Person First Language

When I first started the Special Education major classes, I took SPED 203 and the very first paper that I wrote was a paper on my experiences with people with disabilities.  The title of my paper "My Experiences of Disabled People;" that name alone should make you cringe.  There are two problems with the name of this paper, 1) it is a person with a disability, not a disabled person, I'll get more into that later, and 2) my experiences of rather than with.  Apparently, at that time, I thought that experiences were a one way street with people with disabilities.  I was the only one who was getting any experience out of it.

Now, on to person first language (PFL).  When I was doing a project once, I was working with a few other people and we were doing a project on students with disabilities.  And on all of their PowerPoint slides, they put non-person first language.  They put things like "Autistic boy," "Downs Syndrome Child," etc. and I corrected them and asked them to use PFL, and they said to me "Well, if I use person first language, then the point is not as strong."  So, I used this as a teachable moment and I read the sentence that she wrote, "Downs Syndrome Boy gets arrested" and then I read her how it would be if it were person first "Boy with Downs Syndrome gets arrested."  And I asked her, "Does there seem to be any difference in the point of these two statements?  Both get the point across, one describes the boy as being defined only as Downs Syndrome and the other describes the boy being defined as a boy first, and then he has a disability.

So, the point that I am trying to make about this issue, which is very dear to my heart, is that non-person first language implies that the student is only their disability, or at least their disability is what makes them them, because that is the first thing that you hear about them.  "Jack is an alcoholic" vs. "Jack is a person who struggles with alcoholism."  Both convey the same message, Jack is an alcoholic, but one gives humanity to Jack (PFL) while the other says that Jack is (keyword IS) an alcoholic.

I don't know if I am helping at all with this post.  I would love to think that I am, but I don't know.  This is something that is really close to my heart, and I hope that I was able to get the message that Person First Language is important because it gives humanity back to the person with the disability.