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in article , Scott Weiser at
wrote on 4/3/05 2:23 AM:

A Usenet persona calling itself KMAN wrote:

in article , Scott Weiser at
wrote on 4/1/05 11:23 PM:

A Usenet persona calling itself BCITORGB wrote:

Thanks to KMAN:
============
If I may, for many a person with a disability, "handicapped" is like
the
n-word to many a person with black skin. I realize no offense likely
intended frtzw906 :-)
=============

You're right, none intended.

As I was writing, I occasionally was about to write "disabled" but
wasn't sure if that was perhaps the taboo expression. In another
lifetime, I was in the public school system, and was more "aware". Now
I occasionally get caught using n-word equivalencies... Sorry!

It's not the "handicapped" that bothers me...people can be handicapped and I
don't subscribe to the pressure to use "politically correct" speech

It's not about being politically correct. My awakening on this issue comes
simply from listening to people with disabilities and understanding how the
rest of the world views them and how this impacts on the way they view
themselves. I don't know one person with a disability who wants to be
labelled as handicapped. Of course, they would prefer not to have any label
at all. But there are times when it is pragmatically necessary, in which
case, whatever the label, understanding that it is "a person with a
disability" not a "disabled person" makes a huge difference.

It's semantic politically-correct pettifoggery. Disabled people are
disabled.

No, they are people.

It's just a fact of life. They are handicapped. They have a
"disadvantage that makes achievement unusually difficult." It's only a
pejorative term if one uses it in a pejorative context. Otherwise it's
simply a statement of fact couched in a way that is, if anything, supportive
of their disadvantage and it recognizes the fundamental strength of
character that's implicit in their successes.

If they find it important that you don't speak about them as though the
disability IS their identity, rather than a part of who they are, why
deliberately go out of your way? A person with a disability is just that - a
person with a disability. They are not a "disabled person" like some car
than won't run.

Unless one is using it in a pejorative context, saying "That man is black"
or "That woman is Asian" or "That child is Indian" or "That person is
handicapped" is simply a statement of observed reality and ought not be
cause for all this histrionic gum-flapping.

The term "handicapped" is offensive to most people with disabilities, when
you say "person with a handicap" or "handicapped person." Why do out of your
way to use a term that you know offends, when there is no reason you have to
use it?

Engaging in politically corrrect sophistry doesn't help anybody, it just
masks the *real* problem, which is that many people consider the handicapped
(or disabled, or "person with a disability") as somehow inferior to others.

It's not about being politically correct. Language used around people with
disabilities and the way people with disabilities are treated/viewed are not
two phenomena that develop in isolation.

That's not the case. They are not inferior, they are not superior, they are
equal in every way but one: they have a disadvantage that makes achievement
unusually difficult. Lots of people have such disadvantages. Blacks.
Indians. The poor. So what? Big deal. Denying that they are disadvantaged
doesn't help them overcome the disadvantage and help them towards
achievement

I agree with all of the above.

it merely silences the debate because people are too afraid of
being politically incorrect to take ownership of the problems the
disabled/handicapped face in life that each person can help to resolve.

I disagree here. Affording someone the simple respect of acknowledging that
they are first and foremost a person, and using terminologies that do not
offend them, does not silence anyone.

Getting all het-up about calling someone "handicapped" is just a way of
avoiding the issue entirely.

Only in the same way that getting het-up about calling someone a "******" is
just a way of avoiding the issue entirely.

Your position on this makes no sense.

It makes it easy to say "hey, he's not
handicapped and he doesn't need my help" and go on about your life with nary
a thought to how you could ease the burden.

All I've said is that if there is a need to refer to the fact that someone
has a disability, the most respectful way to do so is to say that the are "a
person with a disability" not a "disabled person" and not "handicapped"
since that is a term that is as offensive to a person with a disability as
"******" is to a person who is black.

It also allows people to ignore the issues entirely by claiming that they
don't want to be seen as being insensitive or discriminatory by noticing
someone's disability, so they just *ignore the person entirely.*

Using respectful language has nothing to do with what you are talking about.

