The History of Inclusion in the United States

2. 1930–1960: Special Education Comes of Age

1930–1960: Special Education Comes of Age There has been considerable controversy over the policy of ‘segregation ’ of exceptional children from the normal school population. . . . If a child can be accepted by a regular class and can profit by instruction in the regular class, with needed special services brought to him there, he may well remain there. If, however, his enrolment [sic] in the regular class is detrimental to his own development or that of the other children, then he should be placed where his growth can best be furthered . Thus, the education of exceptional children accepts special services in regular grades, special classes, and special schools as possible means for the appropriate education of each child. —National Society for the Study of Education,  B etween 1930 and 1960, the world of special education, both in and beyond the public schools, changed dramatically. During these three decades, the number of children identified as disabled and placed in a special education setting steadily increased; research on the etiology, diagnosis, and treatment of a wide range of categories of disability expanded and became more sophisticated; and public as well as professional attitudes shifted remarkably in response not only to that research but also to legal decisions, public advocacy, and extensive experience in schools. Slowed temporarily by the Depression of the 1930s, special education nonetheless developed a momentum, a structure , and a core of assumptions and knowledge that by the beginning of the Kennedy administration in 1961 would propel it to an important position in educational practice and public consciousness. At the heart 34 2 of this expansion was continued debate concerning the propriety and effectiveness of segregated settings for special education students. Status as of 1930 In 1930, President Herbert Hoover convened a White House Conference on Child Health and Protection. As part of that conference, the Committee on the Physically and Mentally Handicapped prepared a report on “The Handicapped Child,” which was published in 1933 as Section IV of the full conference report.“The Handicapped Child” consisted of more than 400 pages of statistics, description, analysis, and recommendations related to the education and treatment of the nation’s disabled children, representing the most thorough discussion yet of the national investment in special education. The report included detailed discussions of “the deaf and the hard of hearing,”“the visually handicapped,” “the crippled,” “internal conditions” (tuberculosis, heart disease, intestinal parasites), “problems of mental health,” and “problems of mental deficiency.” It also offered a discussion on “vocational adjustment.”1 The committee estimated that there were at least 10,000,000 handicapped children in the United States classified under these various conditions . The report did not include consistent data on the number of public school children enrolled in special education; rather, it focused on ascertaining prevalence rates in the population and on the size of residence populations in institutions. It did report 2,785 visually handicapped pupils in public schools, but did not indicate how many were taught in classes designed especially for them. It also reported 13,282 “crippled” students assigned to 500 special schools or classes in eightythree cities with populations of 10,000 or more. The committee estimated that 7.89 percent of all children were “mentally and physically atypical” to the point of “requiring special class provision.”2 In 1930, Stanley Davies published Social Control of the Mentally Deficient , a text that would be widely read and discussed over the next several decades. Davies reported that in the school year 1926–1927, there were 51,814 “subnormal and backward children enrolled in the special classes of 218 city day school systems reporting from 33 States.” Davies also cited a survey undertaken for the 1927–1928 school year by Ohio Special Education Comes of Age 35 State University professor Arch O. Heck, who reported at least 3,996 “special and ungraded classes throughout the country, enrolling in all, 78,014 children, of whom approximately two-thirds are definitely subnormal .” Davies was adamant that the public schools be involved in special education:“The position of the public school in the mental deficiency program is unique. No other agency can begin to make so effective a contribution to the social control of mental deficiency. No other agency, by its neglect of this problem, can leave so much damage to be repaired by other agencies.” He argued that failure to provide special education for the...