SOME WWW SPECIAL EDUCATION LINKS
In the 50's, when I started school, all students were in regualr classes. The special needs students were often made to sit in the front right next to the teacher's desk or ignored and left in the back. These were the ones who were said to have "cooties" and were made fun of by the other students. School life was miserable. By the time they reached junior high and high school age, they dissappeared, because they quit school and got a job or just stayed home.
Then, new classes started showing up in school boiler rooms. An effort was made to meet educational needs by separation from the general population. Movies, filmstrips, games and a watered down curriculum were used trying to make education more interesting and concrete.
Manditory attendance laws forced schools to deal with the special ed. students. Words like mainstreaming started creeping into schools. Regular teachers, now used to the separation, were convinced they could not handle special students in their classrooms. But they started showing up in shop, home ec., and p.e. classes anyway. They also worked in the lunch room and helped the janitor shovel snow and sweep floors.
Next came accountability in special education with the advent of IEP'S (individual educational programs). Labels like EMR (educatable mental retarded) were replaced with DD (developementally disabled), DH (developementally handicapped), SLD (specific learning disabilities) and SBH (sever behavioral disorder). The new buzz term was LD/BD (learning disorder/behavior disorder). This was to be the savior of the at risk students. "We will take your children, heal them, and return them to the regular classes caught up at grade level all in one year", was promised to the parents and regular teachers. It didn't work.
Self contained classrooms, resource rooms, tutors, vocational programs, work study and pull out programs were all tried as special education stumbled around to find the best way to educate the special students. Many were successful, even though districts and teachers were tied down because of state funding.
ADD (attention deficient disorder) became the new buzz word. It almost seemed like a fad. Everyone had it. Maybe I'm getting too old or too cynical, but who cares about the label. Whether it is LD or ADD or XYZ, they'er still the same kids with the same needs and same problems.
The best thing that ever happened to special education, was when the state no longer dictated with funding what the local district had to do to meet the individual needs of students. Non-categorical expiermental units started springing up all over. Teachers now could reach across paper boundaries to help students. Free at last, free at last, thank God I'm free at last!
Today inclusion is capturing the attention of educators, both regular and special. This is a whole subject in itself. See my link, Inclusion or Intrusion, for a discussion on the topic and an opportunity to make comments.
comments. If you would like to receive a copy of those responses, please indicate what you would like to receive. I'll do my best to send them. I also plan to post as many responses at this site as I can.
SOME WWW SPECIAL EDUCATION LINKS
Page