The History of Special Education: From Isolation to Integration

Introduction

70 Part 1 / Lessons of a Dark Past diverged sharply from the route illuminated by the French philosophes and practitioners . Political differences and fears fueled by the French Revolution spilled over to affect all aspects of British life, including the education of disabled individuals . France was Britain's ancient and enduring enemy on the battlefieldand would become so again under Napoleon. The violence of the Revolution and the ensuing Reign of Terror shook all of Europe, and nowhere was this more apparent than in Britain. Still smarting from the loss of the American colonies, fearful after the internal civil disruptions of the 1780s, and beginning to face internal dissension with the onset of the Industrial Revolution, the British may not yet have feared for their empire, but they fretted for their stability, bound up as it was in the British class and political system. Even if the common people applauded the strength of their peasant brethren, the ruling classes quaked at the specter of internal dissension and revolution sparked by news of the French experience . To protect themselves against the corrupting miasma drifting across the Channel, the British closeted themselves in mounting conservatism, one manifestation of which was animosity to all things French. Although the British isolated themselves, their disregard of French philosophers and teachers did not ultimately translate into ignorance of the new social philosophies circulating in Europe. By the close of the eighteenth century the social climate in Britain promoted education for exceptional persons. Nevertheless , religious zealotry, political conservatism, and a stereotyped social philosophy inhibited the creative and speculative thinking that might have occurred in Great Britain (Seigel, 1969). Rather than following the rigorous intellectual approach used by the French in special education, the British embarked on a basically utilitarian method of education. They brushed aside the novel psychological and philosophical principles concerning the disabled population and sought to make exceptional individuals fit neatly into regular society. In Great Britain the care and training of exceptional children was a logical extension of the schemes for managing those who are impecunious and dependent that emerged in the early decades of the eighteenth century. The 1730s saw an upsurge of infanticide, particularly in the turbulent city of London, a trend that hastened public acceptance of the need for a foundling hospital, which the English had heretofore resisted (Ramsland, 1989). Orphanages and workhouses sprung up, and greater demands were aired for the extension of schools for the poor and of Sunday schools. The task of educating disabled individuals in Britain was most often undertaken by fierce evangelical reformers who were rising to prominence among English social thinkers. The moral and religious priorities of Evangelicals were far removed from those of the Enlightenment, although there were significant links between them. In particular, the Enlightenment emphasis upon the human capacity for improvement helped to ensure that the Evangelical movement, despite its return to seventeenth-century Puritan morality, moved away from emphasizing original sin (L. A. Williams, 1989). The Evangelicals believed that children had the capacity for sin but that on the whole theirs, unlike adults, was excusable. Following this thread, they segregated handicapped children partly to protect impressionable youngsters from adult contamination. Zealously concerned with the saving of souls, the British protected the disabled under the sponsorship of private charities and private teachers. Special Chapter 2 / Education and Enlightenment 71 education was not heralded as philosophical inquiry, or even as an exercise in humanitarianism, but rather as a process by which exceptional people could be educated and evangelicalized so that they could earn entry into the next world. Evangelicals believed in the educability of exceptional children but placed more emphasis on religious improvement than on intellectual development. Following a sequence now well established in special education, deaf persons were the first to be educated. But, as Jean Paul Seigel (1969) stresses, almost through Victorian times, the education of deaf persons in Britain was marked by ignorance of the psychology of deafness and by an unwillingness or inability on the part of the British theorists to apply fresh concepts of psychology and philosophy. The rising British educators ignored the contributions of John Wallis, Bulwer, and the others who laid the foundation for the enterprise in that country as well as the psychological principles that had evolved in France. In Britain the emphasis was very simple: sign language was thought dehumanizing , and therefore speech must be developed as quickly and effectively as possible (Kyle, 1980-81). Consequently, the education of deaf students in Britain focused...