My History of Special Education (A Teacher's Story)
As Susan Ohanian quotes on her site, "We don't need people who can spit back facts. We've got Google." (Prof. Roberta Michnick Golinkoff) If you google "history of special education usa," you will get about 13,300,000 results. Do that if you want to read facts. Continure reading here for my personal history of special education.
When I was going to elementary school in the late 1950's in the hills of WV, I walked passed the "colored school" to catch a bus to the new school for us white kids. Not only did we have a new building with no broken windows, but we had grass in our playground. When I asked my mother why this was, she simply said, "That's just the way it is." And, that was the way it was back then.
When I was in the sixth grade, my father lost his job on the railroad. We moved to Maryland where he could find work. That was the first time that I went to school with black students. Things weren't just that way any more, things had changed.
I don't remember any fellow students with special needs. They went to "special schools" for the, pardon the non-PC terms, "deaf, blind, crippled, or crazy." And, that's just the way it was back then.
I began my college career going to a local community college. There were two reasons for this choice: We were not a wealthy family, but more importantly, my high school boyfriend was going there. I lost the boyfriend but found that I really liked college. So, I worked full-time for a year, got a college loan, and continued at the university majoring in English Education. During this time, I met a student named Danny who had some major learning disabilities caused by brain damage. His mirror writing fascinated me and I obtained permission to visit his classroom. I was hooked, but didn't know it yet.
I started my career in education teaching English in a middle school in MD. In that school, there was one special education classroom for 10 students who were, again, pardon the non-PC term, "intellectually limited". There were two classrooms for students who were "seriously behaviorally disturbed." Some of these students came from other middle schools because this middle school was a "center" for students who were seriously behaviorally disturbed. Can you be mildly behaviorally disturbed? ("Seriously" was dropped from that label some years ago.)
The teacher's union required all teachers to have a duty-free lunch and a planning period, so "sped" students were "mainstreamed" during those times. I had a few of those kids in my English classes. I liked them and worked well with them. So, I got more of them.
I found their learning differences very interesting. There was talk about a new special education law (PL 94-142, 1975) in the works that would require more teachers to be trained to work with these students. The county I was working in offered reimbursement for tuition for courses leading to a graduate degree in special education, so in 1978, I completed a master's degree in Communicative Disorders at Johns Hopkins University. My thinking was, I have to teach these kids so I might as well learn how to do it, and if the courses are essentially "free," that works for me.
I was working my way through college during the 1960's. I was too busy to join in the fun of that decade, which spared me some of the "bad trips" that others took. The notion of the time was, "If it feels good, do it." This carried over into schools, too. The open classroom concept was implemented, and failed.
I was just beginning my teaching career when portable walls began dividing the open space classrooms. I visited one of these schools. I put myself in a student's place. How was I supposed to pay attention to my teacher's lecture when the kids to the right of me were watching a movie, the kids to the left of me were playing a game, and there was a constant parade of people walking behind me? It didn't work. People just aren't wired to focus on something boring and ignore the more interesting details going on around them.
The focus of my graduate school training in the 1970's was the diagnostic-prescriptive medical model. Test the kid, find out what's wrong with him, and fix him so he can be successful in the regular classroom. This was the beginning of identifying learning disabilities (a good thing), labeling weaknesses as deficits (a bad thing), and remediating with drill, drill, drill! If you try harder, you can learn this! For some kids with learning disabilities, this is like telling a non-sighted person that she can see or a non-hearing person that he can hear or a quadriplegic that she can walk, if they would just try harder.
It seems that more and more kids have LD, ADHD, ODD, CD, ED, BD, Asperger's, etc. Pick your syndrome! Why? More information, better identification, environmental factors... While most of these medical issues are treatable or manageable, the labels tell us what's wrong with the kid, not what's right with the kid.
In Caught in the Middle: Nonstandard Kids and a Killing Curriculum, Susan Ohanian writes, "I don't know who first came up with a medical model for education, but it was a bad idea, a notion that has done a lot of harm. Assuming that students are a disease that teachers can and should diagnose and remedy reveals an arrogance of position and a contempt for children that is soul-searching."
She's right. We were taught to identify deficits and weaknesses and to remediate them. So, we pulled kids out of "regular classes" into self-contained or resource classes where we could fix them. What we learned in the 1980's was that we did not have the magic dust to do that. Some learning differences cannot be fixed and do not go away after puberty, thankfully.
So, in the 1990's we decided that these kids would be better socialized and more "normalized" if they were "mainstreamed" with "normal" kids, and we sent them back to regular education classes. Well, the regular education teachers did not want them back. They could teach the "regular" kids easier without those "sped kids." And, here's the crux of the clash between regular and special educators that fuels daily battles in public schools today.
Some say that those kids did not learn much academically in those special education pull-out programs. Maybe they learned some learning strategies, maybe they just colored a lot of maps and did a lot of word finds. Parents did not like this. Even if regular education teachers knew this, most of them didn't care what was going on there as long as THOSE kids stayed out of their classes.
