Walking backwards to undo prejudice: Report from the U.S. Capitol Conference including students with disabilities

Life is full of surprises, but none so surprising as the achievement of human potential. The building of the great cathedrals and the vision of the minds that led to them; the writings, backwards, by Leonardo Da Vinci, the beauty of the music from the human voice; all challenge our predisposed sense of reality, our myths about ordinary life as it is supposed to be. Gifts and talents, once demonstrated to society as whole are taken for granted, but what are they really like in their social context?What is it like to live with them? To live among people so unusual that things mundane to them are the stuff of other people's great dreams? And what of the people around them, to whom they express those dreams? "There is a fine line of difference between sanity and insanity," said George Carlin in his classic comedy routine, Class Clown, "AND I HAVE ERASED IT."