One Size Fits None
I was struck by Simon Lewsen’s article “The Accommodation Problem” (September/October). Are universities enabling students to avoid the essential challenges of learning, or are universities finally adapting to inclusive learning? As a high school teacher, I see this struggle as being the result of students carrying high school accommodations into higher education. A number of high schools in Canada follow Universal Design for Learning principles. But since provinces—Ontario, most recently—started “de-streaming” courses, eliminating the distinction between applied and academic streams, there’s a greater diversity of abilities and learning styles in our overstuffed classrooms. We don’t always have the time, training, or resources to tailor individual accommodations to every single student on every single assessment, so we look for universal strategies, like removing deadlines altogether or creating rubrics that don’t penalize spelling and grammar errors. Given this reality in high schools, it’s no wonder students are arriving at universities expecting extensive accommodations.
Anonymous
Toronto, ON
I’ve been a post-secondary educator for eight years. As a result, I have some sympathy for heavily underpaid sessional instructors, even when their classroom policies present hardships for disabled or neurodivergent students—a situation Lewsen describes in his cover story on university accommodations. What I object to is not so much the article itself but its framing on the cover, which depicts students presenting their diagnoses to an overwhelmed professor. University is intense all around, but if we wanted to find the most “coddled” students, we’d look for those who’ve had a disproportionately easy time. That’s not the disabled or neurodivergent students. There are currently too many reasons why disabled people feel they have no choice but to drop out. As usual, accusations of academic “coddling” help no one, solve no problems, and scorn the already marginalized.
Marisa Brook
Halifax, NS
It’s Just a Phage
As an undergraduate student at Queen’s University with a particular research interest in antibiotic resistance, I found Monica Kidd’s evaluation of antibiotic resistance and bacterio-phage therapy in “The Resistance Is Coming” (May) to be insightful and well communicated. Given the presentation of bacteriophages as a potential solution to widespread antibiotic resistance, I am curious as to the author’s thoughts on bacterial resistance to the phages themselves. I’ve read that bacteria can develop mutations that stop phages from entering their cells. If this happens in a bacterial population treated with phages, the bacteria could become resistant, similar to how they develop resistance to antibiotics. As promising as phage therapy seems to be for treating drug-resistant bacteria, I wonder if, like antibiotics, it is just a temporary fix.
Ronin Offman
Richmond Hill, ON
