THE HISTORY OF DISABILITY

         retrieved from: https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/pennhurst-state-school-and-hospital/

    Today in my Foundations course, we were able to watch the documentary Suffer The Little Children about the Pennhurst facility for individuals with disabilities. We also had Dr. Bruce Kiesling come to our class to talk about the history of disability in the United States. The documentary and the presentation gave our class a deeper look about how disability was perceived and how people with disabilities have been treated and interacted with through history. 

    One thing that really blew my mind was how people have perceived individuals with disabilities over the years. We learned that in the early 20th century, people automatically associated disability with criminalization. In the documentary, they show the individuals living in Pennhurst would be shackled to their beds, radiators, or sitting in a cage. I can't even image what those individuals were thinking. If you wanted to be sent to Pennhurst, you just had to have a MINOR condition such as: imperfect gate, imperfect speech, diminished sight, and a facial deformity. Dr. Kiesling explained to us that most of the time if you were either a minority, a criminal, or an immigrant you were sent to Pennhurst. The community wanted a perfect image, anyone with a disability would be considered a burden and should be sent away. It just makes my stomach and heart hurt for individuals who were just slightly different were sent away.

    Another topic that bothered me was the use of language for the term disability. Some popular words that were used in the documentary were "idiot", "moron", "imbecile", "retard", and "feeble-minded". I can't even imagine using these words today in the 21st century. These terms at the time were used as clinical terms and now they are used more as "slang" words. At the time these terms were used on medical records to be shown to other colleagues. The family was only on a need to know basis and was mostly kept in the dark. 

    From seeing the documentary and talking with Dr. Kiesling, I plan to remove any kind of "ableist" language from my vocabulary. We must continue to be educated on the history of these words to understand why they are not appropriate to use now. I also plan to be an agent to those in my community about ableist language and about the history of disability to help spread awareness to those who might not know how their words can cause harm to others.