Ryan Leitch tops the world in Geography. Oh yeah, and he’s disabled.

February 13th, 2008 · 2 Comments

This is what I love seeing, disabled people doing awesome stuff. It was reported today in the Herald that year 13 Westlake Boys student Ryan Leitch “topped the world” in his NCEA Level 3 Geography exam, such a grade achieved by only around 36 students every year. It is of little consequence to his academic success that Ryan also has muscular atrophy, but nonetheless the entire article has this tone of “Wow, look how well this kid has done, even though he’s disabled”, as if being smart and in a wheelchair is some sort of extreme oxymoron? I don’t doubt for a second the difficulties Ryan faces in his everyday life, I can even empathise to an extent, but this whole notion of succeeding in spite of a disability is, as far as I’m concerned, not only quaint but utterly patronising.

Tags: Education · News

2 responses so far ↓

1 Disabled NZ teenager tops the world, yet can’t even get funding for Uni // Mar 4, 2008 at 10:18 am

[…] written about Ryan Leitch before, but for those of you who don’t recognise the name, he’s the 18 year-old Auckland boy […]
2 Anonymous // Sep 13, 2008 at 10:14 pm

Lol, it’s great to hear all that, but you’ve got some mistaken information :

it’s not NCEA level 3 but there were Cambridge International Examinations . Lol, i don’t think there’s much to compete in NCEA over the world anyway

walking . is . overrated

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