Tanfolyam

 Possibly the largest and most pervasive issue in special education, along with my own personal journey in education, is special education's relationship to general education. History indicates that it's never been a straightforward clear cut relationship between the two. There's been lots of giving and taking or even I will say pulling and pushing as it pertains to educational policy, and the educational practices and services of education and special education by the human educators who deliver those services on both parties of the isle, like me Tanfolyam.

Throughout the last 20+ years I have already been on both parties of education. I have experienced and felt what it was like to be a regular main stream educator working with special education policy, special education students and their specialized teachers. I have already been on the special education side hoping to get regular education teachers to work more effectively with my special education students through modifying their instruction and materials and having a bit more patience and empathy.

Furthermore, I have already been a mainstream regular education teacher who taught regular education inclusion classes wanting to work out how to best assist some new special education teacher in my class and his / her special education students as well. And, in contrast, I have already been a special education inclusion teacher intruding on the territory of some regular education teachers with my special education students and the modifications I believed these teachers should implement. I will inform you first-hand that none of this give and take between special education and regular education has been easy. Nor do I see this pushing and pulling becoming easy anytime soon.

So, what's special education? And why is it so special and yet so complex and controversial sometimes? Well, special education, as its name suggests, is just a specialized branch of education. It claims its lineage to such people as Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard (1775-1838), the physician who "tamed" the "wild boy of Aveyron," and Anne Sullivan Macy (1866-1936), the teacher who "worked miracles" with Helen Keller.

Special educators teach students who have physical, cognitive, language, learning, sensory, and/or emotional abilities that deviate from those of the general population. Special educators provide instruction specifically tailored to meet individualized needs. These teachers basically make education more available and accessible to students who otherwise would have limited usage of education due to whatever disability they're struggling with.

It's not only the teachers though who may play a role in the real history of special education in this country. Physicians and clergy, including Itard- mentioned above, Edouard O. Seguin (1812-1880), Samuel Gridley Howe (1801-1876), and Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet (1787-1851), desired to ameliorate the neglectful, often abusive treatment of people with disabilities. Sadly, education in this country was, more often than not, very neglectful and abusive when working with students which are different somehow.

There's even a wealthy literature within our nation that describes the procedure provided to people with disabilities in the 1800s and early 1900s. Sadly, in these stories, along with in actuality, the segment of our population with disabilities were often confined in jails and almshouses without decent food, clothing, personal hygiene, and exercise.

For a good example of this different treatment within our literature one needs to check no longer than Tiny Tim in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (1843). Additionally, often times people with disabilities were often portrayed as villains, such as for instance in the book Captain Hook in J.M. Barrie's "Peter Pan" in 1911 Tanfolyam.

The prevailing view of the authors of this time period was that one should submit to misfortunes, both as a questionnaire of obedience to God's will, and because these seeming misfortunes are ultimately meant for one's own good. Progress for the people with disabilities was hard to come by currently with this way of thinking permeating our society, literature and thinking.

So, that which was society to accomplish about these folks of misfortune? Well, during much of the nineteenth century, and early in the twentieth, professionals believed people with disabilities were best treated in residential facilities in rural environments. An out of sight out of mind sort of thing, if you will...

However, by the end of the nineteenth century the size of these institutions had increased so dramatically that the target of rehabilitation for people with disabilities just wasn't working. Institutions became instruments for permanent segregation.

I involve some experience with your segregation policies of education. A few of it's good and a number of it's not good. You see, I have already been a self-contained teacher on and off through the entire years in multiple environments in self-contained classrooms in public places high schools, middle schools and elementary schools. I have taught in multiple special education behavioral self-contained schools that totally separated these troubled students with disabilities in managing their behavior from their mainstream peers by putting them in very different buildings which were sometimes even in different towns from their homes, friends and peers.

Over the years many special education professionals became critics of those institutions mentioned above that separated and segregated our children with disabilities from their peers. Irvine Howe was among the first to ever advocate taking our youth out of those huge institutions and to place out residents into families. Unfortunately this practice became a logistical and pragmatic problem and it took quite a long time before it could become a viable option to institutionalization for the students with disabilities.

Now on the positive side, you may be interested in knowing however that in 1817 the very first special education school in the United States, the American Asylum for the Education and Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb (now called the American School for the Deaf), was established in Hartford, Connecticut, by Gallaudet. That school is still there today and is among the top schools in the united states for students with auditory disabilities. A genuine success story!

However, as you can already imagine, the lasting success of the American School for the Deaf was the exception and not the rule during this time period period. And to enhance this, in the late nineteenth century, social Darwinism replaced environmentalism as the primary causal explanation for anyone people with disabilities who deviated from those of the general population Tanfolyam.