The Earth-wide effort to “Spread the Word” and promote a more inclusive, accepting environment is looming on the calendar. On 5 March 2025 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of people will talk about “the R word” and engage in efforts to encourage we humans to be considerate and, well, humane to our fellow humans regardless of their intellectual or personal-social strengths.
A movement called “Spread the Word” is aiming to counter derogatory language and bullying and to support inclusive actions. Spread the Word provides content and resources for each of the efforts. It not only has support from The Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation (which benefits people with intellectual disabilities) but also from nearly 1,000,000 people and 6000 schools in 80 countries.1
This is not, as I understand it, an effort to ban completely the use of words such as “retard,” “retarded,” and “retardation.” Reasonable people know that there are legitimate uses of these words.2 It is an effort to help people to avoid using those words as derogations. It is an effort to speak respectfully, considerately, and humanely.
Readers interested in actions they can take to help promote respect and inclusion can find resources at Spread the Word about (with quotes for relevant pages for each):
Derogatory Language
In 2009, the “Spread the Word to End the Word” campaign began, when use of the R-Word (‘retard(ed)’) was incredibly frequent throughout society. The efforts substantially cut into the use of the R-Word in everyday life, but the push to see it fully eradicated from conversational norms remains an ongoing process. For context, the R-Word is the most common phrase used to demean, insult, and discriminate against people with disabilities, and it has an extremely negative effect on social and self-esteem of people it’s used against.
Bullying
Recently, the United Nations reported that 1 in 3 students worldwide reported being a victim of bullying in some capacity. For all ages, social statuses, genders, and backgrounds, bullying is prominent in school, sports, and virtually every social situation throughout childhood. Uniquely, bullying is universal, but that doesn’t mean bullying is equal for all groups.
Inclusive Action
What is inclusion? Well, it’s less an idea, and more of an action. At its core, inclusion is making an active effort to create, maintain, and encourage a welcoming environment for all, where all walks of life and perspectives are heard. For students and people with intellectual disabilities, inclusive environments are key to feeling socially accepted, and social acceptance is key to the mental and physical well-being of all, intellectual disability or not.
Spread the Word is affiliated with Special Olympics, Best Buddies, and Generation Unified (an organization of schools working with Special. Olympics and has been supported with funds from the Office of Special Education Programs at the US Department of Education).

Some terminology background
Many readers know that this is the latest version of a long-standing tend in terminology (Trent, 1994). Indeed, adoption of the term “intellectual disabilities” instead of “mental retardation” reflects concern about “retardation” having a negative connotation. According Wikipedia, a leading advocacy organization in the US changed its name repeatedly over the past ~150 years:
1876: Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and Feebleminded Persons
1906: American Association for the Study of the Feebleminded
1933: American Association on Mental Deficiency
1987: American Association on Mental Retardation
2007: American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities
Summary
Spread the Word will conduct an Earth-wide observance on 5 March 2025 to advance respectful and inclusive actions with individuals with disabilities. This is another effort in a long history of endeavors to include individuals with disabilities in the broader culture.
I pledged. Will you?
References
Trent, J. W. (1994). Inventing the feeble mind: A history of mental retardation in the United States. University of California Press.
Footnotes
I took these numbers from the Spread the Word site’s “Live Pledge Count” as of early February 2025.
People who work on traditional internal combustion engines know that one might need to advance or retard the timing of the sparks that set off the miniature explosions in an engine’s cylinders so that fuel (e.g., gas!) will ignite properly and burn efficiently. In a different vein, those of us from the country areas of the southern US know that sometimes the word “retired” may be closer to “retard,” as in the sentence, “Wellll…ahh retard when ahh turn 70.”
It is interesting how the terminology has changed over the years, for the better. Nice article.