Being Special By Faith Brueggeman
As a person goes from one environment to the next they may notice that the way people act towards them differs. For example, the way an employee at the local grocery store treats its customer can be significantly different than how a fellow peer at a high school treats another. Though no one can put an answer on the specific reason why people’s attitudes change, there is a definite difference. Through personal experience I have seen that students at school are a lot harsher and more opinionated than those outside of school.
These opinions can be found about the school lunch, the dress code, and the people in our school, specifically the intelligence of the students around us. Everyone can pick out the honor roll student, and the slacker, but in a completely different group are the mentally handicapped students. Pupils have many different opinions on the presence of the mentally handicapped in our high school. In personal experience I have had a few classes with mentally retarded students. In my art class there was an autistic boy named Aaron. Anyone can tell he is disabled. He seems to make random noises and scrunches up his face and arms, sometimes punches the air. These are of course not common in non-mentally retarded. When Aaron does this, people laugh. I wish they wouldn’t because it’s not like he can help it. But I acknowledge the fact that he is a talented artist and a nice and fun guy. It may be hard to admit it, but our opinions affect the way we treat the people around us. The only thing we can do is be open minded and not let our opinion override our sense of decency. A sense of misunderstanding can be found in every situation.
During the course of the school day I interviewed three students. The first person I interviewed said that the word “retard” is a derogatory term to make people feel inferior. Another opinion from the second interviewee is that the word is a name tossed around a lot. And finally, my third interviewee said that retard means special. In everyday life Ariann Baker believes that people say “that’s retarded” and have replaced the word stupid. Jenna Loos also agrees. Another opinion is that students think too fast before they talk, and think spontaneously and it just sticks. When talking about their experiences with the disabled, Ariann’s second cousin and mom’s best friends children are mentally disabled. Ariann states that the mother of the children found out that one of the children was autistic but didn’t test the second. She says she didn’t test the second because although she loves the child, she couldn’t deal with two autistic children. Jenna’s sister has special needs. Her cousin also has disabilities. She says that having experience with the disabled changes how she looks at things and how she treats people. She also says that it gives her a better perspective on life. Brady is in Mr. Miller’s advisory and he spends most of his time with the disabled; he decorated cookies with them and enjoyed the experience immensely. Finally, when referring to the use of derogatory terms targeting them in particular, Ariann states that she’s never been called retarded, but she has been called several derogatory terms referring to her sexuality. Jenna and Brady both say that they have been called retarded, but it has always been in a joking matter and never serious. Brady says that students use the word retarded very loosely and often.
When having a casual conversation with friend Molly Johansen, she told me how another student became enraged with seeing the word retarded used in a medical way. He says that you cannot justify the use of a word one way and put down a different use for it. Though this is just an opinion it shows the variety of opinions in our school. It shows the modern day opinion of today’s teenager. This is a closed minded view and he should think about all the other words that have different meanings but there are a wrong and right way to use them.
In society today, there are those more cruel opinions on the mentally handicapped. Even though they may not admit it, a majority of the school uses the word “retard” in their everyday vocabulary. Dictionary.com defines a retard to be: to make slow; delay the development or progress of (an action, process, etc.); hinder or impede. When searching retardation on Webmd.com, it brings up syndromes such as Megalocornea Mental Retardation Syndrome and Down syndrome. Nowhere in there do they say that retardation is related to a person doing something dumb or stupid. Students may say using that word to describe someone’s stupidity doesn’t hurt anyone if there isn’t a mentally retarded person around, but honestly, it does. In my opinion when a person uses that word they appear to be unintelligent and cannot find a better and less offensive way to express how they feel. At our school for a small time the Best Buddies program tried to make it evident that the word “retard” hurts them and is over misused and abused. As a reaction to this people either tried to watch the words they were saying or made up a more arrogant way to say it. The word “tard” or “re re” has replaced this already growing derogatory term. It personally makes me upset and frustrated because it seems these negative words have become a popular and everyday use. Other derogatory terms can be found in our high school such as “feg” to replace fag, which is used multiple times by several people and just plain old “fag”. The overuse of such mean words upset me, and I wish people would realize what a negative affect these words have on our environment. The fact that the “popular” and well-known kids in our school have popularized the use of these words is reflecting upon how our students are grown up and the negative environment future students are put into. These words will soon pass through society as okay and acceptable behavior. Even in personal experience, I’ve heard parents, grown adults with hopefully a thorough education, using these words along with their kids. Whether they want to look cool to their kids or they’ve just grown up that way is irrelevant. The use of these terms is unacceptable and should be stopped. If we don’t stop the use of them now, the future will wind down into this unintelligent ball of stupidity and future Americans will not see a smart and accepting world they will see a foul mouthed and unkind world.
