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[CCBC-Net] Meaning Well
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From: Steward, Celeste <csteward>
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2006 10:56:01 -0700
Dear Laurie--Bravo for speaking up...I agree that proper semantics don't always translate into kindness or sensitivity from the speaker. Changing the language won't change the person's viewpoint. I don't concern myself very much with stereotypes--that way madness lies. It's best to deal with people on an individual basis. It's not a perfect world.
As for disability in children's literature--I think the publishing industry has made great strides in how people with disabilities are portrayed. Can't say I've ever read a children's book that cast physically-challenged people into pitiable roles. Maybe I'm lucky. But perhaps I should not even refer to them as disabled or challenged or whatever? On the other hand, my parents came from an entire generation that called fill-in-the-blank-challenged people "handicapped"--but it did not render them any less kind or any less sensitive to those who needed their help.
Celeste Steward
Collection Development Librarian, Children's Services Alameda County Library 2400 Stevenson Blvd. Fremont, CA 94538
-----Original Message----- From: ccbc-net-bounces at ccbc.education.wisc.edu
[mailto:ccbc-net-bounces at ccbc.education.wisc.edu] On Behalf Of LAURIE DRAUS Sent: Friday, October 13, 2006 10:25 AM To: ccbc-net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu Subject: Re: [CCBC-Net] Meaning Well
I'm sorry if I sound politically incorrect, and this is just my personal opinion, not any official view of the school, but the "People First Language" strikes me as "Meaning Well" for the sake of coming across as
"Doing Something Positive". I am afraid I don't see a it as being truly useful to ascribe a lot of significance to word order that really doesn't exist in the language as normally used.
I'm sure there are nothing but good intentions behind this movement, and certainly we should make every effort to recognize people for their more important individual qualities over and above any disabilities or lessened abilities, and that finding ways to do this is an admirable goal.
But I don't think we should make some up if they aren't there. I'm not sure at all that rearranging normal English sentence structure or marking one order of adjective/noun, noun/adjective as thoughtfully humanizing and sensitive, and the other as thougtlessly pigeon-holing and insensitive is going to affect anyone's intentions or feelings on the subject except giving them a new way they have to go over their words to make sure they say things in a prescribed format so as not to come across to the media-checkers as uncaring when they never were to start with.
I am not on the outside of this issue looking in, or looking down. I myself have ADD as does one of my daughters. My son has fairly severe autism. It doesn't bother me or impress me or make me feel the speaker/writer sees my son, for example, as a real person first, one way or the other, if a teacher or an article were to call my son an autistic student or a student with autism.
I don't see anything truly progressive here in marking one good and one bad. I work with teachers in special education and I don't think there is any less personal dedication or thinking of the student as a person first if I hear a teacher talking about an IEP meeting for a hearing-impaired sixth-grader, vs. one talking about one for a student
"with hearing impairment."
Neither strikes me as better or more compassionate or more sensitive and unprejudiced than the other. Why? Because it's just one of the normal ways adjectives are structured in the English language. The order rarely carries any real weight or intent. There is nothing inherent in English syntax in any other context I can think of that makes using an adjective first in a description somehow disdainful or dismissive of the subject.
A snow-covered mountain, or a mountain covered with snow, both conjure up the same picture. I don't think that either arrangement gives it any significantly measurable level of "mountain-ness" than the other way. A brown book, a book that's brown. A long hall, a hall that's long. A tall policeman, a policeman who's tall. English just doesn't naturally present one way as nicer and one ruder than the other.
Most everyday people are not going to feel there is truly any positive or negative meaning given by the order of the words if there never is in any other sentence they use in their everyday lives. It will strike them as artificial, I think.
I do agree with the person who said that using *just* the adjective and leaving out the part that refers to the person can in many instances sound cold and rude: a Chinese, a black, an autistic. I *would* think less of a teacher who said that they had "two blinds and three LD's this afternoon."
I will work at using the "proper" structure in official school business because I see this becoming "an issue." But I think it is not really sound, because starts out from the point of a fallacy--that in our language, using an adjective first belittles the noun. That just isn't so.
Lauri Cahoon-Draus K-12 Library Media Specialist Suring School Libraries draus at suring.k12.wi.us
**suring
"It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." Sherlock Holmes - A Scandal in Bohemia.