What you are talking about here is, however, quite interesting, and if it
were not being spoken in the context of justification for deliberately using
disrespectful language, would be a basis for an important discussion.

If you don't think this is the case, spend a week in a wheelchair sometime.
You become positively invisible.

I have some significant insight into what people with disabilities
experience.

Sorry, but I believe in telling it like it is and facing things directly,
not finding semantic refuges and dodges that allow me to avoid the issues.

Sorry, that's not what I am advocating.

I'm telling you that there are ways of being more respectful to a person
with a disability. That has nothing to do with avoiding issues. You don't
have to call someone who is black a ****** in order to directly face the
issues concerning them.

what
offended me is the compartmentalizing of the handicapped child as a debit to
the system and your presumption that this debit ought to be leveled out by
abusing her sister out of egalitarian zeal.

As to the anecdote in question, you can't begin to imagine how the
hypocrisy of those parents ****ed me off.

There's nothing in the least bit hypocritical about what they did. Their
handicapped child is entitled to a public school education, according to
your own vociferous arguments, and the parents are perfectly entitled to
exercise that right. Her sister, however, is fortunate enough to get a
better, private education at her parents expense, who, by the way are *still
paying for her public school educational right!* Thus, while the bright
sister's private education reduces the burden on the public school system,
thus freeing up resources for other students, her parents are now, in
effect, paying DOUBLE for the handicapped sister's education. What on earth
is your complaint? It's not only no skin off your nose, it's actually
beneficial to the school system as a whole.

Your complaint sounds remarkably like sour grapes to me.

Or you are being incredibly naïve and/or disingenuous.

The outcome of this will be the erosion of funds for the public school
system because support for paying the taxes to sustain public schools will
plummet.

Only if you let it happen. And if it does, what does that tell you about the
value of a public school education?

It tells you that people are selfish.

Moreover, it won't happen because if it was going to happen, it would have
*already happened.* But it's not happening, is it? People still pay taxes
for public schools, and many of them put their kids in private schools
anyway. No big disaster looming. Never has been.

Will be. If you make public school education the sole domain of the poor and
people with disabilities.

The further outcome will be schools that are comprised entirely of the poor
and people with disabilities.

So what? So long as they are receiving a top-notch education funded by the
public

They won't be.

which can afford to provide far more resources to each public school
child than they could before, when children who had the means to get a
private education were forced into the public system, thus clogging it up,
who cares? Think of it as a way of providing much better, specialized
education for those students.

It won't happen. There will be less and less money. It will become like your
plan for health care for the poor...unless a charity provides it, there
won't be any.

And for them to malign the
public system as they were in the process of diminishing it!

How did they "malign" the system? By wishing to give their gifted daughter
an education commensurate with her abilities? By exercising their
handicapped daughter's fundamental right to a public school education while
paying double what you pay for your child? Please enlighten us as to how
they "maligned" the system.

It stills
makes my blood boil! If I were king for a day, private schools would be
on the chopping block.

Why? Because YOU can't afford one for your own kids? You would bind gifted
children, or even ordinary children lucky enough to have wealthy parents to
academic slavery merely in order to assuage your own guilt and anger over
not being able to provide a premium education for your own children?

You are leaping to the faulty conclusion that a publicly funded school is
incapable of serving giften children appropriately.

It's hardly a faulty conclusion. Every study ever done shows that private
school educations are far superior, particularly when it comes to
individualized instruction for the gifted, than public schools.

Whoops, you are getting a bit mixed up.

Those studies don't claim that a publicly funded school is incapable of
serving gifted children appropriately, they claim that they simply aren't
doing so. Obviously, they could, with the right approach and the right
resources.

It's a simple fact that public schools, by their nature, have to provide a
uniform curriculum to every student because there is always insufficient
money, resources and teachers to provide individualized instruction for
gifted students.

So provide what is needed.

Even in the best public systems, which provide special
"charter schools" and special schools for the gifted, the quality of
education is far inferior to a private school education targeted at an
individual student.

And the more public schools become the sole domain of the poor and people
with disabilities, the worse and worse the schools will get, since they will
get less and less resources and less and less funding.