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The Beginnings of Special Education
Disability has historically been misunderstood: It has been perceived as a curse or punishment for being immoral, or been linked to racist ideas of physical or mental inferiority. In the 18th century US, children with disabilities may have been kept at home, out of the sight of the community, or abandoned and sent to an almshouse. Children who were sick or physically disabled might end up in a hospital for most of their lives.1 When formal schooling became more widespread for white students in the middle of the 19th century, disabled children were taken up as a cause by religious men who felt a moral calling to help them.
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The earliest schools for disabled children in New York City were started by philanthropists who were not disabled themselves. They learned teaching methods from European educators who had had some success teaching Deaf, blind, and intellectually disabled children.2 Some of these early schools were day schools, and others were residential schools, where children lived while they were educated. The initial goals of these residential institutions were to try to rehabilitate those who could adapt to their disability and fit in with society. They soon became places to segregate Disabled people away from society, where they weren’t seen.
At first, schools for the blind and Deaf were supported by tuition from wealthy families and charitable donations for poor disabled children. Early institutions for children with intellectual disabilities, however, were funded by the state.3 At first, the day schools and state institutions shared a goal of educating or rehabilitating disabled children so they could attend school with non-disabled students, find employment as adults, and become “productive” members of society.4 Many people never returned to society, but stayed and worked at the institutions. The purpose of the institutions shifted from educational to custodial, with some school leaders arguing that children with intellectual disabilities should be completely segregated.5
The way people thought about the worthiness of support for children with certain disabilities is evident in where they located them. Schools for the blind and Deaf were in Manhattan, but the “Idiot School” was located on Randall’s Island, away from the city. Many children with intellectual and developmental disabilities were later sent to residential institutions like Letchworth Village in Rockland County, forty miles from New York City.
As compulsory schooling took effect in the late 19th century, the charitable schools became publicly funded, and new categories of children were created. Elizabeth Farrell, a social welfare reformer working at the Henry Street Settlement, pioneered an “ungraded class.” Farrell also taught children who were pushed out of school because of behavior problems, limited English proficiency, or disability, including “behavioral, academic, physical, or psychological problems,” often collectively described as “backward and feeble-minded children.”6 She convinced the NYC Board of Education to offer public ungraded classes, starting first at P.S. 1 in lower Manhattan in 1906. By 1908, the public school system’s special education system was taking shape, with a special institution for truants, and classes for the “mentally defective,” “incorrigibles,” “deaf-mutes,” and the blind.7 The need for these special classes was evident, but the resources were not available to teach all students. Without an explicit right to education, school staff could decide that students could not be educated and exclude them from school.
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Irmo Marini, The History of Treatment Toward People With Disabilities (New York: Springer Publishing Company, 2021), https://connect.springerpub.com/content/book/978-0-8261-8063-6/part/part01/chapter/ch01. ↩︎
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Margaret A. Winzer, The History of Special Education: From Isolation to Integration (Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 1993), 77-78. ↩︎
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James Trent, Inventing the Feeble Mind: A History of Intellectual Disability in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 826. ↩︎
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Trent, Inventing the Feeble Mind, 42. ↩︎
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Michael M. Gerber, “A History of Special Education,” in Handbook of Special Education, (Oxfordshire, United Kingdom: Routledge, 2017), 10. ↩︎
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Kimberly E. Kode, Elizabeth Farrell and the History of Special Education (Arlington, VA: Council for Exceptional Children, 2002), 42, https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED474364. ↩︎
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“New York City’s Schools and What They Cost: The Greatest System in the Country, Costing Annually Something Like $50,000,000, It Is Unable to Accommodate All Children Seeking an Education Here,” The New York Times, September 13, 1908, https://www.nytimes.com/1908/09/13/archives/new-york-citys-schools-and-what-they-cost-the-greatest-system-in.html. ↩︎
