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Transformation of the American Public's Understanding of Disability

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People with disabilities have always existed, but they have not always been acknowledged, treated fairly, or given the right to go to school. As people started expressing interest in educational reform in an effort to support and understand those with disabilities, the public’s understanding of disability shifted, and so too did the terminology used. Because the terminology has shifted over time, the history of special education includes terms that were once commonplace but are now deemed inappropriate or offensive. This chapter focuses on the shifts of understanding that occurred over time throughout the United States, starting with the 1800s and ending with the 1920s. The next chapter addresses the changes in United States laws from the 1920s to the present day related to disabilities and special education.

Early Advocacy: 1800s

The Roots of Special Education

The 1800s were a time of curiosity, and as a result, people were eager to understand what they did not understand. At this time, very little was known about people with disabilities and their ability to learn. Jean Marc Gaspard Itard (1774-1838) worked to change this. In 1800, Itard was appointed Chief Physician at the Institute for Deaf Mutes in Paris. While there, he began working with a feral child named Victor. Victor had been found wandering in the wilds of France. He was estimated to be 12 years old, and speculation was Victor had spent most of those years alone. Victor had no communication or social skills. Because Itard believed Victor was capable of learning, he worked extensively with him for several years, after which time Victor had learned very few words. Victor’s difficulty acquiring language caused Itard to highlight the essential importance of language attainment during a child’s earliest years of life.

The goals set by Itard for educating Victor are now considered to be the first Individual Education Program (IEP) ever created. Although Victor did not make the progress Itard had hoped for, he did prove that people with mental disabilities could learn. Itard’s historical work with Victor has regarded him as the founder of special education (Chalat, 1982). Given the circumstances of Victor’s upbringing, scholars today are still speculating if Victor had a disability or if it was delayed development.

Poorhouses, Training Schools, and Asylums

At this time, in the 1800s, it was not uncommon for people who were poor or disabled to be placed into what were called “poorhouses.” At the time, poorhouses were publicly funded housing units, or institutions, that allowed outcasts to be separated from the rest of society. This separation continued into the late 1900s, as the 1910 census found that “more than 110,000 [children] were living in asylums across the country. They were labeled ‘dependent, neglected, and/or delinquent’” (Katz, 1996). One reason for this misunderstanding may have been that the general public was not able to learn about those with disabilities because they were separated from the rest of society.

To gain a deeper understanding of those with disabilities, terminologies were developed to classify people with disabilities and their differences. French psychiatrist Jean-Étienne Dominique Esquirol (1772-1840) identified two categories: imbeciles and idiots. Imbeciles were described as being almost as efficient as those without disabilities but as having limitations on their functionality, whereas idiots were described as having no intellect and as being unable to think or learn. However, by the mid-19th century, the understanding of people with disabilities began to shift (Parallels in Time: A history of developmental disabilities, 2022).

One of the reasons for this shift is that people were becoming aware of the living conditions of people with disabilities. One person who helped bring this awareness was Dorothea Dix (1802-1887), a social reformer and teacher who advocated for people with disabilities. While in England, she was exposed to the living conditions of those living in prisons and poorhouses, and when she returned to the United States in 1840, she began visiting prisons and poorhouses in the United States. To get an understanding of Dix’s impact, “[b]y 1845, she had . . . [visited] 19 state prisons, 300 county jails, and 500 poor houses . . . From 1845 to 1848, Dix lobbied various state legislatures to improve the living conditions of the mentally ill” (Markel, 2020).  However, in 1848, women could not address Congress, so Dix had Samuel Gridley Howe (1901-1876), an American physician and advocate for the education of the blind, present a speech on her behalf. This speech was positively received, and soon thereafter, a change in the education of people with disabilities would soon begin.

Within that same year, 1848, Gridley Howe helped start the Massachusetts School for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Youth (Perkins School for the Blind), which served as a boarding school for students with intellectual disabilities. He, along with Édouard Séguin, a French physician and educationist who studied medicine under Itard and psychiatry under Esquirol, wanted to include family and community in the education of people with disabilities. Together, they advocated for the preparation of people with disabilities to live in society instead of a lifetime locked away in institutions (Parallels in Time: A history of developmental disabilities, 2022). Audio of a letter to Gridley Howe on behalf of a patient has been preserved through the project “A History of Developmental Disabilities.”

As a result of people’s advocacy and curiosity, by the late 1800s, there were numerous training schools developed to support the education of people with disabilities. These training schools used Séguin’s physiological teaching methods to get students to the desired educational outcomes and were founded on the belief that through education, compassion, and the teaching of social skills, the teachers could “make the deviant undeviant” (Parallels in Time: A history of developmental disabilities, 2022). The ultimate goal of these schools was to help people with disabilities live within society, and they were successful. However, this positive change soon took a turn for the worse.

However,  economic despair occurred following the Civil War, which caused graduates of the training schools to be unable to find employment in their communities. Many of these people ended up in poorhouses or jails (Parallels in Time: A history of developmental disabilities, 2022). Because enrollment in the training schools continued to increase, more schools were opened; however, the school’s commitment to training and transitioning to society was no longer the focus. Soon training schools shifted to asylums, as there was an increase in students and a reduction in educational commitment. Not only did the physical spaces shift from one thing to another, but the way in which the people with disabilities were treated and considered also shifted. When they were at the training schools, they were students; when they were at the asylums, they were residents who received institutionalized custodial care. People with disabilities were also connected to crime and poverty in research studies during the Reconstruction Era (1865-1877) as a result (Kode, 2017).

