GETTYSBURG AND DEFECTS

So, what is a defect? Does a child with a special need have a defect? While working today, I was listening to Ken Burns' (the documentarian) being interviewed on WNYC about his Gettysburg Project. He talked about a school of boys with special needs including ADHD, Dyslexia, Dysgraphia, etc., and how emotionally moving it was for all of these boys, despite their issues, to manage to memorize and recite the Gettysburg Address. That certainly is wonderful, but what shocked me is he described their issues as "defects." I looked up defect on a free online dictionary, since no one digs out the old, dusty Websters anymore, and found this definition.

DEFECT:

1. The lack of something necessary or desirable for completion or perfection; a deficiency 2. An imperfection that causes inadequacy or failure; a shortcoming. See Synonyms at blemish.

So many things are defective. My camera that can no longer open and close the lens is defective. My boiler that leaks has a defect. I need a new camera. I need to fix my boiler. I prefer not to refer to any person as having a "defect." My daughter has dyslexia. It is not a defect, but a learning difference. I can not, nor would I like to, trade in my daughter for a more perfect model. She is imperfect, as all people are, yet perfect to me, as all daughters are to their moms.

Words matter when speaking about people with learning differences. When we call a learning difference a "defect," we take away the respect of all people that are not created "perfect." So, in Ken Burns' pursuit of finding meaning for all of us in the Gettysburg address, he may want to investigate the power of language and how language can uplift some people and denigrate others. Calling a learning issue a defect denigrates a person. I'm sure Mr. Burns did not know or think about how he might hurt a population of people by saying that their learning differences are defects. The struggle of people with different abilities is reenforced when an educated man that is trying to educate, us, the people, can so forcefully forget that words matter to all people. People with disabilities prefer not to be told they have a "defect." That time has passed. Now, let us read the the Gettysburg address:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.