wrong" through the Torah. (21:49) [11] "Such is God's guidance; He bestows it on whom He pleases of His servants." (6:88) [12]

In both the Hebrew and Arabic accounts of God's covenant with Moses, several key ideas for a spirituality of teaching and disability emerge. First, God grants each of Moses' requests for help, demonstrating what the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act calls "reasonable accommodation" on both a spiritual and practical level. Second, God doesn't heal Moses. (Exodus 4:10) Rather, God empowers him to fulfill his vocation. (Surah 28:35, Exodus 4:12) Third, the Torah suggests that God intentionally creates humans with a variety of abilities and disabilities. (Exodus 4:11) God doesn't seem to attach any stigma to what we call "disability." In both the Hebrew and Arabic versions, Moses' disability isn't a problem with him or with God, rather it is a problem created by the Egyptians' and Israelites' reactions. Fourth, both the Torah and Koran assure that God is always with people with disabilities in our struggles and successes. (Surah 26:14, Exodus 4:12) Finally, the God-ordained relationship between Moses and his brother Aaron demonstrates that God's intention is for people with and without disabilities to work together and to help each other. While Aaron did indeed help us brother articulate God's messages, Moses helped Aaron to remain strong in his faith and courageous in his leadership of the Israelites. (Exodus 32:21-35) [13]

While these interactions between God and Moses provide a spiritual model and resource for teachers, it is significant that this relationship is not one-sided. First, Moses asks for help, as students should be encouraged to do from the first day of class. (I put a paragraph for students with disabilities in all course syllabi and mention it during the orientation session.) Second, Moses doesn't ask to be healed; he does remind God that his disability appears to be ongoing. (Exodus 4:10) His doing so illustrates the need for students with disabilities (especially chronic or degenerative disabilities) to be assertive about reasonable accommodation with teachers, administrators, doctors, and even family members and friends sometimes. Finally, in both the Koran and the Torah, Moses continually expresses his frustration, fears, and self-doubts--even to God. Moses' courage to confess his struggles with his disability to his Creator points to the kinds of conversations we need to be free to have in the academy if teachers and students with disabilities are truly to be "reasonably accommodated," welcomed and supported.

[1] The Koran. Trans. N. J. Dawood. New York: Penguin, 1995, 220.

[2] Ibid., 258.

[3] Ibid., 274.

[4] The New Oxford Annotated Bible. 3rd ed. Michael Coogan, ed. Oxford: Oxford University, 2001, 87.

[5] Ibid., 88.

[6] Ibid.

[7] The Koran, 274.

[8] Ibid., 117, 346.

[9] Ibid., 31;23,294.

[10] Ibid., 77.

[11] Ibid., 230.

[12] Ibid., 100.

[13] The Bible, 130.

Heather Ann Ackley Bean, Ph.D. Azusa Pacific University, CA