The Messenger - February 2008 - No Labels Please
By Paul Andrews, SJ - 01 February 2008
The Pope’s Intentions: This month the Pope asks us to pray ‘that people with learning disabilities be loved and respected so that they can live life to the full’.
The first time I met Mary, we had to make special preparations. She was coming in a wheelchair, and was so weighty that lifting her upstairs was out of the question. So, I met her in the basement of a big Victorian house.
At fourteen she was heavy, fleshy, almost blind, hard of hearing, and unable to walk. She thought clearly, but breathing difficulties made her speech hard to follow. Despite her multiple handicaps she was attending a community school which had taken pains to integrate, and provide special help for, children of all abilities and conditions.
This remarkable girl stands out in my memory for a number of reasons. She could present an heroically cheerful face to the world, but when given the opportunity, she could show the other side of her emotional life, when she would scream with pain and frustration.
She could see beyond her own difficulties to the way society made life still more difficult for disabled people; for instance she took on the manager of a large city cinema, and got him to provide wheelchair access and space for people like her. She fought her way through the school curriculum, and then persuaded a prestigious university to give her an undergraduate place.
She was a pioneer, a trailblazer. It is people like Mary who inspired the Pope’s intention for this month. It reminds us that society can do a great deal to ease the lot of those who are born with disabilities.
Even with the best teaching and therapy, many will need to be cared for, often in sheltered accommodat-ion and employment, not contributing much to the national economy. But they are God’s children, and this is the only life they have. Love of them means enabling them to live it more fully and with less pain, and if possible with a knowledge that they are contributing. This intention is a test of respect for life as such.
In fact we have made huge advances in helping disabled people to live more fully as fellow-citizens. The fact that Mary found a place in a good community school, and later in university, says a lot for our advances both in teaching and in tolerance in the last century.
In the past, some societies let such children die, or even hastened their death. In others, the care of them was mainly custodial; in other words they were protected from harm but not educated. Binet devised the first intelligence tests
to ascertain children’s level of teachability. Many were considered incapable of learning to read, who today would become competent readers. We have made progress in teaching even autistic children. This demands well-motivated staff with well-focussed training and an understanding of how much we can expect of children.
It is important not to put tight limits on our expectations. Working in a school for children with special needs, we, the staff, cherished two ambitions: to give finely focussed help to those who had specific difficulties in learning; and to save them from being labelled. A label can be dangerous and self-fulfilling.
Like those without any clear disability, special needs come in various shapes and sizes: some needy children are affectionate, some are resentful, some are more easily loved than others. They cannot be defined by their disability, any more than another citizen can be defined by saying he is left-handed, or brown-eyed. I am blue-eyed; that does not define me. If Fiona has Down syndrome, it does not define her. There is more to her than meets the eye.
What does a label say? It indicates some of the things that the disabled child cannot do. But you do not know half of the things that they can do, or the language in which they might express them, or the feelings that stir in them, mostly unexpressed. Labels are always inadequate.
Jean Vanier has built his L’Arche communities on the conviction that whether we are labelled healthy or handicapped, we are all wounded healers. We all carry scars and need help; but also, we all, including the Down syndrome and brain-damaged children, can help and heal.
The Pope is speaking not just of children at school, but of all people with disabilities, including adults. How can they be helped to live in a way worthy of their physical and social condition?
In Gaelic Ireland, people who would now be seen as intellectually challenged, were called duine le Dia, a lovely title, stressing that their innocence kept them close to God. It showed respect and love. But the self-respect which stems from a sense of contributing to society is harder to foster.
In the developed world, unskilled jobs are fewer than before. But when account is taken of the real capacities of people suffering from a specific disability, we have found many ways of employing those who are visually impaired, or in wheelchairs. What we are praying for this month is a warm acceptance of these fellow-citizens for all that they can contribute to society.
Apart from schooling and work, we look for a fuller leisure life for all with disabilities. The splendid organization of the Special Olympics has opened competitive sport to youngsters who in the past would have been excluded. And much thought and care are going into opening the possibility of a loving sexual life to those who in the past would have been too easily exploited. There is much work in progress, plenty to pray about.