inclusion: history of educ for people w disabilities - notes

[these notes were typed up to be passed on to others; they are a bit flippant and probably unclear; I will revise them if I ever have time. pwd="people with disabilities" throughout]


History of education for people with disabilities

General split between pre- and post-“enlightenment” eras:

PRE-enlightenment:
1200 – 1700 - Dominant belief = disabilities are supernatural

• Mental illness = possession by evil spirits
  
• Disease and ill fortune = sign that god(s) were turning against you
  
• “abnormal” babies killed, ppl mistreated
  

POST-enlightenment:
1800s - Science begins to replace religion as explanatory concept
Problems explained as genetic instead of spiritual
Results

• care is medical and supportive instead of punitive
  
• institutions have benevolent goal of “protecting” and “training”
  
  • protect: pwd are seen as “eternal children” in need of protection
    
  • train: goal that behavior or intellect can be improved & can return to society (transitional schooling)
  
  
• basic idea is still paternalistic
  
• some are seen as “unteachable” and they are permanently institutionalized
  

POST-ENLIGHTENMENT TIMELINE

1. 1800s through early 1900s - Urbanization / industrialization
   
   • Rural social order could absorb “misfits” but new economic order is more demanding of conformity and ability
     
   • “Alms houses” created where those who cannot support selves (widows, orphans, pwd) are “warehoused.”
     
   • Less charitable era—pwd chained like animals & kept in abusive conditions
     
   • Beginning of compulsory schooling
     
     • Schools get larger, more factory-like
       
     • students begin to be segregated by age and ability
       
     • again, more “misfits” created
       
   
   
   
   
2. Mid- to late 1800s: emergence of special education
   
   • idea of educating students w disab: blind and deaf first, then others
     
   • schools were “clearing house” for all different kinds of pwd, and had wide age ranges
     
   • “separate but equal” endorsed for perceived racial and ability differences —definitely excluded from mainstream schools
   
   
   I am trying to make sense of the lecture notes from the history lecture—I think the attitude gradually got more compassionate during the 1800s, but I didn’t want to put that down without stating that I am not 100% sure about it.
   
   
3. 1920s Attitude shift: from protecting pwd to protecting society from the “deviant”
   
   • growing sense that fed’l gov’t is responsible for caring for all people
     
   • pseudo-scientific categorizing and labelling
     
     • Such labels as “idiot, moron, imbecile”
       
     • tests for determining which category people fit into
       
     • include alcoholics and “morally degenerate” like prostitutes
     
     
   • Development of the idea of “hereditarianism”
     
     • Pwd pass on “undesirable” characteristics
       
     • Institutionalize them to prevent them from “breeding”
       
     • Psuedo-scientific justifications for racism
     
     
   • All kinds of bad stuff
     
     • Eugenics movement (US mvt inspires Nazis)
       
     • Restrict immigration / test immigrants
       
     • Forced sterilization of “defective women” (60K people sterilized!) and immigrants
       
   
   
   
4. Depression and New Deal
   
   • FDR has a disability but it is carefully hidden from public
     
   • First federal money for pwd – money to states to support “blind, dependent or crippled”
     
   
   
   
5. 1940s – 1950s
   
   • Death camps make Eugenics movement look bad
     
   • Postwar laws help wounded veterans with acquired disabilities
     
   • Eventually these laws expanded to help everyone else incl those w genetic disab and mentally ill
     
   • Brown v Board 1954 overturns separate but equal
     
   • Beginnings of advocacy by parents of pwd for their inclusion in these rights