Euphemisms Spread Stigma - Study on "Special Needs"

@LaurieBerkner we should talk someday about "special needs" vs "disabled." :) Though I admit most parents like the former.

— David M. Perry (@Lollardfish) February 14, 2017

My son's love of music is known across the multi-verse, specifically Hamilton and the band Flogging Molly (though yesterday he chose and danced to Alan Jackson's, "5:00 somewhere").  But before those were his favorites, he spent years delighted by the music of Laurie Berkner. She's on twitter, sometimes we briefly exchange a few words, and I saw her calling for "special needs" kids for a video the other day, leading to this.

@LaurieBerkner we should talk someday about "special needs" vs "disabled." :) Though I admit most parents like the former.

— David M. Perry (@Lollardfish) February 14, 2017

This was on my mind as I read about a new study by Morton Ann Gernsbacher (et al.) on:
“Special needs” is an ineffective euphemism (open access link to the full article). The article takes a long-held assessment by activists and scholars alike that "special" isn't helpful, despite its popularity, and tries to form a quantitative analysis.

In a blog post on the study, Gernsbacher writes:

In addition to its negative connotations, we argued special needs is imprecise; it can refer to groups as unrelated as minority and bi-racial children in the realm of child adoption; middle-age adults and persons without personal transportation in the realm of disaster preparedness; and pregnant women and people with nut allergies in the realm of airline travel).

Special needs also connotes segregation. Most special programs (e.g., Special Olympics and special education) segregate persons with disabilities from persons without disabilities. Special needs also implies special rights. In our research article, we pointed to an OpEd in The Chronicle of Higher Education that misconstrues legally mandated disability rights as special rights, as well as similar misconstruals observed in common vernacular.

We concluded that special needs has become a dysphemism, similar to lame (e.g., a lame idea), crippled, blind (e.g., blind to evidence), and deaf (e.g., deaf to reason). Our research did not explore whether non-disabled people’s use of special needs is intentional (although some instances clearly imply negative intentionality). Perhaps, as Simi Linton suggests, non-disabled people’s ambivalence about disability rather than sharp repulsion underlies their use of the term special needs. Regardless of speakers’ and writers’ motivation, our research recommends not using the euphemism special needs and instead using the non-euphemized term disability.

So: People associate it with negative things, it's imprecise, it connotes segregation, and it's used as an insult.

The Disabled Child Body as Object

A teacher in this video knocks a child with "special needs" over with her knee, because he was pausing at the door to the classroom and she wanted him to get inside. It was probably an accident, she just wanted to prod him along. When he gets up, she talks above his head to the adult in the room as she keeps pushing the child in the back.

She's resigned and been arrested. Video at the link. It's distressing in its casual violence, but not graphic.

The child's body here is just treated like an object. He's a non person.

I have become a pro-surveillance partisan in "special education" classrooms. I just can't see any other way to stop the abuse.

Good tweet here:

1) Kid appears used to abuse. 2) Teacher seems unconcerned that she might be observed, poss. by teacher in class. https://t.co/79HQpk4nMo

— Elizabeth Picciuto (@epicciuto) March 25, 2016

#SayTheWord

There's a new hashtag campaign around saying the word "disability." It is initiated and led by my friend and writing companion Lawrence Carter-Long. I am wildly in favor. I am trying, in my writing this year, to write the sentence: "There are no special needs, only needs" as often as possible.

We all have needs. Needs vary. Needs require different kinds of resources to meet. We all have needs.

Here's a great recent post from "E is for Erin" on the tag.

There’s a social media campaign going on right now to #SayTheWord – it was started by Lawrence Carter-Long, the Public Affairs Manager for the National Council on Disability, and is an active Twitter hashtag. The word, of course, is disabled.The importance of this campaign is driven home to me over and over again as I see people performing ludicrous and painful contortions to avoid saying it. Reminder that when I make a criticism the way well-meaning people interact with disability, I am not attacking the people (parenthetical reminder that I was immersed in ableism myself not long ago), but inviting people to think about things in a different way.
Instead of saying disabled, nice people say things like:

• differently abled
• handicapable (yes, really)
• physically/mentally challenged
• special needs

It’s that last one, special needs, that I really want to take aim at, because I believe that seemingly innocuous phrase does serious damage to disability rights.

