Special Olympics: For Who? (I)

I've been really troubled by President Obama's remark about the Special Olympics on last Thursday's Tonight Show:

Chatting with the host, Jay Leno, the president said he had been practicing at the White House bowling alley and rolled a 129. “It was like the Special Olympics or something,” Mr. Obama said.

The President has apologized, the March 20th New York Times notes, but I don't think his very unfortunate remark is going to be forgotten. Sullivan at Left Brain/Right Brain has commented further on the President's gaffe and also on the Special Olympics' media campaign to eliminate the use of the r-word.

Amid all these considerations about words which (to quote Tim Shriver, the chairman of the Special Olympics) can "'hurt'" and which "'do matter,'" I've been thinking about some other questions raised about the Special Olympics by Canadian journalist Lauren McKeon in an article in This Magazine (May-June 2008), Why won't you let me play?: Is the Special Olympics discriminating against the kids it's supposed to help?.  McKeon's sister, Carol, who is developmentally disabled, played soccer in Challenge League in Ontario, which is "...affiliated with, but not fully integrated into, Special Olympics Canada (SOC)." In Challenge League, Carol did pretty much what Jim and I hoped Charlie would learn from the numerous special needs sports leagues/programs that we attempted to enroll him in over the years:

Carol found not only acceptance but friendship and a chance to simply be herself. None of her teammates cared that for that first year she was afraid to “get in the game.” They also didn’t care that some players used walkers or wheelchairs, that two or three always ran the wrong way, or that inevitably one player tried to spend the game picking dandelions or doing gymnastics. They were a team and they were having fun.

Not that things were idyllic. There were bullies and more skilled athletes who, at times, could dominate the game. And the other coaches and I did spend a lot of time encouraging players to run the right way, kick the ball and stop picking flowers: next to fun, learning the fundamentals of the game and developing those skills were key. But we didn’t keep score and what seemed to matter most was that those kids who spent so much time on the outside were finally on the inside.

Ok, we could do without the bullying (we could all do without the bullying). But for Charlie (and, when I look back on my elementary school P.E. days of ducking when the ball was hit in my direction and then running as fast as I dared to find the ball I could never catch, me and all those non-sports-minded kids), sports activities that were about effort and trying and learning, about fitness and playing "for the fun of it" and "going at your own pace": These have been the best activities, where Charlie has learned the most and enjoyed himself the most. Indeed, when Charlie was 5 and playing in a Challenger League in a very suburban New Jersey suburb, his coach (whose daughter played on a "regular" little league team and whose son was on Charlie's team) noted that he preferred the Challenger League because "this is what it's about, not the competition, just going out and playing ball and having a good time."

But, as McKeon notes, too often it seems that there's a split between Special Olympics as providing a venue for "differently able" athletes to learn to play sports and be active, and the highest-ranked athletes who compete in the top levels of competition, and not necessarily a corresponding divying up of resources.

Who are the Special Olympics for?

There'll be more discussion about this topic in another post later today tomorrow.