Special education

“ We respond that the integral education, that tries to give to the child isn’t possible except through collective action; and that a special education, such as today a millionaire can give his children, is far inferior to that which will be received in the educational establishments of regenerated society to each of the pueblo’s children. ”

“ What is not envisioned is that the appropriate educational programming and related services will result in an educational benefit being conferred. Special education can no more ensure good results than can regular education. ”

“ Following these physical examinations, the children who are clearly sub-normal are placed in special classes or special schools, where, under the direction of specially fitted teachers, they do any mental work for which they are fitted, in the interims of time between manual activities. Weaving, woodworking, folding and similar employments hold the attention of sub-normal children where intellectual work will not. The special school, freed from the throttling grip of an iron-clad course of study, studies the need of each child, and makes a course of study to fit the need. ”

“ One could imagine a school, and there are some of the kind, which only cares about producing graduates, without thinking of what will become of them in life, even if they go to the dogs. Every class, every school, for defectives ought to aim at rendering its pupils socially useful. It is not a question of enriching their minds, but of giving them the means of working for their living. This is an important question. Upon this depends our complete and final judgment of the utility of special education. ”

“ A Call for Inclusive Schools, Report to the National Association of State Boards of Education by Study Group on Special Education (October 1992) . While "inclusion" may be a more precise term, we will nonetheless use the term "mainstreaming" because it is currently the common parlance. Moreover, as we discuss below, "mainstreaming" as required under IDEA does not mean simply the placement of a child with disabilities in a regular classroom or school program. ”

“ Thus, a determination that a child with disabilities might make greater academic progress in a segregated, special education class may not warrant excluding that child from a regular classroom environment. We emphasize that the Act does not require states to offer the same educational experience to a child with disabilities as is generally provided for nondisabled children. ”

“ The children that find it harder than most of their age and station to grow up to full enjoyment and use of life's opportunities, because of some weight of affliction, are, we now know, entitled to all the training that the normal child receives and whatever else of special education their condition requires. The children that can never grow up to mental maturity, even with all that educational ingenuity can offer, are the permanent members of Society's Infant Class. ”

“ Article 47 Special schools shall conduct education and correction of juveniles receiving special education in different hierarchies and categories, provide targeted moral education, rule of law education, and mental health education, and provide vocational education in light of the actual circumstances; and guarantee that juveniles who have not finished compulsory education continue to receive compulsory education. ”

“ We ask that all intelligent initiative should be accepted and encouraged, and that the teachers in special schools should frequently meet together in order that they may compare their experience. In short, we should give to the schools and classes for defectives such freedom and elasticity that the kind of education best adapted for such children would be able to evolve and perfect itself like a living organism. ”

“ Through the increase in the differentiation of special classes within the schools our educational systems are making education more nearly free to all, and so taking a most important part in the great work of prevention. ”

“ If combined with vocational guidance it not only prevents the boy or girl from aimlessly drifting into an unskilled occupation, but it singles out for special attention children who show special aptitude for particular trades and professions. Vocational education for the blind, the deaf, the crippled, and the otherwise disabled is social service of the finest and most constructive type. ”

“ But, in the course of study in the common school, it is proper and necessary that the human interest should always be kept somewhat in advance of the physical. This is simply a statement of the fact, admitted by all, that professional training in the special school is the application, in a restricted field, of principles which should be applied in every field and in all studies, whether those characteristic of a profession or those which constitute divisions of a broad, liberal and cultural education. ”

“ Has the school met the legitimate demand for a suitable education of the adolescent? The answer is that the school has been slow in meeting this situation. The archaic form of school organization which attached the seventh and eighth grades to the elementary school has hindered greatly a proper recognition of the special needs of adolescence. The child of twelve or thirteen does not need a review of the elementary work so much as a preparation for the active life of adulthood. The adolescent needs to be given an insight into the organization of society. ”

“ We ought to be convinced from such evidence of the necessity of special schools for deficients, wholly separated from the elementary schools, and where medical care combined with a specially adapted pedagogic treatment may transform the school into a true "home of health and education." ”

“ Under the prevailing policy, subject to the assessment and recommendation of the specialists and with parents' consent, children with more severe or multiple disabilities are placed in special schools for intensive support. ”

“ In our opinion it is best to remove these children early to special institutions, where their education can be superintended by those thoroughly accomplished and accustomed to dealing with this class. ”

“ It goes without saying that a special training is necessary for the intellectual "backwards"; but before any attempt at education, it is necessary to treat their bodily deficiencies, and to place them in the special schools with the boarding system, where they will be under the eye both of the doctor and of the teacher. ”

“ In addition to the free appropriate education requirement, IDEA provides that states must establish
procedures to assure that, to the maximum extent appropriate, children with disabilities . . . are educated with children who are not disabled, and that special classes, separate schooling, or other removal of children with disabilities from the regular educational environment occurs only when the nature and severity of the disability is such that education in regular classes with the use of supplementary aids and services cannot be achieved satisfactorily . ”

