Reply to Tell me more about the School Board election process

Forum Index » Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)

Reply to "Tell me more about the School Board election process"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Okay, Davis isn’t a reasonable person. Just saw her nutso public comments at the board meeting.[/quote]

Anyone who uses the offensive term "special needs" is not getting my vote.[/quote]

Yes, we have gone full circle and are now back to disabled.  That will certainly make a child with special needs feel better about themselves.  [/quote]
Not every child with special needs is necessarily disabled. [/quote]

Is “special needs” offensive?[/quote]

Yes. Nearly everyone in the disability community opposes the use of that term as it just stigmatizes the word disability. I don't say that people using the term "special needs" have malicious intent, but if a school board candidate claims to be fighting for students with disabilities, they should at least learn the correct terminology.[/quote]

How are you able to speak for "nearly everyone" in the disability community?[/quote]

All of the disability rights organizations oppose using that term.[/quote]

Hmmm.

Political advocates often don't reflect their actual constituents.  If you speak with parents, most use the term "special needs" rather than "disability community"

"Disability community" sounds very limiting and negative, in my humble opinion, compared to "special needs".

But honestly, the term used matters far less than the kindness and understanding, or in the case of fcps, the neglect of that community over pandemic.  Trying to make things political by nitpicking over terminology is far worse than someone using last month's preferred terminology. [/quote]

I'm a parent of three kids with disabilities and disabled myself. While many parents may use the term "special needs," their kids generally don't use the term once they become old enough to advocate for themselves. I don't say this to offend anyone, but many parents still hold some kind of stigma when talking about disabilities, even if their own kids are disabled, so while they have the best intentions, they use phrases like "special needs" to avoid stigmatized terms like disability. But disability shouldn't be a word that we're afraid to say.
[/quote]

Thanks for the context, but what happened here was someone trying to cancel a well-intentioned SB candidate for using a term that some rabid advocates in the “disability community” have now decided is outdated.  And that’s simply absurd. [/quote]

I don't think that's absurd at all. My son who has several disabilities and just started college dropped a class because a professor used the term "adjustments for special needs," in the syllabus to refer to accommodations. His position was that if the professor couldn't even use the correct terminology, they didn't actually care for disabled students. And I'm proud of him for taking that stand for himself.[/quote]
I have two kids with special needs or disabilities.  And that’s ridiculous. Whatever happened to then using his voice to address his concern with the professor?  Like an adult.  You can see from even this (very small sample) post that people have varying opinions on the matter.  If I as a professional (I’m not in education by the way) were to ever offend someone by mistake, I would want to know and learn from it.  My guess is that your son does not know all there is to know about every culture, etc.  It’s one thing to be purposefully mean. It’s another to not know. [/quote

+1
"Disabled" people should not be exempt from showing consideration and kindness to others.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics