Education and the Handicapped 1760 - 1960

D.G. Pritchard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136270369
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

First published in 1998. This is Volume VIII of twenty-eight in the Sociology of Education series. During the nineteenth century and part of the twentieth the children now known as disabled or with accessibility needs were termed physically defective and mentally defective; the schools that they and the blind and the deaf attended were frequently called institutions; the education they received bore the name of instruction. This book is the story of the advance in opinion and outlook from 1760 to 1960, which brought about the change from instruction to education, from institution to school, and from mentally defective to those with special needs, that the book sets out to tell. Written in 1963.

1
Earliest Provision for the Handicapped

ANY consideration of the history of the education of the handicapped must take into account the development of educational provision for ordinary children. When it is realized that less than one hundred years ago fewer than two-fifths of our children attended school, it is hardly surprising that the growth of special education is a recent manifestation. Schools had, of course, existed since the coming of Augustine in 597, though they were predominantly for clever boys of good family. Occasional parochial and chantry schools were to be found, but until the foundation of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge in 1698, no large-scale effort to give elementary education to the poorer classes had been made. During the eighteenth century the charity schools of the S.P.C.K. were augmented by dame schools, Sunday Schools and schools of industry. The quality of the education they provided was poor; its extent limited.

Schools for the handicapped did not appear until the second half of the eighteenth century. That they should lag behind was understandable, for educational and social trends are followed, not created, by provision for the handicapped. Furthermore, certain specialist techniques are necessary, and some of these are allied to and dependent upon advances in science, medicine and mental measurement, which themselves are recent. However, certain discoveries were ignored or forgotten. For fifty years the genius of Louis Braille was ignored in England; the fact that the deaf could speak, for a longer period.

Even if there were no schools, there were individual and isolated attempts to improve the lot of the handicapped. These followed an earlier period, in which the handicapped had been sacrificed to the welfare of society, be that society the roving tribe or the Greek city state. The former found them a burden in their effort to survive, the latter in their effort to purify the race; a concept not entirely outmoded in the twentieth century. In Sparta the laws of Lycurgus approved the abandonment of idiots, and the exposure of handicapped infants. The Athenians, even under Solon and in the time of Plato, practised exposure, and killed outright their deaf children. The Spartans, with a finer sense of cruelty, merely put them in the great pit in Taygetus.

In the Christian era, as the teaching of Christ, and the Hebraic Law which exhorted that the handicapped should be aided, became known, the attitude towards them softened. Hospices for the blind were established; in Caesarea in the fourth century by St. Basil, and in the fifth by St. Lymnaeus in Syria. Of these little is known, nor of the first English hospice, Elsing Spittle, opened by a London merchant for one hundred blind men in 1329, and confiscated at the Reformation. Better known is the Hospice Nationale des Quinze-Vingts, Paris. Its foundation is generally attributed to Louis IX, St. Louis, about 1260, as an asylum for three hundred of his soldiers blinded in the Crusades. Its origins, in fact, are obscure, and it is probable that it was only rebuilt by Louis. Its successor still stands today, and for its purpose of providing asylum it has proved eminently successful. Unfortunately, it also provided a tradition of charity and begging, which both inhibited independence and became inseparably associated with the blind, for its inmates were for long encouraged to augment its funds by soliciting alms.

Other hospital brotherhoods were patterned on the Quinze-Vingts, but, as none of them attempted any training or instruction, of more import to the education of the blind were the block letters devised by Didymus. Blinded in early childhood, he became, under the late Roman Empire, Professor of philosophy and theology at the University of Alexandria. Sporadic and mainly unsuccessful attempts to teach the blind to read by touch continued until the seventeenth century. Even if they could be successfully taught, there would be nothing for them to read. Block letters could obviously not be made into a book. When, in 1651, Harsdorffer in Germany produced wax tablets by which the blind could write, there was far more purpose in learning to read. This was emphasized when the Swiss, Jacob Bernouilli, invented a frame which guided a pencil on paper. But still the difficulty of the block letters remained; and it was left to Valentin Haüy to adopt embossed print, invented some time earlier, to the use of the blind. Haüy's claim to fame rests on firmer foundations than this. He was the first to claim that the blind could and should be educated. At the Institution Nationale des Jeunes Aveugles in Paris, he substantiated his claim.

His attention was first drawn to the condition of the blind when he saw, outside a café in a fashionable boulevard, a group of blind men, grotesquely attired and wearing pasteboard spectacles, executing a discordant symphony to the delight of the passers-by. Determining to alleviate their lot, he sought out Maria von Paradis, the famous blind harpsichordist. She acquainted him with earlier work on behalf of the blind, and the methods of teaching then in existence. He modified and added to these, and tried out his ideas on François Leseuer, a blind waif he had found begging at the door of the church of Saint-Germain des Prés. Leseuer made a good pupil, and soon could read Roman letters if printed heavily enough to show in low relief on the reverse side. After witnessing a demonstration of Leseuer's ability, the Société Philanthropique decided to support Haüy's idea of founding a school. He relinquished his lucrative post at the Foreign Office, and with twelve blind children from an almshouse and funds from the Société he opened the Institution Nationale in 1784.

Two years later the school had thirty pupils, who were commanded to give an exhibition of their attainments before Louis XVI at Versailles, and by the year of the Revolution, the number had increased to fifty. Within the walls of the Institution, the blind, like the sighted without, responded to the call of liberty, and Haüy was faced with a popular rising, with which he dealt more tactfully and successfully than Louis was able to outside. This was the least of his troubles. The Revolution threatened to overthrow all charitable institutions. The members of the Société Philosopbique went into hiding. Subscriptions ceased. In 1791 conditions improved materially when the National Assembly endowed the school with the house and funds of a suppressed convent. Educationally, however, they declined as the new rulers of France sought to dictate policy. Ten years later they decreed that the school should be closed and the children removed to the Quinze-Vingts. Haiiy was thanked for his services and dismissed, and instruction of the children ceased. But he had not laboured in vain. His efforts had already gained the tribute of imitation, and his Essai sur l'Education des Aveugles enshrined his methods. In any case, in the year of Waterloo, the Institution Nationale became once again a separate entity, soon to receive its most famous pupil, and later teacher, Louis Braille; soon, too, to give further inspiration by the excellence of its music teaching.

The first efforts on behalf of the deaf are also ascribed to a saint. It was for long believed that Bede's account of how, about 685, the Bishop of Hagulstad, St. John of Beverly, taught a dumb youth to speak, was an early example of the oral instruction of a deaf-mute. As, however, Bede makes no mention of deafness, it is at least possible that this was a case of recovery from aphasia.¹ Eight centuries pass before another record, which could refer to the instruction of the deaf, appears. Rodolphus Agricola, a native of Groningen, mentions as within his knowledge that a deaf and dumb person had been taught to write and note down his thoughts.² This statement, when published, was received with considerable scepticism, mainly because of Aristotle's thesis that living persons deprived of hearing are not capable of education. It was left to Geronimo Cardano, mathematician, naturalist, physician and philosopher, to convince the sceptics. This sixteenth-century Italian, of great but ill-regulated talents, propounded the theoretical principle on which the education of the deaf became based. He realized that it was possible to substitute one sense for another. Thus, by using their sight the deaf could read, and so compensate for their deafness. Equally, by writing they could make up for their lack of speech. Through reading they could 'hear', through writing 'speak'. As for the world of ideas the deaf could enter this, too. For though writing be associated with speech, and speech with thought, written characters and ideas could be connected together without the intervention of sounds.