“ In some cases it would be found that the child was altogether unable to undertake this work, and measures should be taken to remedy the defect before the child enters upon the school course. Lastly, it is now realised that more attention must be paid to the differences that exist between individual children, and that in the case of children with a low degree of intelligence it is much better both for themselves and for the school generally to institute special classes or special schools for their education. ”

“ Last year the social worker who was supplied to the department of ungraded classes of the New York public schools by the Public Education Association proved abundantly the need for such work in connection with all the special classes for children who are backward from any cause whatever. ”

“ Such measures in behalf of general education as governments have adopted in recent times are founded, to be sure, partly on the conscious need of self-protection against ignorance and its baleful consequences to the state. A more directly humane impulse, however, mingles with this motive. The operation of benevolent feeling is seen in the multiplying of special schools for the benefit of the blind, of the deaf and dumb, and even of imbeciles. ”

“ Their excellent work has led to impressive results over the past three decades, including 94% of children served by CASE receiving appropriate educational services and 95% of clients being connected to local parent networks to help them address other family needs. ”

“ In many of the large towns where institutions are established, associations iu aid of the deaf and dumb are springing up and carrying on most important and valuable work. Their first business is to seek out neglected children and to get them placed in some special school. Situations are procured for those on leaving school whose parents are unable to do anything for them, and the education com menced at the institutions is carried on by means of lectures ”

“ Another method is to teach only the exceptional children individually, while the others are taught as before in classes. Still another plan that is now being adopted extensively in large cities, is that of having special schools or classes for each type of exceptional child, the deaf, the blind, the lame, the epileptic, the incorrigible, etc. ”

“ Through special classes and mainstream programs in schools, more and more young people with this developmental disability are joining in the exciting process of learning and discovery. Many are also working to achieve their fullest potential through vocational training and independent living programs. ”

“ In precisely similar fashion, our daily associations cannot be trusted to make clear to the young the part played in our activities by remote physical energies, and by invisible structures. Hence a special mode of social intercourse is instituted, the school, to care for such matters. ”

“ As a Nation, let us also reassert our commitment to ensuring equal opportunity, equal access, and full participation of citizens with disabilities in our community life. This year, we celebrated the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, reaffirming our belief that all students can learn and must have the opportunities and resources necessary to do so. ”

“ It is probable that the special school would render greater services than the ordinary school, because it has greater advantages: teachers experienced in the training of defectives, a curriculum better fitted to the aptitudes of the latter, and, most important of all, the possibility of individual instruction. ”

“ When the defect is a serious one, such children should on no account be brought up in the family circle, or educated in ordinary schools; it is absolutely necessary to provide special schools and institutions for each class of such defectives—blind schools, deaf-mute schools, cripple schools, &c. ”

“ This purpose can be accomplished by—
(1) meeting the educational needs of low-achieving children in our Nation’s highest-poverty schools, English learners, migratory children, children with disabilities, Indian children, and neglected or delinquent children; (2) closing the achievement gap between high- and low-performing children, especially the achievement gaps between minority and nonminority students, and between disadvantaged children and their more advantaged peers; (3) affording parents substantial and meaningful opportunities to participate in the education of their children ”

“ For the well-born, normal-minded, healthy-bodied child, who has wise and careful guardians or parents to assist in his mental guidance, the public school forms a good basis on which to build an education. ”

“ It should be stressed that, where a handicapped child is so disruptive in a regular classroom that the education of other students is significantly impaired, the needs of the handicapped child cannot be met in that environment. ”

“ Within recent years, special schools have been opened in connection with the school systems of large cities, so that children who need individual care and watchfulness may receive more attention than they could secure in the graded class-room. ”

“ In such schools children who are so different from normal children that under ordinary circumstances or even in special classes they would become a burden upon society may, by individual treatment directed by experts, be developed into happy, intelligent human beings and useful citizens. ”

“ Diseases of the eye and all maladies that would impair the capacity of a child to earn its living should in the interest of the community receive prompt attention and the most skilful treatment available. Special schools for children who are crippled, blind, deaf, feeble-minded or otherwise afflicted should be provided at the public cost, from motives, not of mere philanthropy, but of enlightened self-interest. ”

“ It is still required in most public schools, though, that pupils in any group should be kept quite close together in their educational progress, even when they show marked differences in ability in particular subjects or in the entire work of the school. But the pressure is becoming constantly greater to arrange school programs so that pupils may go forward as rapidly as their abilities, either general or special, will enable them to do, while those who are deficient may receive help according to their needs. ”

“ This humanising process will be introduced into the schools, when scholars are no longer regarded as classes, but each individual for himself. The schools will then commence to fulfil one of the many conditions necessary to give young people real nourishment and so develop them and make them happy.
Such a school life will make its first aim to discover in early years uncommon talent, to direct such talent to special studies. ”