【文章內(nèi)容簡(jiǎn)介】 nto transformation. so, again, transformation, adaptation, is ourgreatest human skill. and, perhaps, until we39。re tested, we don39。t know what we39。remade of. maybe that39。s what adversity gives us: a sense of self, a sense of ourown power. so, we can give ourselves a gift. we can reimagine adversity assomething more than just tough times. maybe we can see it as change. adversityis just change that we haven39。t adapted ourselves to yet.i think the greatest adversity that we39。ve created for ourselves is thisidea of normalcy. now, who39。s normal? there39。s no normal. there39。s mon, there39。stypical. there39。s no normal, and would you want to meet that poor, beige personif they e_isted? (laughter) i don39。t think so. if we can change this paradigmfrom one of achieving normalcy to one of possibility or potency, to be even alittle bit more dangerous we can release the power of so many more children,and invite them to engage their rare and valuable abilities with themunity.anthropologists tell us that the one thing we as humans have alwaysrequired of our munity members is to be of use, to be able to 39。s evidence that neanderthals, 60,000 years ago, carried their elderly andthose with serious physical injury, and perhaps it39。s because the life e_perienceof survival of these people proved of value to the munity. they didn39。t viewthese people as broken and useless。 they were seen as rare and valuable.a few years ago, i was in a food market in the town where i grew up in thatred zone in northeastern pennsylvania, and i was standing over a bushel oftomatoes. it was summertime: i had shorts on. i hear this guy, his voice behindme say, well, if it isn39。t aimee mullins. and i turn around, and it39。s thisolder man. i have no idea who he is.and i said, i39。m sorry, sir, have we met? i don39。t remember meetingyou.he said, well, you wouldn39。t remember meeting me. i mean, when we met i wasdelivering you from your mother39。s womb. (laughter) oh, that guy. and, but ofcourse, actually, it did click.this man was dr. kean, a man that i had only known about through mymother39。s stories of that day, because, of course, typical fashion, i arrivedlate for my birthday by two weeks. and so my mother39。s prenatal physician hadgone on vacation, so the man who delivered me was a plete stranger to myparents. and, because i was born without the fibula bones, and had feet turnedin, and a few toes in this foot and a few toes in that, he had to be the bearer this stranger had to be the bearer of bad news.he said to me, i had to give this prognosis to your parents that you wouldnever walk, and you would never have the kind of mobility that other kids haveor any kind of life of independence, and you39。ve been making liar out of me eversince. (laughter) (applause)the e_traordinary thing is that he said he had saved newspaper clippingsthroughout my whole childhood, whether winning a second grade spelling bee,marching with the girl scouts, you know, the halloween parade, winning mycollege scholarship, or any of my sports victories, and he was using it, andintegrating it into teaching resident students, med students from hahnemannmedical school and hershey medical school. and he called this part of the coursethe _ factor, the potential of the human will. no prognosis can account for howpowerful this could be as a determinant in the quality of someone39。s life. anddr. kean went on to tell me, he said, in my e_perience, unless repeatedly toldotherwise, and even if given a modicum of support, if left to their own devices,a child will achieve.see, dr. kean made that shift in thinking. he understood that there39。s adifference between the medical condition and what someone might do with it. andthere39。s been a shift in my thinking over time, in that, if you had asked me at15 years old, if i would have traded prosthetics for fleshandbone legs, iwouldn39。t have hesitated for a second. i aspired to that kind of normalcy backthen. but if you ask me today, i39。m not so sure. and it39。s because of thee_periences i39。ve had with them, not in spite of the e_periences i39。ve had withthem. and perhaps this shift in me has happened because i39。ve been e_posed tomore people who have opened doors for me than those who have put lids and castshadows on me.see, all you really need is one person to show you the epiphany of your ownpower, and you39。re off. if you can hand somebody the key to their own power the human spirit is so receptive if you can do that and open a door forsomeone at a crucial moment, you are educating them in the best sense. you39。reteaching them to open doors for themselves. in fact, the e_act meaning of theword educate es from the root word educe. it means to bring forth whatis within, to bring out potential. so again, which potential do we want tobring out?there was a case study done in 1960s britain, when they were moving fromgrammar schools to prehensive schools. it39。s called the streaming trials. wecall it tracking here in the states. it39。s separating students from a, b, c, dand so on. and the a students get the tougher curriculum, the best teachers,etc. well, they took, over a threemonth period, dlevel students, gave thema39。s, told them they were a39。s, told them they were bright, and at the end ofthis threemonth period, they were performing at alevel.and, of course, the heartbreaking, flip side of this study, is that theytook the a students and told them they were d39。s. and that39。s what happened atthe end of that threemonth period. those who were still around in school,besides the people who had dropped out. a crucial part of this case study wasthat the teachers were duped too. the teachers didn39。t know a switch had beenmade. they were simply told, these are the 39。astudents,39。 these are the39。dstudents.39。 and that39。s how they went about teaching them and treatingthem.so, i think that the only true disability is a crushed spirit, a spiritthat39。s been crushed doesn39。t have hope, it doesn39。t see beauty, it no