Able-Mindedness
Able-mindedness is something a lot of people should be discussing. What is able-mindedness though? It is “a socially determined label of mental ability that broadly emcompasses a wide range of concepts such as rationality, intelligence, social awareness, self-control, and more,” according to Schalk (63). In other words, society labels who is able and who isn’t able due to how much they are able to function in society. If you are able to control yourself and be aware as well as rational, you are able-minded. Able-mindedness is different from ableism. Ableism is when you basically discriminate those who are disabled just because you are able to do things they cannot. This is different from able-mindedness because it is not socially constructed based on mental ability.
So why should able-mindedness be discussed? First of all, before reading Schalk, I had no idea that able-mindedness was a thing. This is important because that means basically everyone in “basic” society has no idea what able-mindedness is. I say this because I am a college student in my junior year with a disability studying Gender and Women’s Studies. I should already know about able-mindedness at this point, but I did not. So what does that mean for the rest of society, especially those who are not educated?
Another reason able-mindedness should be discussed more is because it is creating the future for ourselves. Like I said before, able-mindedness is socially constructed. This means that society is creating this picture of who is able and who isn’t. If society isn’t aware of what they are doing by showing that people who act irrational, who aren’t “smart”, or can’t control themselves are “disabled” when they are actually able, then there is no hope for society because at this point everyone would be labeled disabled when that simply is not true. That means those who are truly disabled will not get the help that they need because of this fact. Therefore, those who are disabled would be in the majority.
Able-mindedness needs to be discussed, people. Start thinking about it.