Handicap

“ One must doubt whether the average seven or eight handicap man does this, which, of course, leads to the usual conclusion that the general tendency in medium handicaps in these days is to make them too flattering. ”

“ Where the home carries a serious handicap, she may anticipate the difficulties of the younger children, help them avoid the false starts made by the older brother or sister, and also assist the school to reinforce the children against the inroads of the family handicap.... ”

“ Under usual conditions, eighteen per cent of our working population has a definite physical defect or chronic disease. Of our war handicapped, it is believed that some eighty per cent can be placed, by careful selection of jobs, in work where they can be happy and just as productive in that particular job as they would be without the handicap. Another twelve or thirteen per cent will need rehabilitation before such placement can be made. ”

“ In fine, you may set this down as certain: the more you inspire in your children external interests in play and work, doing this partly by direct teaching and partly by setting them an example of industrious activity, the less reason you will have to fear that they will fall victims to the handicap of jealousy or to the nervous maladies resultant from any form of excessive preoccupation with thoughts of self. ”

“ Today some 36 million Americans suffer from some form of handicap. Eighty percent of Americans will experience some disability in their lifetime. That makes it necessary for all of us to understand and appreciate both the barriers they must surmount and the contributions that they can make to our society. ”

“ FROM what has been said in the foregoing pages, it is an irresistible inference that the greatest of all handicaps a child can have, short of being born hopelessly deficient, is to be born into a home where he will be exposed to mind-deadening or emotion-stressing influences—a home where he will receive neither adequate mental stimulus nor adequate moral training. ”

“ The primary motivation for the inclusion of misperceptions of disabilities in the statutory definition was that "society's accumulated myths and fears about disability and diseases are as handicapping as are the physical limitations that flow from actual impairment." ”

“ Every child that is brought into the world should be given an opportunity to live. This is far from the case today. Children are so handicapped that they are stunted in body and blunted in mind, if they survive. ”

“ There are certain simple regulations of health that are of vital importance to the life success of every one and the parent should attend to their becoming habits while the child is small.
Mental efficiency and accuracy are quickly influenced by bodily conditions. Poor health or physical inability are never accompanied with 100% mental efficiency. You may at once think of some examples of men of high mental caliber who were deficient and handicapped by physical disability. ”

“ For the less seriously handicapped yet specially in need of social consideration—the blind, the deaf, the crippled, those of cardiac weakness, and the children born tired who might become rested and strong—the family has helps in education, medical treatment and work opportunities suited to the particular need, such as no previous era could furnish. ”

“ But you are made to feel by other people that you are handicapped so that they could sell you those crutches. Throw them away and you can walk. That's all that I can say. "If I fall...." — that is your fear. Put the crutches away, and you are not going to fall.
Q: Is the handicap just a belief?
UG: When we are made to believe that we are handicapped, you become dependent on the crutches. The modern gurus supply you with mechanized crutches.
Q: Why do you feel that we are handicapped, why this conflict, this turmoil?
UG: The whole thing is put in there by culture. ”

“ The most that we know of health has been learned through a study of the misadjustments that bring about disease. What has been done educationally to assist the defective, the handicapped and the dependent has thrown a flood of light upon the training of the normal child. Through work undertaken in the first instance for the benefit of the exceptions, the minority, the whole community has benefited.
In this connection no one will deny that immigrants, both men and women, have their handicaps. ”

“ The implementing regulations define handicapped children as "being mentally retarded, hard of hearing, deaf, speech impaired, visually handicapped, seriously emotionally disturbed, orthopedically impaired, other health impaired, deaf-blind, multi-handicapped, or as having specific learning disabilities, who because of those impairments need special education and related services." ”

“ The single greatest difficulty facing the handicapped person is not his or her own disability but rather the attitudes of society toward that disability. Yet handicapped people have proven themselves capable of performing a wide range of jobs with great diligence, skill, and efficiency. ”

“ The hand of the sightless worker is steadier, and his courage greater, because of the years of struggle and constant effort of which his sighted competitors can form no conception.
And so those in charge of the education of the blind, whether in residential schools or public school classes, have a herculean task before them, but if their hearts are in the work, if they are alive to their wonderful opportunity for service, and if they have faith in the ability of their pupils, the future success of these handicapped young people is practically assured. ”

“ But handicapped individuals too often have had to exist on the sidelines of life because of poor education, improper vocational preparation, unavailable transportation, inaccessible buildings and other difficulties. ”

“ To the minds of many, these words may present problems that are entirely new, but to the social worker, and those whose lives have been spent in the service of the handicapped men and women of our civil communities, the problem presented is no new one, the only difference being that, whereas, hitherto, only a few recognized the problem, today, stirred by the knowledge of war and its frightful consequences, every one is eager to share in the rehabilitation movement now sweeping over the land. ”

“ A diagnosis of deficiency should not be made until the examiner is able to estimate whether the removal of training or health handicaps would bring the individual above the borderline. So far as known temporary handicaps affect the standard of the test results with groups they should, of course, also be taken into account. On the other hand, it is clear that the borderline which predicts social failure should not be shifted to allow for differences in permanent handicaps whether those be of race, sex or social position. ”

“ I have directed the Health and Human Services Department to make clear to every health care facility in the United States that the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 protects all handicapped persons against discrimination based on handicaps, including infants. ”

