"You Can't":
The Rights and Responsibilities of Neurodivergent Children
Is being taught in schools a legal right for everyone? Who should be financially responsible?
American history defines three distinct patterns regarding the rights and responsibility for learning.
Old Deluder Satan Law. Image courtesy of the Government of Massachusetts.
American colonists embraced the desire to teach all children to read. This Puritan colonial rule of 1647, known as the Old Deluder Satan Law, gives evidence to the importance of reading the Bible as a means to protect their freedom of religion.
"That every Township in this Jurisdiction, after the Lord hath increased them to the number of fifty Housholders, shall then forthwith appoint one within their town to teach all such children as shall resort to him to write and read." -- Old Deluder Satan Law Courtesy of the Government of Massachusetts.
By 1776, the founding fathers knew that to remain free America needed knowledgeable citizens. Although not specifically stated in the U.S. Constitution, this correspondence from Thomas Jefferson in 1787 emphasizes the importance of education for all citizens:
Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress
“...This last is the most certain and the most legitimate engine of government. Educate and inform the whole mass of the people, enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve it, and it requires no very high degree of education to convince them of this. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.” --Thomas Jefferson to Uriah Forrest, with Enclosure, 31 December 1787 Courtesy of National Archives.
Bill of Rights - Courtesy of the National Archives
The responsibility for providing this education has found legal cause under the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” --The 10th Amendment. Courtesy of National Archives.
Legal interpretations agree that individual states should be responsible for providing the means for a free public education to its citizens.
1830s Massachusetts' legislator Horace Mann saw state-funded public schools as a way to eliminate poverty, crime, and social problems.
"In 1830, 55% of children ages 5-14 were enrolled in public schools but through his (Horace Mann) Common-School Plan, this number rose to 78% by 1870."
History and Evolution 2020
1870 Thomas Nast wood engraving. Courtesy of the Library of Congress
"Education, then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men--the balance-wheel of the social machinery." --Report No. 12 of the Massachusetts School Board (1848) Horace Mann - Courtesy of USA Embassy
Steamer Glass [i.e. class] in Hancock School, Boston. Immigrant children. Location: Boston, Massachusetts. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress
Nineteenth-century America experienced a surge in immigrants who would seek to fill the growing number of jobs. Progressive Reformers sought a way to teach these immigrant children to become productive American citizens. Public education would become a means to “Americanize” the immigrants, and compulsory attendance laws were enacted.
Compulsory School Attendance Laws and Their Administration - 1935
Statistical Atlas of the United States, based upon the results of the eleventh census Nationalities of the Foreign Born 1850 - 1890. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress
It was argued that compulsory attendance would open jobs for adult males by placing youth in schools, however without any formal education or knowledge of the English language, these youth were soon labeled as “unable to learn,” “imbecile,” or “retarded.” "You can’t" began a trend of educational discrimination that would last over 100 years.
Who should learn?
Child In Crib and Father, November 1956. Courtesy of the Disability History Museum
During the 19th and 20th centuries, neurodivergent children made up the most marginalized group excluded from the right to learn.
"Despite the special classes operating under the school board's jurisdiction, there still remained the problem of those mentally retarded children who either were not educable or who had to receive social training before qualifying for admission to the special classes.” Because A Father Cared, Margaret McDonald, November 1956. Courtesy of The Rotarian