On the more uplifting and promising side, there are people like myself who believe the use of these words has a horrendous and negative impact on our society and aim to stop this. One organization trying to stop the use of these words is Best Buddies. At Waukee High School, Best Buddies is a club where students can go and be paired with a disabled student to help them do sports and other everyday activities. They are striving to get the word “retard” out of high schooler’s vocabulary. People don’t always take it seriously, but I appreciate their efforts. I wish that more people would step up and make more students aware of the misuse and abuse of the word. According to americanchronicle.com, March was declared Mental Retardation Awareness Month. In Virginia they even had billboards urging the public to focus on abilities such as a billboard showing a mentally retarded woman working at Cox Communications, showing that even though she’s disabled she can still be apart of everyday society. In Southeastern Virginia, the CSS converted a warehouse in a poverty zone into a laundry occupational center for people with the most severe developmental disabilities. The center is down the street from a homeless shelter, and the homeless work as work-mentors for people with mental retardation. This work helps the developmentally disabled feel more like a human being and less like a sore thumb. This shows the bright side of mental disabilities through people stepping up to raise awareness and help the disabled. As a part of awareness for disabilities there is the website thearc.org. This website has an abundance of facts, news, blogs, and programs and events all striving towards the bettering of life for the disabled. Both of these sites prove that out there, there are people who are helping and advocating mentally disabilities and the disabled themselves.
As a person goes from one environment to the next they may notice that the way people act towards them differs. For example, the way an employee at the local grocery store treats its customer can be significantly different than how a fellow peer at a high school treats another. Though no one can put an answer on the specific reason why people’s attitudes change, there is a definite difference. Through personal experience I have seen that students at school are a lot harsher and more opinionated than those outside of school.
These opinions can be found about the school lunch, the dress code, and the people in our school, specifically the intelligence of the students around us. Everyone can pick out the honor roll student, and the slacker, but in a completely different group are the mentally handicapped students. Pupils have many different opinions on the presence of the mentally handicapped in our high school. In personal experience I have had a few classes with mentally retarded students. In my art class there was an autistic boy named Aaron. Anyone can tell he is disabled. He seems to make random noises and scrunches up his face and arms, sometimes punches the air. These are of course not common in non-mentally retarded. When Aaron does this, people laugh. I wish they wouldn’t because it’s not like he can help it. But I acknowledge the fact that he is a talented artist and a nice and fun guy. It may be hard to admit it, but our opinions affect the way we treat the people around us. The only thing we can do is be open minded and not let our opinion override our sense of decency. A sense of misunderstanding can be found in every situation.
During the course of the school day I interviewed three students. The first person I interviewed said that the word “retard” is a derogatory term to make people feel inferior. Another opinion from the second interviewee is that the word is a name tossed around a lot. And finally, my third interviewee said that retard means special. In everyday life Ariann Baker believes that people say “that’s retarded” and have replaced the word stupid. Jenna Loos also agrees. Another opinion is that students think too fast before they talk, and think spontaneously and it just sticks. When talking about their experiences with the disabled, Ariann’s second cousin and mom’s best friends children are mentally disabled. Ariann states that the mother of the children found out that one of the children was autistic but didn’t test the second. She says she didn’t test the second because although she loves the child, she couldn’t deal with two autistic children. Jenna’s sister has special needs. Her cousin also has disabilities. She says that having experience with the disabled changes how she looks at things and how she treats people. She also says that it gives her a better perspective on life. Brady is in Mr. Miller’s advisory and he spends most of his time with the disabled; he decorated cookies with them and enjoyed the experience immensely. Finally, when referring to the use of derogatory terms targeting them in particular, Ariann states that she’s never been called retarded, but she has been called several derogatory terms referring to her sexuality. Jenna and Brady both say that they have been called retarded, but it has always been in a joking matter and never serious. Brady says that students use the word retarded very loosely and often.
