Values and Attitudes – Part 1

I'm studying a Certificate III in Disability at Canberra Institute of Technology (CIT). This article is in three parts of an assignment I wrote based on Values and Attitudes. It relates to people with disabilities and my arguments against attitudes that are held by a minority of the community.

Now that I have received my grades for this assignment, I want to share with you:

• my research
• the completed assignment
• internet links that support my arguments.

I hope you enjoy the article and I look forward to any comments you may have by posting them in the comments function at the end of this article.



People with a Disability should not be living within the community
Such a statement is based on ill informed, uneducated, and ignorant prejudices. Throughout history many people suffered grave brutality, under the pretence of society helping and protecting the community.

During biblical times, disabilities were viewed as a punishment of the Christian and Israelite(Judaism) God. For example in the ( Job 2:7) it states 'Satan left the LORD's presence and struck Job with painful boils from the soles of his feet to the top of his head'. It then goes on to say that Job's wife said to him 'Are you still holding on to your principles? Curse God and die!'. Further to this, three of Job's trusted friends said that 'he had committed a grave sin against God' (Job 4:7-8). What this means is that Job's wife and friends made an assumption that Job had committed a grave sin against God and that he was being punished for his sin. Job's wife even said that he was better off dead. In actual fact Job had a medical condition.

During the time of Jesus, two men lived in a cemetery. People were too scared to go along the road because the men were dangerous and accused of being possessed by demons (Matthew 8:28-34). It was believed that people with a mental illness or intellectual disability were possessed by demons or evil spirits.

In the Dark Ages many Europeans believed that the power of witches, demons, and spirits caused abnormal behaviours. It was thought, at this time, that the only way to remove these evil forces was by exorcism. If that failed the mentally ill were confined, beaten and sometimes tortured to remove the demons or the witches' spell.

In the twentieth century, extreme policies sanctioned and legislated by governments were created to remove the 'disability' (.e.g. mental illness, intellectual disabilities and people who were unable to work due to disabilities) problem. Terms were used such as feeble mindedness , abnormal, idiots, congenitally crippled in reference to people with disabilities. In Germany on 1st September 1939 Adolf Hitler issued a decree resulting in the killing of patients in mental asylums and other institutions under the policy, code-named Operation T-4. It was found that between the years of 1939 and 1945 Hitler's Nazi Regime had murdered 70,000 mentally and physically handicapped persons. Hitler believed this was the only way to cleanse the human race of abnormalities and relieve the financial burden placed on the community.

Now we are living in the twenty-first century, where society shows respect for people with disabilities. Rather than bad treatment or physical abuse of (beating, torturing or murdering) innocent disabled people, we demand that these individuals be afforded human rights with a life of dignity, equal rights, equal opportunities and inclusion in our community.

People with disabilities are recognised and respected by the United Nations. Such a statement, that people with disabilities should not be living within the community, is discriminatory and against the law of many countries. Disabled people are also protected and defended by human rights advocates.