A council has apologised after parents were offered a choice of class photos with or without children with complex needs in them.
Parents at Aboyne Primary complained after being sent a link from a photography company offering them alternative pictures.
Umm, special doesn’t mean optional, surplus, or extraneous. Like, no definition of it means those things. It doesn’t even imply those things to anyone I’ve ever met. It can mean unusual, though.
So your entire next paragraph doesn’t make sense if you substitute special for unusual. Because it is unusual that some plants don’t need sunlight. Also, I think it is funny that you said some fish don’t need sunlight.
In other news differently abled is totally useful because the differently abled person is ABLE to get from A->B in a different fashion than walking via assistive devices and disabled is crap because it implies that they aren’t able to and next year complex needs will be bad because the need to have education food live aren’t complicated or hard and implying it is discourages us from trying.
I don’t think the problem with dealing with complex needs is the language used but a problem with evolving the language faster than the new choice of words can spread is that it loses its communicative power if outside of people who deal with the issue professionally for instance in school or government nobody has heard the new choice of words and doesn’t understand what is being communicative.
“Photographer offered “no chairs” version of class photos with all the disabled kids photo-shopped out.” is pretty clear.
I’m just assuming it was edited because the idea of literally staging a version where the disabled people weren’t allowed to sit for would be if anything more offensive but we are obviously dealing with insensitive bastards so who knows.
usage for
… optional:
surplus
extraneous
also I think you misread me, I was saying it’s not special if a plant needs sunlight
None of those are correct. Are you not a native English speaker?
Special occasion means an occasion that isn’t ordinary… i.e. unusual. Special cake for the occasion isn’t surplus, it’s just a cake that is specific to the occasion. Specific, shockingly, shares a root word with special.
Special plates for guests only are the plates you don’t usually use… i.e. unusual. Yes, they might ALSO be extraneous, but that isn’t what makes them special. Heck, if you entertain a lot and use those plates for the guests, then they definitely aren’t extraneous.
Special cupcake means you made something you didn’t make like the normal ones or as many as usual… i.e. unusual.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/special - definition 4
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/special - definition 6
https://www.oed.com/dictionary/special_adj - definitions 4b, 6a–g.
None of those sentences are remotely equivalent if you actually substitute. They’re nonsensical, even.
You were the one equivocating those words.
It’s easy to be disingenuous to make yourself sound right, for instance, if I was to be deliberately obtuse I could read your reply as:
Less than one from over there grammatical constructions equal distant same upon thou certainly switch. Such exists jabberwocky, divisible by two.
Which doesn’t make any sense - yeah, because I was an asshole about it.
My original point is clear, easy to grasp and understandable and you’re just trying to derail to score some minor point.
If it makes you feel better- yes if you interpret words wrong they sound wrong. Congrats, you win the internet debate.
That’s all you’ve been so far tho
can you explain what you mean? I shared my experience of why the argument was formed from my experience in education and community communications.
I volunteer for two arts organizations and I work for a tech org - one of which I sit on the board for - who work (at least partially) with young, disabled and/or vulnerable people, and/or have to check communications against best practice.
I have at times been physically long term disabled (although right now I consider myself able bodied), my wife is long term disabled, and I have previously worked with arts organizations focused around hearing loss, sight loss and mobility, and prior to that I was a curriculum organizer for a school district with a focus on engaging those with learning disabilities more in the classroom.
Obviously, the disability community is not a monolith and with any nomenclature (see: differently abled, wheelchair-user debates) there are people on both sides of the argument who do and don’t have disabilities.
That’s a whole lot of irrelevant stuff ya got there.
Keep pretending you can’t understand the other commenters who calmly and clearly explained why what you said is silly, I think it’s funny to watch
it doesn’t matter what random internet commenters think, it matters that communities are engaged and supported and learning environments for young people are as accessible as possible. You could give me a million downvotes and flame me to hell — that’s the reality.
There ya go being deliberately obtuse again
I think it’s hilarious that someone arguing that saying “special needs” is offensive is repeatedly calling people “disabled.” Most people consider “disabled” very offensive, since it implies that those people aren’t able to do things. They are able to, just differently.
no? they dont?
“differently abled” was mentioned in another reply - and alongside that and conversations about people-first vs ability-first language have pretty much run their course about 5 years ago and have primarily been rejected by mainstream usage, but instead focus has shifted to self-representation akin to pronoun usage.