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8. The Boston Special Classes
- Gallaudet University Press
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8 THE BOSTON SPECIAL CLASSES Elizabeth A. R. Daniels opened the first class designated specifically for "mentally defective" children in the Boston public school system on January 30, 1899. Between twelve and fifteen boys and girls attended the class held in room 9 of the Rice Schoolhouse on Appleton Street in the South End. Until December of that year, Daniels's class was the only one of its type in the entire school system. In just over twenty years, however, the number ofthese "special classes" jumped to 77, serving almost twelve hundred students. By 1930 a Department of Special Classes administered the education of around two thousand mentally disabled children attending 135 classes and centers designed specifically for them. Segregated, specialized public education for Boston schoolchildren identified as mentally disabled had come to stay.1 Boston was not the first city to implement such classes. In Europe, Prussia had started "auxiliary schools" for mentally disabled children in 1859. In the United States, Providence, Rhode Island, generally receives credit for starting the first class of this type in 1896, although Cleveland, Ohio, had experimented with the idea in a somewhat different form in the mid-1870s. In Massachusetts, Springfield established a special class in 1898. Nevertheless, Boston soon became the leading employer of the special class in the state and along with New York City set the pace in the special education of mentally disabled American public school children during the early twentieth century. For Boston, special classes represented still another attempt by its school officials to differentiate public school students for purposes ofeducational efficiency and economy. And in antedating by more than a decade similar programs offered in the system for children with a variety of disabilities, the special class constituted a core component ofthe evolution ofspecialized instructional settings in the city. The growth of these classes reveals much about the impact of compulsory 127 128 Specialized Education Programs education on public schooling. However, it also demonstrates the extent to which the understanding of mental retardation had changed during the 1800s and the extent to which beliefs in the importance of bringing every child under the influence of public schooling, and of providing certain groups with specialized instruction, had become ingrained in the minds of educators and other community leaders.2 Origins of the Special Class Schoolteachers in the United States had long known, of course, that considerable differences in ability existed among pupils in a given classroom or school. The typical response to such differences involved adjusting the instruction ofeach student to his or her particular capabilities and grouping children of similar abilities whenever possible. This constituted the traditional practice in the ungraded, one-room schoolhouses of the colonial and early national periods that served all ages and educational levels in the same setting. In emergent urban systems such as Boston's, early classification of students depended more on educational attainment than on age. While older students often mixed with younger ones, the level of achievement in each student grouping (often several groups were instructed separately in the same room) was relatively equal. With the advent ofgrading and classification based on age, however, teachers became more concerned about the wide range of differences of academic performance among their pupils. With the majority of students attending schools on a daily basis and with curricula increasing in complexity and standardization , teachers could identify more easily those students who consistently suffered from observable learning difficulties. They could also see how individual rates ofprogress could differ over time even among students seemingly similar in ability.3 In the late 1860s, the Boston School Committee formally discussed the issue of significant intellectual differences among pupils in the city's graded classrooms. In its annual report of 1867 the committee issued a call for appreciation of the "great differences ... in the capacities of children" and for compassion in coping with those of "sluggish temperament or organic defect." As noted earlier, the BSC also acknowledged that the basic curriculum had been designed for those of"average ability" and that many students learned at either a slower or faster rate. In dealing with different [54.224.124.217] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 02:50 GMT) Special Classes 129 abilities in the classroom, the school committee of the 1860s recommended only in-class solutions and did not engage in discussion of the advisability ofa separate program.4 Nevertheless, individual intellectual differences in the classroom created considerable pressure not only on the teachers but also on the system...