_______________________________________________ CCBC-Net mailing list CCBC-Net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu Visit this link to read archives or to unsubscribe... http://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/mailman/listinfo/ccbc-net
Received on Fri 13 Oct 2006 12:56:01 PM CDT
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2006 10:56:01 -0700
Dear Laurie--Bravo for speaking up...I agree that proper semantics don't always translate into kindness or sensitivity from the speaker. Changing the language won't change the person's viewpoint. I don't concern myself very much with stereotypes--that way madness lies. It's best to deal with people on an individual basis. It's not a perfect world.
As for disability in children's literature--I think the publishing industry has made great strides in how people with disabilities are portrayed. Can't say I've ever read a children's book that cast physically-challenged people into pitiable roles. Maybe I'm lucky. But perhaps I should not even refer to them as disabled or challenged or whatever? On the other hand, my parents came from an entire generation that called fill-in-the-blank-challenged people "handicapped"--but it did not render them any less kind or any less sensitive to those who needed their help.
Celeste Steward
Collection Development Librarian, Children's Services Alameda County Library 2400 Stevenson Blvd. Fremont, CA 94538
-----Original Message----- From: ccbc-net-bounces at ccbc.education.wisc.edu
[mailto:ccbc-net-bounces at ccbc.education.wisc.edu] On Behalf Of LAURIE DRAUS Sent: Friday, October 13, 2006 10:25 AM To: ccbc-net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu Subject: Re: [CCBC-Net] Meaning Well
I'm sorry if I sound politically incorrect, and this is just my personal opinion, not any official view of the school, but the "People First Language" strikes me as "Meaning Well" for the sake of coming across as
"Doing Something Positive". I am afraid I don't see a it as being truly useful to ascribe a lot of significance to word order that really doesn't exist in the language as normally used.
I'm sure there are nothing but good intentions behind this movement, and certainly we should make every effort to recognize people for their more important individual qualities over and above any disabilities or lessened abilities, and that finding ways to do this is an admirable goal.
But I don't think we should make some up if they aren't there. I'm not sure at all that rearranging normal English sentence structure or marking one order of adjective/noun, noun/adjective as thoughtfully humanizing and sensitive, and the other as thougtlessly pigeon-holing and insensitive is going to affect anyone's intentions or feelings on the subject except giving them a new way they have to go over their words to make sure they say things in a prescribed format so as not to come across to the media-checkers as uncaring when they never were to start with.
I am not on the outside of this issue looking in, or looking down. I myself have ADD as does one of my daughters. My son has fairly severe autism. It doesn't bother me or impress me or make me feel the speaker/writer sees my son, for example, as a real person first, one way or the other, if a teacher or an article were to call my son an autistic student or a student with autism.
I don't see anything truly progressive here in marking one good and one bad. I work with teachers in special education and I don't think there is any less personal dedication or thinking of the student as a person first if I hear a teacher talking about an IEP meeting for a hearing-impaired sixth-grader, vs. one talking about one for a student
"with hearing impairment."
Neither strikes me as better or more compassionate or more sensitive and unprejudiced than the other. Why? Because it's just one of the normal ways adjectives are structured in the English language. The order rarely carries any real weight or intent. There is nothing inherent in English syntax in any other context I can think of that makes using an adjective first in a description somehow disdainful or dismissive of the subject.
A snow-covered mountain, or a mountain covered with snow, both conjure up the same picture. I don't think that either arrangement gives it any significantly measurable level of "mountain-ness" than the other way. A brown book, a book that's brown. A long hall, a hall that's long. A tall policeman, a policeman who's tall. English just doesn't naturally present one way as nicer and one ruder than the other.
Most everyday people are not going to feel there is truly any positive or negative meaning given by the order of the words if there never is in any other sentence they use in their everyday lives. It will strike them as artificial, I think.
I do agree with the person who said that using *just* the adjective and leaving out the part that refers to the person can in many instances sound cold and rude: a Chinese, a black, an autistic. I *would* think less of a teacher who said that they had "two blinds and three LD's this afternoon."
I will work at using the "proper" structure in official school business because I see this becoming "an issue." But I think it is not really sound, because starts out from the point of a fallacy--that in our language, using an adjective first belittles the noun. That just isn't so.
Lauri Cahoon-Draus K-12 Library Media Specialist Suring School Libraries draus at suring.k12.wi.us
**suring
"It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." Sherlock Holmes - A Scandal in Bohemia.
_______________________________________________ CCBC-Net mailing list CCBC-Net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu Visit this link to read archives or to unsubscribe... http://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/mailman/listinfo/ccbc-net
Received on Fri 13 Oct 2006 12:56:01 PM CDT
