Here’s another case of the misuse of “Learning Disability.” In a story about an Ohio (US) organization eliminating “mental retardation” from its name, Holly Zachariah of the Columbus (OH, US) Dispatch reported on “MRDD considers name change: ‘Mental retardation’ degrading, hurtful slang, some say.” Ohio’s Association of County Boards of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities is likely to follow a national movement in changing to a name that only refers to Developmental Disabilities.
Over the years, “retarded” has gone from being an acceptable term for describing those with a learning disability to a schoolyard taunt. Advocates say it is long past time to recognize that what has become hurtful slang shouldn’t be used in official agency titles.
This one is especially interesting in a couple of ways. (a) In using Learning Disabilities as a generic, it lumps mental retardation into LD; as both readers know, I’ve repeatedly noted that individuals with Learning Disabilities do not, by definition, have mental retardation. If LD does not equal MR, how can MR equal LD? (b) The overall story is about a change in the language used by groups advocating for individuals with developmental disabilities; organizations are dropping “mental retardation” from the term, “Mental Retardation and Developmental Disasbilities.”
From a wider perspective, I see the change in “MRDD” as another step in a long line of such changes. Terms such as “feebleminded,” “imbecile” and “idiot” have been used in the past. They have given way to what people then considered less pejorative terms. Eventually, people come to believe that the newer less-pejorative labels are, in fact, pejorative, so they are replaced. “Developmental Disabilities” apparently sounds less pejorative to us now. How will it sound to people 30, 40, or 50 years from now?
Link to Ms. Zachariah’s article. For further information about Developmental Disabilities, see the Division for Developmental Disabilities of the Council for Exceptional Children and the ARC (once called the “Association for Retarded Citizens.”)
Sphere: Related Content
There was an interesting and related story on yesterday’s All Things Considered (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6943699). Like you, I
wonder how AAMR’s new name (The American Association on Intellectual and
Developmental Disabilities) will sound in a few years. Personally, I loved the
quote from NPR’s piece: ‘Well, what would you like to be called?’ And they
usually say their first name: ‘I’d like to be called Liz.’ ‘I’d like to be
called Rafael.’ And that’s what’s really important.
Joanne, thanks for expanding on this entry. I, too, heard the NPR coverage, but only part of it. It’s good that issues in developmental disabilities sometimes make the big news.
At least the change to “Developmental Disabilities” isn’t aimed at the illogical recommendation that we provide services without labels. As soon as we say that a child needs help with something, that is essentially a label. About the only logical way to provide services without identifying to whom they will be provided is to distribute them randomly. I hope no one is seriously recommending do this. Jim Kauffman has made this point repeatedly; see, for example, “School reform disorder: Alternative audience responses to nonsense” (1992; Journal of Behavioral Education) and “A diversity of restrictive environments: Placement as a problem of social ecology (with D. P. Hallahan, 1997; book chapter) [see Jim's vita].
I also want to remark that in the area of mental health there is a common argument that labels actually cause problems for individuals with Emotional or Behavioral Disorders. As I noted in an entry on EBD Blog, this idea was pretty thorough debunked by John Ruscio in an article for the Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice. (For the view of one parent of a child with Autism, see the comment by queenannelace on the EBD Blog entry.)