History has proven this has not been an easy clear cut relationship between them both. There’s been quite a bit of giving and taking or even I should say pulling and pushing in regards to educational policy, and also the educational techniques and services of education and special education by the human teachers who deliver those services on both sides of this isle, such as me personally.
Over the previous 20+ years I have been on each side of instruction. I also have been on the exceptional education side seeking to get normal education teachers to work effectively with my own exceptional education students through modifying their schooling and materials along with having only a little more patience and empathy.
Moreover, I have been a mainstream regular education teacher who taught regular education addition classes seeking to work out how to best work with a brand new special education teacher in my own class and their special education students also. And, by comparison, I have already now been a special education inclusion teacher intruding on the realm of several standard education teachers together with my special education students along with also the modifications I thought these teachers should execute. I can tell you first-hand that not one of the offer and choose between special education and regular education was easy. Nor do I see that this pulling and pushing becoming easy any time in the future.
So, what is special education? And exactly what makes it special and yet so complex and contentious some times?
Special educators teach students that have cognitive, cognitive, speech, education, sensory, and/or emotional skills that detract from those of the overall population. These teachers fundamentally make instruction more accessible and available to students who otherwise would have limited access to education as a result of whatever handicap they are fighting with. Sadly, education in this country was, more often than not, very neglectful and abusive when dealing with all students that are different somehow.
There’s even a rich literature within our nation that describes the procedure given to people who have disabilities in the 1800s and early 1900s.
The prevailing view of the writers with the time was that one needs to submit to misfortunes, both being a kind of obedience to God’s will, also because those appearing misfortunes are ultimately intended for one’s own good. Progress for our people with disabilities was hard to come by at this time together with this particular manner of thinking permeating our society, literature and thinking.
However, by the end of the nineteenth century that the size of the institutions had increased so dramatically that the goal of rehab for people with disabilities only was not working. Institutions became instruments such as permanent segregation.
I’ve got some experience with all these segregation policies of instruction. Some of it really is good and some of it is not so great. You see, I have already been a self-contained teacher on / off throughout the years in multiple surroundings in self-contained classrooms in public high schools, middle schools and elementary schools. I have also taught in multiple exclusive schooling behavioral self-study schools which totally separated these troubled students with disabilities in managing their own behavior from their mainstream peers by putting them into completely different buildings which were some times even in various towns from their homes, peers and friends.
Through time many special education professionals became Critics of these institutions stated earlier that separated and segregated our kids with disabilities from their peers. Irvine Howe was among the very first to urge carrying our youth out of these enormous institutions and also to place out citizens into households. Regrettably this clinic became a logistical and pragmatic problem plus it took quite a number of years until it might become a viable alternative to institutionalization for the students with disabilities.
Now on the positive side, You May Be interested in knowing nonetheless that in 1817 the earliest specific education school at the United States, the American Asylum for the Education and Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb (now known as the American School for the Deaf), was created in Hartford, Connecticut, by Gallaudet. This faculty is still there today and is just one of the greatest schools in the country for students with disabilities that are squared. A real success story!
Nevertheless, as you can already imagine, the lasting success of the American School for the Deaf has been that the exception rather than the rule during this time period. And to add to this, in the late nineteenth century, social Darwinism replaced environmentalism because the major philosophical explanation for all those individuals with disabilities that deviated from those of the typical populace.