It's an excellent post. I also quite like, for those not already familiar, Lydia Brown on "identity first language" and Lisa Egan on "I am a disabled person."

Update: Brown (in a comment that isn't showing up. Thanks Blogger!) says: See also, my post on differently-abled as a term: http://www.autistichoya.com/2013/08/differently-abled.html 

A Boy and a Pool Noodle - Discipline and Special Needs

A few days ago over on my Facebook page I shared the story of the school district that took away a blind child's cane and replaced it with a "pool noodle." The cane technically belongs to the school district, and when the bus attendant reported that he was waving it in the air and potentially hitting someone with it, they confiscated it. Instead, they gave him a nerf pool noodle to replace it.

The school has apologized and reversed its decision. Here's a good blog post on the story, with these vital points:

To me, this isn’t the issue. Dakota is still a young boy. It’s entirely possible that on occasion, he’s used his cane in questionable ways. It’s also possible he’s still learning how to control his cane, and not accidentally bump it into people or trip them up. The point to me is that the school should have a more thoughtful set of guidelines and procedures for how to deal with Dakota if he should misbehave, as most 8-year-olds misbehave from time to time. And a central tenet of any disciplinary plan should be to never take away an assistive device a child depends on for independence and mobility. This would apply to canes, crutches, a speech device, a wheelchair, or any other equipment that helps them with their particular disability.

I've been troubled by how many people I've seen on social media saying: "Well the kid acted up, of course the school had to take away his stick!" That is the wrong attitude. Below, I'll offer some thoughts about why.

Here are my thoughts.

1. A cane for someone with vision impairment is a specific piece of assistive technology, designed to give maximum tactile input to the user. It is not just a stick.
2. The school and parents have not reported on the precise incident, but the boy's parents say it was likely just a misunderstanding. That he lifted his cane in the air and the bus attendant decided it meant he was trying to hit someone.
3. I am a critic of zero tolerance policies and I see them as a component of the #cultofcompliance. Schools have decided, as a reaction to the fear of violent incidents on their grounds, that ANY sign of violence, especially weapon-driven violence, must be met with the maximum disciplinary response (students suspended for: drawing a gun, having a picture with a gun, pointing his finger at another child).
4. While zero tolerance can apply to anyone, it is not meted out equally (studied on black preschoolers suspended for fighting). The question is how do the discipline imposing forces interpret typical kid behavior, which includes real fighting, pretend fighting, fake weapon art and weapon play, and so forth. This kind of prejudicial interpretation also applies to kids with special needs.
5. When kids with special needs act in unpredictable ways, too many authority figures panic. Whereas a typical child would likely get verbal discipline and verbal interventions, there's a presumed communicative wall making it harder for the usual interventions to work. Moreover, when dealing with assistive technology, there's a tangible thing you can take away. No teacher would stitch up a child's eyes. No teacher would duct tape over a child's mouth, and yet my son's "voice," his communication device, could be taken from him. I've heard from parents of older kids who wouldn't stop talking with their device, who had their device removed. That is simply not acceptable practice. Can you imagine a child in a wheelchair who won't sit still being dumped on the ground? Yes, they'd sit still, but it's a failure and it's abuse. Taking away this child's cane is abuse. 
6. I blogged the other day about two 6-year-olds placed in restraints due to behavior issues. I acknowledged that misbehavior can be complicated. Oppositional defiant disorder can be tough (although a neuroscientists I know argued that it's often mis-diagnosed autism, but that's a different subject). Sometimes, you're going to need an intervention. Here's my mantra though - any intervention, accommodation, or response to special needs that ends up with handcuffs on a six year old is a failed intervention. The same can be said of any intervention that ends up denying access to an assistive technology device.

Here's my core question. I'm glad the school district gave back the cane, but have they actually learned anything? Next time a child with special needs requires an intervention, will they change their procedures?

And speaking of learning, the root for the word discipline comes from the Latin for teaching or instruction. So what does Dakota learn? He learns that by lifting his cane in the are, acting out in any way, authority will remove his means of navigating the world independently.

That's exactly the opposite of the lesson we want to teach.