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Essays on disability in sports
Impact of disability on sport
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Don't Judge a Book by its Cover
Growing up I always was told not to judge a book by its cover from teachers, parents, and even parents of friends. This is one saying that has always been drilled into my mind and into many others as well. With growing older we should never forget those simple life lessons that we are taught as children. In the Paralympic games this is one of the biggest issues that the participants face. People do not realize what they have till it is gone and for some this may mean their mobility and ability to hear or even see. These are parts of life that others take for granite and when seeing another who has lost these there is the potential to judge them for their new formed way of life. Even with the media this has become an issue due to writers referring to the participants of the games as "freaks of nature" or "supercrips" which are very offending to those who are trying their hardest to live a normal life (Laura Misener). Authors of these articles tried to justify their actions with publishing these hurtful words, but nothing was done to make up for this. People all around the world look at the participants of the Paralympic games as so very different, but really they are just people who are forced to live a different way than from what most would call "normal" due to an impairment. These hurtful comments are mostly due to the ignorance of the human race. The people who are a part of the Paralympic games push themselves as hard as it takes to be the best. They do the same as any athlete would do regarding there condition. Training and being healthy, as any athlete the participants of the paralympics just also have to learn to deal with a physical impairments and the accommodations to...
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...avis, R., & Megginson, N. (2012). The Influence of Paralympic Game
Proposals on Successfully Hosting the Olympics. Palaestra, 26(3), 53-55.
Johan Huizinga. Homo Ludens, 1955. Reprinted by permission of Beacon Press.
Misener, Laura, Simon Darcy, David Legg, and Keith Gilbert. "Beyond Oiympic Legacy :
Understanding Paralympic Legacy Through a Thematic Analysis." Journal of Sport
Management (2013): n. page. Web.
9b60-c1611211d03c%40sessionmgr4003&vid=4&hid=4207>.
Purdue, David E.J., and David P. Howe. "Who's In and Who Is Out? Legitimate Bodies Within
the Paralympic Games." Sociology of Sport Journal (2013): n. page. Web.
c1611211d03c%40sessionmgr4003&vid=4&hid=4207>.
Posnanki, Joe. “To Hall With These Guys?.” Sports Illustrated 115.4 (2011): 14. MAS Ultra – School Edition. Web. 20 Feb. 2014.
Dylan was born with a tumor wrapped around his spinal cord, which was successfully removed however resulted in him becoming paraplegic. The first fourteen years of his life, Dylan defined himself by his disability. He felt ‘weird and different’ because of his disability and this was why he was excluded from his peers. It was not until Grade 9 that Dylan began to see that his disability did not have the power to dictate his life or set a limit to which he could achieve. Since then, Dylan has moved on to achieve phenomenal feats, namely, winning a gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Paralympics to becoming the world’s number one paraplegic tennis player. Dylan can be found wheelchair crowd surfing at concerts, advocating for people with disabilities and training for the 2016 Rio Paralympics. Dylan is on a mission to ‘mainstream disabilities’ and shatter negative
Loyola University Health System. "College athletes putting themselves at risk for long-term health problems." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 11 Feb. 2014. Web. 15 May 2014. .
I began to wonder where and how therapeutic riding originated. In my research I found that therapeutic riding was not taken seriously until Liz Hartel, a Danish rider who had paralysis from poliomyelitis, advanced to competitive riding. Despite the fact that Liz suffered from poliomyelitis, she “went on to win a silver medal in the Grand Prix Dressage competition at the 1952 Helsinki Olympic Games” (Young). After she won this great achievement, an interest around the world in the therapeutic effects of riding emerged; as a result, therapeutic riding programs were established and studies were initiated (Young). I think it is ironic how a person with a disability is so influential in helping other people with disabilities.
Pennington, Bill. "Expectations Lose to Reality of Sports Scholarships." nytimes.com. New York Times, 10 Mar. 2008. Web. 17 Dec. 2013.
Disability in our day in age is seen as being worse than death. People with disabilities should not feel like they don 't belong. They are just like everyone else and want to be treated like everyone else. Many without disabilities think that it can be contagious and stray to even look at people with disability. This is not the case for it 's not contagious and one should not be seen as a different person just because of their disability. They didn 't choose that life and shouldn 't be mistreated for what they are. “People with disability should be treated equally to everyone else.”
