Price reclaims "mad" and "crazy" not as insults but as rhetorical indicators that expose discrimination. Her goal is to apply Disability Studies (DS) theory to transform "thinking about thinking in the classroom"—reframing how academia understands cognitive difference. She gets inside the heads of the anxious, the shy, and the awkward, treating neurodiversity as a critical resource for higher education rather than deviancy to be eliminated. Moving beyond familiar diagnoses like Autism or ADD, Price analyzes cognitive disabilities we cannot yet name, opening new directions for understanding diverse minds in academic spaces.

Transforming How We Understand Academic Thinking

The great myth about mental disability claims that the "mad" are inherently violent—and school shootings represent its fearsome consequence. Tragedies like Virginia Tech and NIU have created paranoia around any mental diversity in the classroom, turning difference into threat. Price overturns the idea that shooters are incomprehensible "monsters," offering a counter-narrative to society's refusal to understand different minds. She argues that "the refusal to understand school shooters trickles down as a justification to avoid the shy lab partner or the unfriendly colleague, to stay out of the way of anyone whose mind seems remotely different." This violence myth becomes the justification for excluding all neurodivergent people from academic spaces.

The Great Myth About Mental Disability

- Transforming How We Understand Academic Thinking
- The Great Myth

State University of New York at Binghamton

Higher education discriminates against mental disability, with a vested interest in removing people with academic disabilities from academia. This stems from the myth that people with divergent thinking are dangerous, resulting in strict standards of acceptable personality. The equation of medical and academic standards leads teachers to pathologize student personalities in the classroom, creating a secret population of neurodivergent minds who use "lore"—leveraging amusement at difference to mitigate distrust. Price applies Disability Studies (DS) to transform this dynamic.

Mad At School: Foreword (by Tobin Siebers)

Price, Margaret. 2011b. Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Reference for: Mad At School by Margaret Price

Price's Purpose and Core Claim

- Academic Standards as Medical Judgements
- The Consequences of Academic Standards for Personality

The "Stunning Revelation": Standards and Consequences

Academia employs fictional personas as "lore" to mask its distrust of neurodivergent minds. Students and faculty are categorized into familiar stereotypes: the "eccentric teacher," the "absent-minded professor," or the "clueless undergraduate." These labels allow institutions to find difference amusing rather than threatening. However, this tolerance is conditional—once these disabled minds cease to entertain or cross boundaries of acceptability, they are swiftly dismissed from academic spaces.

Learn Before

Related

Learn After