A reflection on person-first usage.

For most of this editor's professional career (1956 - present) he has been educating students at the university level; young men and women who have or will enter the teaching field in the discipline of physical education. Although initial exposure to individuals with disabilities came as a result of military experience as an army medic and later a physical therapist assistant within a large military general hospital, teaching in Adapted Physical Education started as early as 1963 while on the faculty at Lock Haven State College in Pennsylvania.

Ever since this early indoctrination as one involved with the professional preparation of the next wave of teachers, the primary mission of the semester's experience has always been to inculcate a sensitivity within students for those students they might someday find within their classes who have a disability. Believing very much in the old social-psychological axiom...what you think of me I will think of me, and what I think of me I will believe...students have been continually reminded to see the person first and the disability second.

The terminology a society, and subsequently an individual, utilizes should reflect correctly the equality of all its citizens, as well as being sensitive to the situation. Those of us within the realm of adapted physical activity (i.e., sport, physical education, and recreation) have mostly been in the vanguard of correct terminology usage; especially in lieu of Federal legislation emanating in 1973 and most recently reflected in PL 101-476. We have avoided the use of disabilities as nouns--the disabled, the blind, the deaf. However, we have not done nearly as well when disabilities are linked with an activity or individual as an adjective--disabled sport, cerebral palsy athelete, Down syndrome student, deaf sport.

Initiatives taken within the past year-and-a-half by the editorial boards of Adapted Physical Activity Quarterly [9(1), 3] and Palaestra [9(2), 5], along with a name change for the Consortiumm fromm National Consortium of Physical Education and Recreation for the Handicapped to National Consortium Physical Education and Recreation for Individuals with Disabilities attest to the growing sensitivity of our profession to language within legislation and or advocacy from consumer groups. These and other initiatives are laudatory ...all of us should be supportive of person-first terminology whenever and wherever practical.

Yet, this editor faces a dilemma with carte blanche utilization of the concept! In the first place, the deaf subcommunity has always utilized deaf as an adjective. Moreover, they have steadfastly placed extra emphasis on their position by making the further distinction as Deaf sport; the upper case "D" furthering their identity. Historically, sport for individuals with disabilities started within the United States with the formation of the American Athletic Association of the Deaf (1945), with a variety of other organizations being established over the following 48 years; including the National Wheelchair Basketball Association (1949), National Wheelchair Athletic Association (1956), National Handicapped Sports (1967), Special Olympics International (1968), U.S. Association for Blind Athletes (1976), U.S. Cerebral Palsy Atheletic Association (1978), U.S. Les Autres Sports Association (1985), and the Dwarf Athletic Association of America (1986). Even the U.S. Olympic Committee's Committee On Sport f/t Disabled had its origin in 1979. Close examination of terminology utilized within the names of the established titles for most of the aforenamed organizations shows a majority are out of sync with today's march on person-first nomenclature.

Do we, as a community of scholars, have the right to insist upon changing such identifications? Certainly not! While the goal of person-first terminology is laudatory, our arrows should be pointed at improving the popular press' verbiage such as continued reference to indivduals with spinal cord injury being wheelchair bound. It would seem to this editor that when one's heart is in the right place, one can not be prejudicial; each article, each situation, each organizational name must be evaluated within its own context rather than insisting upon wholesale conformity to person-first terminology at all costs.