Student Honored for Campaign Against 'R-Word'

BEDFORD, Texas -- Two years ago, Katie Pullano stood up to a teacher who used an offensive word during class.
"A teacher in the seventh grade said that something a student had done was retarded," said Pullano, a ninth-grader at Harwood Junior High School. "I told her the connotation of the word doesn't come off right. She shouldn't be teaching it to teens."
An argument ensued but, Pullano said, the teacher eventually accepted her position and respected her objection.

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/05/20/3973833/bedford-ninth-grader-honored-for.html#storylink=cpy

Labels: Autism

Piece by Ariane Zurcher of Huffington Post.

Labels are useful. They're shorthand for what we want to communicate and yet, they often obscure what is really being said. We say things like, "oh, he's schizophrenic," "she's bipolar," "he's an alcoholic," "she's anorexic," "he's blind" and the meaning seems to get conveyed, but does it? After all, that's not all the person is. It's something they have been diagnosed with, perhaps struggling with. It's a medical term, but it does not encompass who and what that person is in their entirety.
When I hear someone describe another person as "autistic" I understand that person has been given a diagnosis of autism, but I don't presume to know much more about them.