Most people feel relatively uncomfortable when they meet someone with an obvious physical disability. Usually, the disability seems to stand out in ones mind so much that they often forget the person is still a person. In turn, their discomfort is likely to betray their actions, making the other person uncomfortable too. People with disabilities have goals, dreams, wants and desires similar to people without disabilities. Andre Dubus points out very clearly in his article, "Why the Able-bodied Still Don't Get It," how people's attitudes toward "cripples" effect them. It's is evident that although our society has come a long way with excepting those with physical disabilities, people do not understand that those with physical disabilities are as much human as the next person
The Special Olympics date back all the way to the year 1968. Many see these Games as a time to honor someone who is able to “overcome” a task, but author William Peace sees this as an insulting portrayal of people with disabilities. Peace is a multidisciplinary school teacher and scholar that uses a wheel chair and writes about the science behind disabilities and handicaps. As a physically handicapped individual, Peace is able to observe a negative portrayal of disabled persons. In his article titled, “Slippery Slopes: Media, Disability, and Adaptive Sports,” William Peace offers his own personal insight, utilizes several statistics regarding handicaps, as well as numerous rhetorical appeals in order to communicate to the “common man”
Special Olympics is an association that allows the disabled to be active by participating and competing in the sport events. In the 1950s through the 1960s, Eunice Kennedy Shriver realized the difference in the way people acted toward the special needs population and the difference in the way people acted toward others. She began to think about the disadvantages of the disabled and their ability to do activities. She knew they were capable of doing some activities, but no one tried to achieve a difference in the way the special needs were treated. Shriver hated the fact that the disabled were ignored because people didn’t believe the special needs people were the same as others (Meyer).
should never be defined or recognized by their disability but rather on their strengths and how far each
In 2008, Oscar Pistorius had been banned from the Olympics due to his prosthetics. Through intense research the IAAF had claimed that they had found data that pointed toward Oscar having an advantage with his prosthetic limb. His advantage would breach one of the qualifying rules which is that an athlete may not use any device that gives them an advantage. However the CAS had ruled that the data the IAAF found was inconclusive and the disqualification of Pistorius was uncalled for (Chappell). Ethics of banning amputees from the Olympics has arisen due this controversy. The ADA protects all amputees from unfair exclusion and “The Practice and Compliance Manual” identifies effective rules and procedures in admitting new athletes. Yet, forcing
Abstract: The Special Olympics not only give special athletes athletic skills, they offer more opportunity, encouragement, and dexterity to survive in society than the public school system alone. To understand the differences and similarities between handicapped athletes and their non-handicap peers is the first step in creating a program that best meets the child's needs. There were no community programs that catered to the mentally and physically challenged, so Eunice Kennedy-Shriver created "special games" in her back yard for her handicapped child. Shriver established the Special Olympics in 1968. Today there are more than one million special athletes competing in 140 countries. There are some problems with relying on the public school system to seek a child's full potential in the special education programs. The Special Olympics, however, have found an effective method of preparing children, teens, and adults for society through sport. The diverse selection of sports, their rules, and physical demands, is an advantage when there is a huge range of disabilities. There is a program offered for almost everyone. People who benefit from these games range from the athletes themselves, the officials, coaches, caregivers, parents, to the spectators and on-site first aid staff. Mrs. Kennedy-Shriver said this in regard to special athletes, "through sports, they can realize their potential for growth." Over and over this fantastic organization has demonstrated integrity, good sportsmanship, and goal oriented programs that work!
In the essay “Disability,” Nancy Mairs discusses the lack of media attention for the disabled, writing: “To depict disabled people in the ordinary activities of life is to admit that there is something ordinary about disability itself, that it may enter anyone’s life.” An ordinary person has very little exposure to the disabled, and therefore can only draw conclusions from what is seen in the media. As soon as people can picture the disabled as regular people with a debilitating condition, they can begin to respect them and see to their needs without it seeming like an afterthought or a burden. As Mairs wrote: “The fact is that ours is the only minority you can join involuntarily, without warning, at any time.” Looking at the issue from this angle, it is easy to see that many disabled people were ordinary people prior to some sort of accident. Mairs develops this po...
People with disabilities are still people, they are people with hearts and they are actual physical beings; people with disabilities do their best to live every day to their fullest, yet that is still not enough for others. I feel like as a whole, humans are generally uncomfortable with people who have disabilities. Let’s think of it this way, people live their life every day in their normal lives and then they come across a person with a disability and suddenly their life is interrupted, like it is such a barrier in their flow of life to come across someone different from themselves.
Citius, Altius, Fortius. In other words, “Faster, Higher, Stronger.” That is the Olympic motto which is also tagged with the five rings. The Olympic Rings are an honor. The five rings represent the five inhabited continents uniting together in one place. The five rings represent something else to me; it represents the five characteristics an Olympian has…the five characteristics I have.