I wish I had saved a nickel for every time a regular education teacher came to me saying, "I've got one of your students in my class. Will you please take him away?" And, I wish that I had saved a nickel every time that I went to a regular education teacher about to ask that a student be mainstreamed into her class only to be greeted with "the cross to keep the vampire away." If I had saved those nickels, I'd be a rich woman today!
So, we couldn't fix them and we didn't teach them the content of the regular education curriculum and now we want them mainstreamed. That's what parents are fighting for with No Child Left Behind (NCLB). They want their kids to learn, but I think what they really want is for their kids to be "normal" or just like the other kids. It's a parent's dream. However sad it may be, realistically this dream will not come true for some kids who have intensive special needs. But, NCLB supports the parents' dream (perhaps to get their votes) and says that by 2014, ALL students must be proficient in reading, math, and science. This is an honorable goal, a politician's idealistic promise, and, an educator's nightmare.
If I know anything about how we learn, it's that we all learn differently. We cannot all be on the same page at the same time. It's neurologically impossible.
In Delivered from Distraction, Dr. Hallowell writes:
"...If 'no child left behind' is ever to become anything more significant than a catchy political slogan, it will require, first, that we understand that slow and stupid are meaningless; second, that we acknowledge that every brain contains within it the seeds of valuable talents; and third, it will take a commitment on the part of voters and policy-makers, not just heroic parents ..., to provide the funding and leadership required to offer the astonishing benefits of our recently gained knowledge to children everywhere. Only then will no child be left behind. Only then can our society gain strength, when each child finds and develops his gifts, whatever they may be..."
That is what we need to do to improve our public schools! Move away from the standard "2x4x6": two covers of a book, 4 walls of a classroom, and 6 hours per day in a school building. Spend the funds to explore students' strengths, help them to develop these strengths into talents while ensuring that they have the basic skills that they will need to live a functional and happy life.
Dr. Hallowell writes, "Do what you're good at. Don't spend too much time trying to get good at what you're bad at. (You did enough of that in school.)" We only need to know the basics in those subjects that we're not good at. We can hire secretaries, accountants, and lawyers. After all, we have ATM's, online bill paying, spell check, grammar editing, and Google! We can enjoy the subjects that we're good at it, be creative in those subjects, and work happily in our chosen fields. Dr. Hallowell says it well, People find joy in doing what they love and loving what they do.
We need to respect, not just tolerate, our brains and celebrate how they are different. In his children's book, A Walk with a Brain in the Rain, Dr. Hallowell says, "Find something you like,/ Like Riding a bike,/ or bowling a strike,/ And have fun with your brain every day./ Brains do best when they play."
So, why are schools eliminating recess? Read Susan Ohanian's, What Happened to Recess and Why Are Our Children Struggling in Kindergarten? Basically the answer is: To spend more time on preparing for those accountability tests required by NCLB!
"Then a brain named Complain yelled, 'Hey, wait!/ I am going to create a word for what's best./ So some brains can rule all the rest./ Let's make up a test!'" (Hallowell)
What is the opposite of play? According to Dr. Hallowell, it's doing what you're told.
Control. If we control them, then they will do what we tell them to do. No thinking outside of the box. If everyone has to learn the same thing in the same way at the same time and prove it by taking the same test, then politicians are happy because the masses are controlled.
If the test scores are good, OK. If not, we'll punish them by putting their names on a needs to improve list and shaming them. Some politicians are still judging schools based on Puritan ideals. And furthermore, we'll take away their funding. Does that even make any sense at all? Take away the funds to those who need more money so they can provide more services to kids who are not making the grade? Nope, makes no sense at all.
Some parents of students with special needs are happy with NCLB because their kids are being taught the same curriculum and required to pass the same tests as the "normal kids" so they must be "smart" (in it's most narrow meaning) like those other kids.
Some teachers are happy because they have scripts to follow and don't have to be creative, just be a robot of the politicians and collect that paycheck.
But, are the kids happy? Most are not. Most are frustrated. Many will be left behind. Some will be pushed out so that their bad test scores do not cost the school funding. Many will drop out to avoid the shame of failing those tests. Most kids will choose being "bad" over being "dumb" every time, so they'll act out to get kicked out of a place they'd rather not be in anyway.
But, if these kids are weeded out, by whatever methods, the test scores will go up and the funding will continue and school will go on just as before, "2x4x6" or between the two covers of a textbook, inside the four walls of a classroom, six hours a day--the old fashioned way that was beneficial to an agricultural society so kids could work on the farms during the daylight hours during planting, growing, and harvesting seasons.
This is just the way it is. But, things must, can, and will change...
We are no longer an agricultural society dependent on child labor to work in the fields. We know much more about the brain so we can no longer just morally condemn minds that think differently as "bad." Our prisons are full of folks whose brains hold gold nuggets (Hallowell's term) of strengths and talents if we would look for them and support them in using them in positive ways. We can keep kids from knocking on those prison doors, by focusing on their strengths in the beginning and helping them to nurture these strengths into healthy, positive occupations, vocations, and professions. This would be a much better investment than building another prison.
This is just the way it is? No, things must change.
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