Different Stuff

[Derf]

I don't call a person with severe mental difficulties "retard". They really are "special needs". I save retard for those that shake their fist at God.

Maybe there's a better term. "Retard" implies someone who is slow, or kept back from progress, not through his own efforts, but through a lack of actual capacity. If someone in that condition shakes his fist at God, it doesn't reflect poorly on that person. But if they knowingly shake their fist at God, they are not retarded, but are culpable. They are even beyond the fool who says there is no God.

 

[ok doser]

Maybe there's a better term. "Retard" implies someone who is slow, or kept back from progress, not through his own efforts, but through a lack of actual capacity. If someone in that condition shakes his fist at God, it doesn't reflect poorly on that person. But if they knowingly shake their fist at God, they are not retarded, but are culpable. They are even beyond the fool who says there is no God.

I never liked the term retarded or the current acceptable version developmentally delayed for people of diminished intellectual capacity because it implies that the person affected will catch up.

 

[ok doser]

I don't call a person with severe mental difficulties "retard". They really are "special needs". I save retard for those that shake their fist at God.

When I got my teaching degree 15 years ago one of the courses in the curriculum, third semester was "Teaching The Exceptional Child".

The other members of my cohort and I were abuzz at the prospect of learning all sorts of ninja teaching techniques for dealing with brilliant students.

Alas, this course dealt with the other side of the bell curve