Such was Cardano's prestige, such the excellence of his argument, that it became accepted that the education of the deaf, albeit difficult, was not impossible. The way now lay open for efforts on behalf of the deaf. The first to tread it effectively was the Spanish philanthropist Pedro Ponce de Leon. Of noble birth, he entered the Benedictine monastery of San Salvador at Oña, Old Castile. There, tradition has it, he was inspired by Bede's account of St. John of Beverly to attempt lip-reading with the deaf. Contemporary evidence shows that, whatever his inspiration, he was successful. He had a series of pupils to whom he taught speech, reading, writing and arithmetic. They learnt to pray, to assist at Mass and to confess themselves in speech. Among them were the two brothers of the Constable of Castile; because of their ability to speak they became persons at law possessing the right to inherit titles and property. This economic and legal motive accounts in part for the early interest taken in Spain in the education of the deaf.

Ponce died in 1584, and the Spanish interest was continued by another Benedictine, Juan Paulo Bonet. Whereas Ponce had concentrated on speech, Bonet turned his attention to signs. In 1620 he published a record of his experiences as a teacher of the deaf and the manual one-handed alphabet he had used.¹ As Ponce had given the deaf their first effective instruction, so Bonet gave to their teachers their first effective text-book. His alphabet, but very slightly modified, was still in use in France and the United States two hundred years later.

One of Bonet's pupils was seen by Charles I, when as Prince of Wales he made his unsuccessful matrimonial journey to Spain, and described by one of the Prince's suite.² His description helped to inspire the succession of seventeenth-century Britons who worked for the deaf. The physician, John Bulwer, published the first book in English on the education of the deaf.³ In it he emphasized, what was still imperfectly realized in England, that lack of speech need not necessarily accompany deafness. George Dalgarno, a Scot who became an Oxford schoolmaster, produced a sound and practical manual alphabet, which became the basis of the two-handed alphabet of the English schools in the early nineteenth century.⁴ John Wallis and William Holder were not only born in the same year, 1616, but each made the same claim of being the first English teacher to describe a successful method of teaching the deaf.⁵ 'Whalley and Pop ham were the first two children in England to be taught, Wallis and Holder the first two teachers, as far as we know, and theirs the first quarrel.'⁶ Their unedifying dispute conducted through the publications of the Royal Society, of which both were members, was unfortunately but the precursor of many which were to rift and delay the education of the deaf. But the very prominence of their quarrel served to highlight the problem of educating the deaf. The claims of Wallis, the mathematician, and Holder, the theologian, to have taught the deaf to speak were analysed and discussed by philosophers and men of letters. The question received attention, though it was attention of an academic not a practical nature.

Consequently, it was left once again to the Continent to take the lead. Towards the close of the seventeenth century, Johann Amman, a Swiss doctor practising in Amsterdam, successfully taught private pupils, and, more importantly, published his Surdus Loquens—the Speaking Deaf—which, like Bonet's work, was to have considerable influence.¹ While Amman's writings had been important, it was the teaching ability of Jacob Rodriguez Pereira which earned him the gratitude of the deaf. Employing Bonet's alphabet, lip-reading and the subsequent acquisition of speech, his method differed little from his predecessors. Rather his genius lay in his ability to achieve outstanding results.

A Jew of Portuguese birth and Spanish ancestry, he was compelled by persecution to move to France. There, after successfully teaching his deaf sister to speak, he undertook the education of a sixteen-year-old deaf boy of noble family. Within two years, he was able to report extremely favourable results, which eventually came to the knowledge of the Academy of Sciences. That august body investigated and highly commended Pereira's teaching. He and his pupil were presented to Louis XV, and as a result he was given as his next pupil the godson of the Due de Chaulnes. Again he achieved almost immediate and extraordinary success, and his pupil in later years even acquired a second language. Pereira demonstrated that the deaf could reach the heights. Rightly he was given a number of honours, among them election in 1760 to the Royal Society.

