I work in the field of adult continuing education. Getting students prepared for the world, in a formal setting. My students are all amazing, inspiring, funny, interesting and kind. There are not too many courses in a college setting that they would be able to take, and excel at, except mine. They are have one thing in common. All of them have different learning abilities, or should I say diverse learning abilities. Or would it be better to say barriers to employment. Because of learning difficulties, writing difficulties and other learning barriers.
Having just started in this field, I feel I am playing catch up. Trying to catch up on the proper, politically correct and most formal way to talk about these varied abilities. But I am realizing I am not far behind. It seems to be something all educators are trying to constantly get a handle on, to speak about in the kindest most complimentary way.
To think that “diverse abilities” was the preferred term to use when I started a year ago, and now it’s students with barriers to employment (which is more central to what our course is). I have talked with students who did not like the term “diverse abilities”. I asked them what they preferred and they said adaptive better. I am not quite sure how it’s used in a sentence, perhaps I would say “I teach an adaptive group of students”. I would say that sounds really positive. The key here is that we honour the students for their abilities, not DIS-abilities. They are so very capable in many different ways as you and me reading this. They aren’t – The deaf. They are “People who are blind”. They are not “wheelchair bound” but “use a wheel chair”.
It makes me think about the many names we use for indigenous. We started with natives, it moved to aboriginal and now we are onto indigenous. Talking with friends I learned they didn’t like the aboriginal usage (what I grew up saying) because nobody wants to be Ab-normal, which is so similar. So we now use the correct term indigenous.
It’s so important to give words and meaning some thought. Think, in England if you call somebody a C*unt. It’s an endearing, friendly, joking term. Here in Canada if you say that to somebody in the same way as the English, you’re in big big trouble. So yes context is extremely important to get right. Just to clarify that the video above is an example of how not to talk with students or anybody!
Brown University. (n.d.). Appropriate Terminology, retrieved May 20, 2022, from https://www.brown.edu/campus-life/support/accessibility-services/resources-teaching-students-disabilities/appropriate-terminology
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