For the past seven months I have worked with the Disabled Students Services program on my college campus. I work in a guidance lab for students with disabilities, helping out with tutoring, appointment scheduling, and system management. Something I have come to deplore, not only through my work, but in other areas as well, is the use of the word disabled, and the treatment of those labeled similarly.
To me, "disabled" has a negative connotation. Dis- is a latin root that means "apart from" or "having a negative or reversing force." In context here, that means that disabled people are "apart from" or the polar reverse of so-called "abled" people.
I can't stand that.
Just because a person's brain developed in ways different from what is considered "normal" does not mean that they are any less capable of functioning as you or I can. For example, I have tutored people with learning disabilities that, according to the books, should make them slower learners, less apt to pick up on complex ideas. But many of these folks are breezing through their courses with much more success than someone who is supposedly normal. People have always been against things that they cannot understand, and brain anomalies is one of the areas that humans are woefully inept at understanding. We don't even know everything about the functions of the "abled" brain, so how can we presume to classify disabled people based on their brain activity?
Just as we should stop physical discrimination (based on ethnicity, weight, sex appeal...) we also have to stop the discrimination against those people that are considered, by our society, to be less able to function. People that are supposedly disabled have come through my work's program and left with a Bachelor's degree, while other students, who have lived as an "abled" person all their life, come in and test positive for certain learning disabilities. The incongruities just don't fly with me. It's time to stop this foolish prejudice (as all are) and start accepting people as people, not as their disability.
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I would agree with you that disabled is the wrong word. Autistics are usually better at math because their brain is wired differently. They are however "disabled" in other areas.
Your example that many"disabled" breeze through their courses more easily than other people, may have to do with the fact that they probably value the courses more. They also know that they have to work harder generally develop better study habits than the people who never had to study. if the students who never studied, have to study for their classes now, they struggle, because many of them do not know how to study. Because of their learning disabilities, some students may understand some ideas better, but I suspect that a larger part is taht they know how to prepare themselves better than the average student
That is a really good point. People who are born with that different wiring have to learn how to get by in an environment that might normally be harder for them. I hadn't really thought of it in that context, and it makes a lot of sense. I wasn't saying that it is this way for all disabled students, just that there are many times where people link disabilities with inferiority. Thanks for your input, it brings up another good perspective.