In the same year the first public school in the world for handicapped children opened its doors. Hitherto the education of the deaf had been confined to children of the wealthy. The motives of their teachers had varied. Some, like Ponce, were impelled by religion. Others, like Wallis and Holder, by prestige, while Pereira represented a new class, the professional tutor of the deaf. Disinterested humanitarianism had played but a small part. But for Charles Michel, Abbé de l'Epée, it was the primary consideration. Born at Versailles, where his father was architect to Louis XIV, he studied for the Church and became a deacon. A man of great piety and evangelistic views, given to introspection, he was unable to accept all the doctrines of the Church. His acceptance of Jansenism impelled Rome to advise the Bishop to refuse his ordination to the priesthood. He therefore turned to the law, and was admitted to the Bar. Advocacy, however, though well within his ability was insufficient for his reforming nature. He left it to work among the poor of Paris. To help him in this work, he decided to re-seek ordination. His humility was such that he was able to condemn as pride any feeling that he was right and the Church wrong. With this confession of faith and the aid of his uncle, the Bishop of Troyes, he was ordained. For long he laboured among the poor, and it was during his work with them that he first met deaf children. Moved to compassion, he determined that the improvement of their lot should be his vocation. In 1760 he founded the Institution Nationale des Sourds-Muets in Paris.

The school was designed for poor children, and, moreover, unselected poor children. Previous teachers had been able to select their pupils, who, in any case, with their good backgrounds could have been expected to be reasonably intelligent. But the Abbé's task was formidable. Not only was he attempting the education of those who had had no advantages, and many disadvantages, but he was also attempting their instruction in the mass, as opposed to the individual tuition of the earlier teachers. At first he knew little of the education of the deaf, but he soon acquainted himself with the writings of Bonet and Amman. He was ready to attempt their oral methods, but as the numbers in his school grew, he realized that it would be far easier to instruct large groups by manual methods. He adopted Bonet's alphabet and added to it an extremely effective system of arbitrary signs which he devised. These he published, together with an account of his method of teaching, in 1784, by which time he was convinced, as against earlier opinion, that speech was not necessary in the education of the deaf, nor was it the best way of educating them.¹

The entirely opposite, but traditional, view was expressed by Samuel Heinicke. In temperament and background, too, he was unlike the meek and well-connected De l'Epée. He was strong-willed, tenacious and resolute, and coming from German peasant stock he determined to escape his background. His ambition was to become a teacher or a preacher, and, as the first step in his circuitous journey, he enlisted in the Dresden Royal Life Guards, part of the forces of the Elector of Saxony. He devoted his free time to study, and became proficient in Latin, French and mathematics. His free time must have been considerable, for he also taught private students while in the army. One of these was a deaf and dumb boy, who so aroused his interest that he was about to leave the forces to specialize in the teaching of the deaf when the Seven Years War broke out. He was taken prisoner, but...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. Earliest Provision for the Handicapped
• 2. Eighteenth Century: The First English Schools
• 3. The Period of Experiment: I. Institutional Education of the Blind and Deaf
• 4. The Period of Experiment: II. Methods of Teaching the Blind to Read
• 5. The Period of Experiment: III. Developments in the Education of the Feeble-minded and Physically Handicapped
• 6. The Period of Transition: I. Changes in the Education of the Blind
• 7. The Period of Transition: II. School Board Classes for the Deaf and Blind
• 8. The Period of Transition: III. The Return of the Oral Education of the Deaf
• 9. The Period of State Intervention: I. The Royal Commission on the Blind and Deaf
• 10. The Period of State Intervention: II. School Board Classes for the Mentally Handicapped
• 11. The Period of State Intervention: III. The Departmental Committee on Defective and Epileptic Children
• 12. The Period of Growth: I. Advances in the Education of the Physically Handicapped
• 13. The Period of Growth: II. Advances in the Health Services
• 14. The Period of Growth: III. Advances in the Education of the Mentally Handicapped
• 15. The Period of Growth: IV. Advances in the Education of the Blind and Deaf
• 16. The Period of Consolidation: I. The 1944 Act
• 17. The Period of Consolidation: II. The Present
• Bibliography
• Index