Shortly thereafter, the first special education class was created in Rhode Island in 1896. As more students were entering public education, teachers were noticing an influx of students with learning disabilities. At this time in history, they were being labeled as either feeble-minded or backward. Although compulsory education laws were enforced across the United States by 1918, children with disabilities were still excluded from most public schools. Families were given the choice to either keep their children with disabilities at home or institutionalize them (Pardini, 2017). Schools relied on the institutions to train teachers to work with students categorized as feeble-minded (Parallels in Time: A history of developmental disabilities, 2022).

Around the same time as the creation of the first special education class, Lillian Wald (1867-1940) founded the Henry Street Settlement in New York City in 1893. She and Mary Brewster, who were both nurses, often interacted with the immigrant community. They sought to improve their living conditions, as their main concerns were education and access to healthcare. After founding the Henry Street Settlement, Wald reached out to teacher Elizabeth Farrell (1870-1932) to help work with immigrant children. At this time, students with disabilities were being educated as a means of preparation for institutionalization thereafter (Kode, 2017).

The Transformation of the Treatment of People with Disabilities in America

A Scientific Approach to Understanding Disability: 1900s-1920s

The Binet Intelligence Test and Feeble Mindedness

The term used to refer to people with intellectual disabilities at this time was “feeble-minded.” Unlike the terminology that we have come to use and know today, the language at this time was used liberally to describe any person experiencing intellectual disabilities, as there was no differentiation between the types of intellectual disabilities. This broad understanding, or lack thereof, not only made it challenging to diagnose but also challenging to support and treat. Additionally, the term “feeble-minded” tends to be connected to eugenics, a concept that is concerned with controlling human genetics.

To determine if someone was feeble-minded, French psychologist Alfred Binet (1857-1911) developed the first intelligence quotient (IQ) test to serve as an assessment tool in 1905. People would take the IQ test and, from there, were classified as being feeble-minded if their scores did not align with what was considered to be normal. While we tend to associate IQ tests with measuring intelligence, the tool’s original intent was to identify if someone was feeble-minded.

The Eugenics Movement

While eugenics is a science that is now morally frowned upon due to its ethical implications, in the 1900s, it sought to manipulate human genetics to produce desirable characteristics in the general population. American scientist and eugenicist Henry Herbert Goddard (1866-1957) believed that intellectual and cognitive disabilities were inevitably passed on from one generation to the next. Based on this belief, Goddard influenced people at the time to also believe that if people with disabilities reproduced, disease, crime, and evil would spread (Kode, 2017). This resulted in the sterilization of many people.

Goddard translated the Binet Intelligence Test from French to English so it could be used in the U.S. to determine if people in the United States were feeble-minded. He used this test not only to label children as feeble-minded but also to reduce the children’s potential as they were then deemed unable to learn. He recommended that those classified as feeble-minded be segregated in asylums and surgically sterilized so they could not reproduce. Feeble-mindedness was heavily concentrated in poor, uneducated, and minority populations.

One problem with this is that immigrants were also being misclassified as feeble-minded. Immigration at this time was on the rise, as people were fleeing their home countries due to poor living conditions. Ironically, they found themselves living in similar conditions once they relocated to New York City. One of the reasons for this is that they were being misclassified as feeble-minded and idiots, which resulted in being segregated from other populations (Cherry, 2022). This test has been criticized for measuring assimilation rather than knowledge acquisition. In recent years, psychologists have been rethinking how intelligence is measured. 

In 1911, the Research Committee of the Eugenics Section of the American Breeder’s Association echoed Goddard’s recommendations by recommending lifelong segregation of people with disabilities and forced sterilization. Within 50 years of the recommendation, almost 50,000 people were sterilized (Kode, 2017). Twenty years after the Research Committee of the Eugenics Section of the American Breeder’s Association’s recommendation in 1931, 30 states had enacted sterilization laws.

These laws were so effective that German Nazis turned to California during World War II to learn more about how they had sterilized their people, as California had extensive practices relating to this. When criticized for his own practices relating to sterilization, Hitler stated he was following the laws of America that prevented the reproduction of the unfit (Black, 2003). Following the horrors of World War II, the eugenics movement was discredited.

Conclusion

While it was not uncommon for people with disabilities to be institutionalized, segregated from the public, reproductively sterilized, and abandoned by their families, these actions were due to fear of misunderstood behaviors, misconceived notions of genetics, misinformation, and just plain ignorance. We should not dilute or ignore the history of how people with disabilities were treated. Knowing the history of how people with disabilities were treated allows us to learn from the past and forge for a better, more inclusive, future.

Transformation of the American Public's Understanding of Disability

References

Black, E. “The Horrifying American Roots of Nazi Eugenics.” History News Network. N.p., Sept. 2003.

Chalat, N. I. (1982). History of Medicine Jean Marc Gaspard Itard – 1774-1838. The Laryngoscope, 9(6). https://doi.org/10.1002/lary.1982.92.6.627

Cherry, K. (2022). Alfred Binet and the History of IQ Testing. Verywellmind.

Katz, M. (1996). In the shadow of the poorhouse: A social history of welfare in America. NY: Basic Books.

Kode, K. (2017). Elizabeth Farrell and the History of Special Education (2nd Ed.) Council of Exceptional Children.

Markel, H. (2020). Dorothea Dix’s tireless fight to end inhumane treatment for mental health patients. PBS.

Pardini, P. (2017). The History of Special Education. Weebly. https://impactofspecialneeds.weebly.com/special-education-history.htm

Perkins School for the Blind. Samuel Gridley Howe. https://www.perkins.org/samuel-gridley-howe/

The Minnesota Governor’s Council on Developmental Disabilities (2022). Parallels in Time: A history of developmental disabilities. https://mn.gov/mnddc/parallels/index.html