“ We can enter the bodies of the handicapped to find out how a blind person negotiates the merciless world of speeding cars and people in a hurry. The empathy game has been played with words and theatrics in many schools. But once a person assumes the handicapped body in a simulated universe, the insight gained is no longer based on how convincing a description is, but on the limits of self-constitution as handicapped. People can learn more about each other by sharing their conditions and limitations. And, hopefully, they will ascertain a sense of solidarity beyond empty expressions of sympathy. ”

“ The past decade has been marked by significant advances for handicapped people.
Such laws as the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 protect many handicapped individuals from discrimination in employment and services. ”

“ It shows that we are becoming as capable in the community-at-large of understanding the radical difference between those who are defective in mind and those who are merely handicapped by loss of some special sense or some physical power as loving and wise parents have been when either defective or handicapped children have called upon them for special care. ”

“ Then, again, some people who are neither mentally nor morally degenerate, are born with physical handicaps or acquire these handicaps early in life; such, for instance, are the deaf-mutes, the blind, and the crippled. They are the ones whom we most commonly meet on the public streets begging or selling trinkets, or playing some sort of instrument as an excuse for what is really begging. ”

“ The probability of a child handicapped by a weak constitution, an overcrowded home, inadequate food and care, and possibly a deficient mental equipment, winding up in prison or an almshouse, is too evident for comment. ”

“ The child who has been handicapped by illness and lack of opportunity, the child who is inherently dull and backward, must be distinguished from the child with nervous instability or definite mental defect. ”

“ There also are severely handicapped infants who require not only the love and support of their families but who also must have the help of many groups in their communities-doctors, hospitals, health departments, providers of health care, and others-if they are to thrive. ”

“ During these seven days, we emphasize our recognition of the changing roles of people with disabilities in America today. Their aspirations and demonstrated ability to meet challenges and make the most of opportunities have resulted in changing the way the Nation thinks about handicaps and disabilities. Let us recognize through our actions, as well as our words, that people with disabilities are first of all our fellow citizens, who happen to be disabled. ”

“ Individuals whose mental development tests in the lowest X per cent. of the population are PRESUMABLY INTELLECTUALLY DEFICIENT, unless their deficiency is caused by removable handicaps. Above these is a group of Y per cent. within which the diagnosis of intellectual deficiency is uncertain on the basis of our present tests. The size of the presumably deficient X group is to be determined by the number of intellectually weak which society is at present justified in indefinitely isolating. ”

“ Subtracting those who could be classed mentally defective, we have but forty-one persons who were apparently physically handicapped. It will be noted that the percentage of the aged is considerably lower than the previous tables show. ”

“ Disabled persons9.2, 43, 53 CThe public authorities shall carry out a policy of preventive care, treatment, rehabilitation and integration of the physically, sensorially and mentally handicapped by giving them the specialized care they require, and affording them special protection for the enjoyment of the rights granted by this Part to all citizens. ”

“ Such handicaps, however, are limited to relatively few of a population. The raison d'être of the greater number of minor mental inefficiencies the psychanalyst puts down to handicaps in the unconscious. ”

“ His body becomes weakened, his nervous system disordered, and the physical substratum of his mind diseased. These defects he transmits to his offspring and thus handicaps them in the effort that is required from the individual to adapt himself to the conditions of society. ”

“ This day-a wonderful, vigorous celebration of the progress and possibilities for equal opportunity-must also include an equally vigorous commitment to continue the fight. Now is the time to act on our understanding that having a physical or mental disability is a part of the human experience. ”

“ The question what degree of natural intelligence he shall be endowed with, in comparison with other children, is determined, not by himself, but by his Creator, and depends, probably, upon conditions of organization in his cerebral system as much beyond his control as any thing abnormal in the features of his face, or blindness, or deafness, or any other physical disadvantage. The child who shows any indications of inferiority to others in any of these respects should be the object of his parent's or his teacher's special tenderness and care. ”

“ Never was Bohemianism more handicapped by its setting than that of Chelsea, if the Manresa Road was to be taken as a criterion. Along the uninviting uniformity of this street no trace of unorthodoxy was to be seen. There came no merry, roystering laughter from attic windows. No talented figures of idle geniuses fetched pints of beer from the public-house at the corner. No one dressed in an ancient ulster and a battered straw hat and puffing enormous clouds of blue smoke from a treasured clay pipe gazed philosophically into space from a doorway. ”

“ Just as in the case of physical illness, we need to know not merely that the patient is sick, but also why he is sick, what organs are involved, what course the illness will run, and what physical work the patient can safely undertake, so in the case of a retarded child, we need to know the exact degree of intellectual deficiency, what mental functions are chiefly concerned in the defect, whether the deficiency is due to innate endowment, to physical illness, or to faults of education, and what lines of mental activity the child will be able to pursue with reasonable hope of success. ”

“ She has made an admirable start toward a differential diagnosis of special defects in number work, language ability and other mental activities. The degree of special deficiency which results in social failure could be placed upon an objective basis, but the rarity of special deficiencies as compared with general deficiency will make this a slow task. In the meantime we may rely upon the mutual dependence of the organic processes as a point of view which emphasizes the common spread of deficiency to many activities. ”