Mongoloid

Recently I and my fellow faculty were given a lecture by a (retired) veteran teacher. He seemed a nice enough guy and obviously has many years of teaching experience under his belt but his lecture was little more than inspirational phrases that had little narrative connection between them. This is not unusual in education.

What is unusual in education is when he used the term 'mongoloid' to describe a hypothetical student that could not be educated. I found this a little troubling and was surprised to find that many of my colleagues did not know the term. Happily, they all agreed that any term that is used both for people with Down syndrome and those who are ethnically southeast Asian is an offensive term.