When having a casual conversation with friend Molly Johansen, she told me how another student became enraged with seeing the word retarded used in a medical way. He says that you cannot justify the use of a word one way and put down a different use for it. Though this is just an opinion it shows the variety of opinions in our school. It shows the modern day opinion of today’s teenager. This is a closed minded view and he should think about all the other words that have different meanings but there are a wrong and right way to use them.
In society today, there are those more cruel opinions on the mentally handicapped. Even though they may not admit it, a majority of the school uses the word “retard” in their everyday vocabulary. Dictionary.com defines a retard to be: to make slow; delay the development or progress of (an action, process, etc.); hinder or impede. When searching retardation on Webmd.com, it brings up syndromes such as Megalocornea Mental Retardation Syndrome and Down syndrome. Nowhere in there do they say that retardation is related to a person doing something dumb or stupid. Students may say using that word to describe someone’s stupidity doesn’t hurt anyone if there isn’t a mentally retarded person around, but honestly, it does. In my opinion when a person uses that word they appear to be unintelligent and cannot find a better and less offensive way to express how they feel. At our school for a small time the Best Buddies program tried to make it evident that the word “retard” hurts them and is over misused and abused. As a reaction to this people either tried to watch the words they were saying or made up a more arrogant way to say it. The word “tard” or “re re” has replaced this already growing derogatory term. It personally makes me upset and frustrated because it seems these negative words have become a popular and everyday use. Other derogatory terms can be found in our high school such as “feg” to replace fag, which is used multiple times by several people and just plain old “fag”. The overuse of such mean words upset me, and I wish people would realize what a negative affect these words have on our environment. The fact that the “popular” and well-known kids in our school have popularized the use of these words is reflecting upon how our students are grown up and the negative environment future students are put into. These words will soon pass through society as okay and acceptable behavior. Even in personal experience, I’ve heard parents, grown adults with hopefully a thorough education, using these words along with their kids. Whether they want to look cool to their kids or they’ve just grown up that way is irrelevant. The use of these terms is unacceptable and should be stopped. If we don’t stop the use of them now, the future will wind down into this unintelligent ball of stupidity and future Americans will not see a smart and accepting world they will see a foul mouthed and unkind world.
On the more uplifting and promising side, there are people like myself who believe the use of these words has a horrendous and negative impact on our society and aim to stop this. One organization trying to stop the use of these words is Best Buddies. At Waukee High School, Best Buddies is a club where students can go and be paired with a disabled student to help them do sports and other everyday activities. They are striving to get the word “retard” out of high schooler’s vocabulary. People don’t always take it seriously, but I appreciate their efforts. I wish that more people would step up and make more students aware of the misuse and abuse of the word. According to americanchronicle.com, March was declared Mental Retardation Awareness Month. In Virginia they even had billboards urging the public to focus on abilities such as a billboard showing a mentally retarded woman working at Cox Communications, showing that even though she’s disabled she can still be apart of everyday society. In Southeastern Virginia, the CSS converted a warehouse in a poverty zone into a laundry occupational center for people with the most severe developmental disabilities. The center is down the street from a homeless shelter, and the homeless work as work-mentors for people with mental retardation. This work helps the developmentally disabled feel more like a human being and less like a sore thumb. This shows the bright side of mental disabilities through people stepping up to raise awareness and help the disabled. As a part of awareness for disabilities there is the website thearc.org. This website has an abundance of facts, news, blogs, and programs and events all striving towards the bettering of life for the disabled. Both of these sites prove that out there, there are people who are helping and advocating mentally disabilities and the disabled themselves.