Cm in inches

Probably the largest and most pervasive issue in special education, along with my own personal journey in education, is special education's relationship to general education. History indicates that this has never been a simple clear-cut relationship involving the two. Cm in inches there has been plenty of giving and taking or perhaps I will say pulling and pushing as it pertains to educational policy, and the educational practices and services of education and special education by the human educators who deliver those services on both parties of the aisle, like me.

During the last 20+ years, I have already been on both parties of education. I have seen and felt what it had been like to be a regular mainstream educator working with special education policy, special education students, and their specialized teachers. I've also been on the special education side looking to get regular education teachers to work more effectively with my special education students by modifying their instruction and materials and having a little more patience and empathy.

Furthermore, I have already been a mainstream regular education teacher who taught regular education inclusion classes trying to work out how to best assist some new special education teachers within my class and his / her special education students as well. And, in comparison, I have already been a particular education inclusion teacher intruding on the territory of some regular education teachers with my special education students and the modifications I thought these teachers should implement. I could tell you first-hand that none with this give-and-take between special education and regular education has been easy. Nor do I see this pushing and pulling becoming easy anytime soon.

So, what is special education? And why is it so special and yet so complex and controversial sometimes? Well, special education, as its name suggests, is a specialized branch of education. It claims its lineage to such people as Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard (1775-1838), the physician who "tamed" the "wild boy of Aveyron," and Anne Sullivan Macy (1866-1936), the teacher who "worked miracles" with Helen Keller.

Special educators teach students who've physical, cognitive, language, learning, sensory, and/or emotional abilities that deviate from those of the typical population. Special educators provide instruction specifically tailored to meet up individualized needs. These teachers basically make education more available and accessible to students who otherwise might have limited usage of education as a result of whatever disability they are struggling with.

It's not just the teachers though who play a role in the annals of special education in this country. Physicians and clergy, including Itard- mentioned previously, Edouard O. Seguin (1812-1880), Samuel Gridley Howe (1801-1876), and Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet (1787-1851) wanted to ameliorate the neglectful, often abusive treatment of an individual with disabilities. Sadly, education in this country was, more often than not, very neglectful and abusive when working with students which are different somehow.

There is even rich literature in our nation that describes the procedure provided to individuals with disabilities in the 1800s and early 1900s. Sadly, in these stories, along with in the real world, the segment of our population with disabilities was often confined in jails and almshouses without decent food, clothing, personal hygiene, and exercise.

For a typical example of this different treatment in our literature, one needs to look no more than Tiny Tim in Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol (1843). In addition, often people who have disabilities were often portrayed as villains, such as for instance in the book Captain Hook in J.M. Barrie's "Peter Pan" in 1911.

The prevailing view of the authors of now period was that certain should submit to misfortunes, both as a questionnaire of obedience to God's will, and since these seeming misfortunes are ultimately designed for one's own good. Progress for our people who have disabilities was hard to come by at this time within this manner of thinking permeating our society, literature, and thinking.

So, what was society to accomplish about these people of misfortune? Well, during a lot of the nineteenth century, and early in the twentieth, professionals believed individuals with disabilities were best treated in residential facilities in rural environments. An out-of-sight mind kind of thing, in the event that you will...

Cm in inches, however by the finish of the nineteenth century, the size of these institutions had increased so dramatically that the goal of rehabilitation for people with disabilities just wasn't working. Institutions became instruments for permanent segregation.