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, 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.

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?

How unbelievably arrogant. How astonishingly selfish and petty.

[I might be persuaded that "choice" in education
*might* be a good thing through some sort of voucher system so long as
-- ditto the medicare program -- nobody could spend more than the
voucher amount. I'd have to think this one through.]

I think you ought to examine your motives first.

--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser