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D. Dierdort
D. Dierdort wrote Lettre Sur les areugles, or Letter on the blind for the use of people loosing sight. Encarcerated for his writes and released thanks to his followers in Nov. 3th, 1749. -
Valentin Hauy begins School in Paris for students as the first Institution for blind children.
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Jean-Marc Gaspard Itard- Pioneer on the beginning of Special Education
After attempting to teach "Victor, The Wild Boy of Areyron", he became the first Physician to suggest tha educational intervention can improve the lives of individuals with disabilities. -
Benjamin Rush
In his efforts to aid Philadelphia's black community, Rush was heavily involved in promoting the African Church. He also recruited Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, and other blacks to help him attend the sick during the yellow fever epidemic of 1793. -
History of Inclusion in the United States
As a significant term, inclusion came into use relatively recently in the long history of special education in the United States. Since the 1800s, when children with disabilities first were segregated for instruction in public schools, professionals and parents have called for more equitable, “normal” treatment of these students, and for closer contact with their nondisabled peers. -
Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet
Hopkins Gallaudet brings from Europe, model education programs for the deaf. -
First School for the Deaf in the US
Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc found the American Asylum for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb. -
1829-1832 Important Events
The New England Asylum for the Blind was directed by Samuel Gridley Howe (Harvard Medical School)
Louis Braille adapts French military code for night communication for blind persons. -
Physician Johann Guggenbuhl
Guggenbuhl found that people who entered his school at an early age showed improvement in both physical and mental development. -
Dorothea Dix- The American Psychiatric Association
Dorothea Dix travels the US and Europe studying the conditions of insane asylums. In 1845 she influences politics and advocates for better treatment of individuals with emotional disturbances. -
Edouard Seguin- Special Education Movement in the US
A student of Itard published the Moral Treatment, Hygiene, and Education of Idiots and other Backward Children. This was the first Special Education Treatise addressing the needs of children with disabilities. -
First University for the Deaf- Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet
Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet founded Columbia Institution of the Deaf during the presidency of Abraham Lincoln. -
1930-1960 Special Education
Between 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. -
The time of Segregation 1930
The current extensive involvement of American public schools in the education of children with disabilities constitutes a relatively recent development. -
Resistance to Integration: Giftedness and Deafness
Perhaps the most powerful legacy of the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 was the widespread acceptance in national legal and educational policy of the ethical necessity of authentic, meaningful integration whenever and wherever possible. -
Integration,Mainstreaming, and the Regular Education Initiative
In 1984, Susan and William Stainback published what would become one of the seminal statements in the debate concerning integration in special education. Their article, “A Rationale for the Merger of Special and Regular Education,” appeared in the October 1984 issue of Exceptional Children. -
1992–2004: Inclusion
Today, special education stands at a crossroads. After decades of efforts to create truly special education for children with disabilities, decades of internal and external critique of the scope, form, and substance of special education within public school systems, and decades of trial and error.
