Mental Retardation - Improper terminology?

[Jean-Marc Perreault]

Hi Tipsters,            I’m facing a rather surprising situation at the moment. In discussing Intelligence and its distribution in the population, I naturally touched on the “gifted”, as well as on “mental retardation”. One student was offended that I would use such a “crude and archaic” term. She then went to the Learning Disability centre where she volunteers and shared with them that I was still using such terminology (mental retardation). According to the student, when she told them about it (director, supervisor, psychologist), they just about spit their coffee on the spot! She reports that they could not believe I would use such terminology. Wow!   Ok. So, after talking with the student, I started to wonder if I had perhaps missed the boat at some point or another. So I went back to all the Intro texts lining my bookshelf (thanks to all the publishers who keep sending them my way), and looked up various sections on intelligence. Well, they all use Mental Retardation as a classification, even the Canadian Edition (as Canadians sometimes tend to be very politically correct, I thought that for sure I would find some form of warning in there).   Here are two that I looked at:     Myers, D.G. (2004). Psychology (7th ed.). Holland, MI: Worth.  On page 439: The degrees of Mental Retardation.   Lefton, L.A., Brannon, L., Boyes, M.C., & Ogden, N.A. (2005). Psychology (2nd Canadian ed.). Toronto, ON: Pearson. On page 298.     And the list goes on… Geee… Even the DSM has it as a classification. It feels rather strange to being accused of being so discriminatory and backwards when in fact I strongly urge my students to stay away from labelling individuals. As such, I press them to avoid using such terms as “schizophrenic, alcoholic, depressed”, and so on when referring to individuals. I tell them to talk about the conditions instead.   So, I’m curious to hear about your opinions on the matter. Is it still ok to talk about Mental Retardation? Or should I move towards what her mentors suggested: Mentally challenged, or even “gifted” (she said they were moving in that direction to replace mental retardation).   Cheers to all!   Jean-Marc --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: archive@jab.org To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]