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British Columbia Association for the Mentally Retarded, Victoria, British Columbia, 1976

Your program committee has asked me to discuss this morning the topic "Human Rights -- Myth or Reality." Let me state right off my premise as pointedly as I can. There is no question that human rights for mentally retarded persons, young and old, are a reality, that they exist. That evidence is all around us. But there is also the reality that there are all too many people who keep on denying this reality, who call these human rights a myth, a fantasy, wishful thinking, and worse.

It is only fair to state that a number of people in this room, people who do care for and about retarded individuals, nevertheless hold this view and cannot accept the reality of human rights as it relates to the retarded person for whom they care.

Let me now hasten to add that to assert the reality of human rights is by no way saying that the implementation, the fulfillment of these rights, is an accomplished fact. These are indeed two different things, recognizing the reality of human rights for mentally retarded persons and then setting about implementing these rights on a day-to-day basis. The point that must be made forcefully is of course that we cannot possibly hope for any kind of implementation efforts from people who in the first place deny that such rights do exist, that mentally retarded individuals are endowed with the same human rights as the rest of us.

Next it must be stressed that there is a marked difference between human rights and legal rights. Legal rights are either derived from specific statutes or from basic pronouncements of the judiciary, the courts. Human rights cover much broader ground. They grow out of the human existence itself, may be formulated by philosophers or pronounced by some body such as the United Nations. I refer you to the program of this conference, where on page 2 you will find reprinted the UN Declaration on the Rights of Mentally Retarded Persons, which, in the second paragraph specifically, speaks of reaffirming faith in human rights.

Most legal rights relating to persons involve human rights, but you only need to recall the terror regimes of Hitler in Germany to remember legal rights which were devoid of any humanity.

On the other hand, it is important to be mindful that in general even those human rights which lack the affirmation as legal rights can and do have a powerful influence on our lives, and in many instances determine our actions as if we were facing the mandate of a law.

What is the meaning of all of this, within the framework of the theme of this Conference? Let me start with a simple and yet most fundamental point: out of the human experience has come the recognition that human life can be equated with growth and development. There is no standing still; there may be processes of deterioration leading to death, but growth and development is the basic fact of human life, and the most basic human right derived from this is the right to grow and develop, the right to move from childhood to adolescence, from adolescence to adulthood. Human growth is not just a physiological process. It expresses itself in many different areas of human life. Traditionally, one of the most basic impediments in the life of retarded persons has been a persistent effort to deny this growth process. Some years ago your own Canadian Film Board called persons with mental retardation "Eternal Children." Nobel Prize winner Pearl Buck referred to her retarded adult daughter as "The Child Who Never Grew." And last evening John DuRand expressed his exasperation in seeing grownup men and women come to his workshop with Mickey Mouse lunch boxes. His example was well chosen, because the daily use of such an inappropriate lunch box does amount to a daily denial that the person carrying the box has a right to be seen as being a young man, or a young woman, and, quite obviously, this denial will manifest itself in many other ways. Again, let me refer to Mr. DuRand's slides we saw last night. In one instance he showed, very compellingly, how just the surroundings, the work environment, in which we place a retarded young adult can be damaging when it looks like a playroom rather than a work station.

At first blush this point may impress you as being far removed from anything as high sounding as a basic human right, yet ever more increasingly we have come to recognize the significance of a term educators have long been using: "age-appropriate." My husband likes to tell a story how, very early in his career as the Executive Director of the National ARC, he was taught the importance of this factor by the parent of a retarded child. He had spent the day visiting various facilities of the parent association in the State of South Dakota, and had been taken by the State President to his house for dinner. After an initial greeting, the lady of the house had gone to the kitchen to prepare dinner, and the children were playing outside, with the exception of the youngest, a boy with Down's Syndrome who had remained in the living room. The father excused himself to make some telephone calls, and in connection with this story it is important to mention that he had been totally blinded as an adult. In any case, as the father talked on the phone my husband spoke to John, the boy with Down's Syndrome, and to my husband's great satisfaction, after a while John climbed on his lap and they continued to chat. As the father hung up the phone he listened for a second and, with the acuity of hearing many blind persons develop to compensate for their loss of sight, he surprised my husband by saying "Doc -- is that boy sitting on your lap?" And, without waiting for an answer, he added quite sharply, "John, you know where you should be. Go out and play in the yard."