Popularity of certain labels

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Autism: Why all teachers need to use the same terms

I agree with the recommendations. ASC might confuse people. "On the spectrum" is certainly the softest term to use and will go right over the heads of some NTs.

Depends on the school. If it's a special school then the teachers are properly trained with labels.

For mainstream schools the teachers are invariably poorly trained to deal with special needs. Their focus is on mainstream kids.

In my daughter's mainstream highschool they lump kids with ADHD, autism, learning disabilities into special classes which essentially is segregation (mostly because the kids on ILPs and not going to college). In these classes the labels don't matter, all the kids are earmarked as special needs.

My favorite label is good old fashioned "idiot savant"(hence the name vermontsavant)I could care less about "person with autism" vs. "autistic person" and all that crap.

To be honest, these labels are more important to the people who choose to carry them than to the NTs who simply lump all special needs into one category.

Then there is this new suffix "tard".

Popular on social sites like this, and on U Tube.

As in "liberal", or "religitard".

And my favorite "globetard".

A "globetard" is one of those weirdos who buy into this notion that the world is round.
If your dumb enough to drink the round earth kool Aid then ..it's perfectly alright to call you a "globetard".

But when they label right thinking folks who know that the earth is flat "flattrards"then... that's.... offensive! And there oughtta be law against saying that!! !! !

I remember back in the 90's before ret*d had become such a prejoritive slur,there was a guy I knew who worked in a group home and he referred to his clients as the "tard squad" but that was the 90's before such words were considered so offensive.

Huh?

We are both over a certain age yet I don't remember a time when "ret*d" was NOT a stinging insult.

There was a brief window before I was born in the mid Fifties when "ret*d" was just a nice clinical scientific term that the mental health community used because they had to stop using words like "imbecile" and "moron" as clinical terms. So they latched on to the fancy French word for "delayed" as more clinical sounding euphemism. But by the time I was in public school in the late Sixties and early Seventies "ret*d" was the standard epithet on every schoolkid's lips. So of course by 1980 (if not long before) the solemn white jacketed grownups in the mental health profession had to find NEW euphemisms for "ret*d" (which itself was euphemism originally), like "special", "deleyed",or whatever. By the Nineties "ret*d" had been an insult for decades.

So THAT part of your post doesn't make any sense to me.

But that IS interesting that that far back (in the pre internet days) someone was already shortening "ret*d" to "tard".

I had never encountered "tard" until like a couple of years ago. And I have only seen it used in internet text, or spoken by folks on U Tube. Never in real offline life.

It was considered an insult but not in the same way it is today,where it's an unforgivable thing to say.Back then people could get away with calling Bob,Vickie,Neil and Mark "the tard squad" then it was in bad taste but not unforgivable.

"ret*d" was always an insult but I don't remember that word coming into use until the 80s or 90s. "ret*d" was the schoolyard taunt back in my 60s and 70s schooldays. "Mental Retardation" was the old diagnosis, as well as "imbilcity" and "moran" before that.

Which proves you can run but you can't hide. Since "Autistic" is now being used as an insult it seems only a matter of time before the language police will "arrest" Autistic. This will keep on going on unless people stop letting bullies decide what words we use. I am not optimistic of seeing that in my lifetime.

Old news...kids in the playground have become so sophisticated with name calling they even have a "**tard-scale" based on how functional the person (kind of a reverse DSMV)

The little darlings will invariably grow up to be pivotal members of NT society no doubt.