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BOUTONNIERES continued

"I feel good knowing that somebody out there is going to be touched by what I’m doing," Shalati said. Without in any way taking away from her personal pride in her accomplishments, I feel awful that she had been exploited so thoroughly: first made to work in sweatshop conditions that no nondisabled person would legally be required to endure unless he or she were a convicted felon, and second, held up to the world as an inspirational example – as if her impairment were her oppression and not the archaic attitudes that condemn her to toil over these "patriotic ornaments" instead of receiving an education.

The sheltered workshop at the Homewood Flossmoore High School is supported by a federal grant from the Job Training Partnership Act. The original purpose of the JTPA (a program devised in the early 1980s by then-Senator Dan Quayle to replace the Great Society-era Comprehensive Employment Training Act or CETA) was to prepare people who had received inadequate educations for jobs in the private sector. Evidently it didn’t occur to Lowrey to question why JTPA is supporting sheltered workshops, or why boutonniere-making has replaced education at Homewood Flossmoore.

This is nothing new, of course. As a former reporter, I am constantly startled by the behavior of my former colleagues when they go out to report a feel-good story about "handicapped people." Journalistic objectivity, research, the questioning attitude – all of them go out the window when the goal of the story is "human interest" about persons with disabilities "overcoming" something.

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