The Rights and Responsibilities of Neurodivergent Children
What happens when children can't learn?
Limited Rights / Limited Options
Alexander G. Bell With Students At The American Association To Promote Teaching Speech To The Deaf, July 28, 1892. Courtesy of the Disability Museum
In 1872, Alexander Graham Bell's interest in technology led to opening Boston's first special education schools specifically to teach deaf students.
Institutions and Responsibility
Defectives, Feeble-minded: United States. Massachusetts. Waverly. School for Feeble-minded: Massachusetts School for the Feeble-Minded.: How Boys are Taught Simple Manual Labor. Courtesy of 1903 Harvard Art Museum
In 1848, Samuel Gridley Howe opened the first modern institution, The Massachusetts School for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Youth, in Boston. Throughout the next century, many families were advised to place the responsibility of care for their disabled child with institutions to lessen emotional and financial burdens.
Willowbrook State School postcard. Courtesy of ACLU New York Public Library
Without legal rights, parents experienced shame, overprotection, or rejection of their handicapped infant. Doctors would dismiss pleas for a cure. As reported in The Mentally Retarded Child: A Guide For Parents (1952), parents were advised to...
“Send him to an institution and forget about him!”
The Mentally Retarded Child: A Guide For Parents, 1952
“EIGHT YEARS AGO, when our son Eddie was two years old, doctors told us we would have to shut him up in an institution for retarded children. I usually take my time before making up my mind, but for once I didn’t wait a split second before deciding good and loud, “Over my dead body!” Date: Nov 1, 1955 Frank Piccola, as told to Ralph Bass. Courtesy of Coronet Magazine and the Disability History Museum
"We Kept Our Retarded Child At Home, excerpt,” Frank Piccola, as told to Ralph Bass, in New York City Civil Rights History Project, Nov 1, 1955. Courtesy of Coronet Magazine and the Disability History Museum
Institutions’ primary responsibility was custodial care with minimal education opportunities. A visit by Senator Robert F. Kennedy in 1965 began a push for social change.
"I think that at the state institution for the mentally retarded, and I think that particularly at Willowbrook, we have a situation that borders on a snake pit…. There is very little future for these children, for those who are in these institutions. Both need a tremendous overhauling…. – I think all of us are at fault and I think it's just long overdue that something be done about it."
Robert Kennedy Visiting Institutions in NY, 1965. Courtesy of The Minnesota Governor's Council on Developmental Disabilities
Courtesy of Daily News New York, New York. Friday, Sep 10, 1965, Page 60.
Public Hostage: Public Ransom Photo Gallery, The Radiator; Willowbrook. Courtesy of The Minnesota Governor's Council on Developmental Disabilities
Robert Kennedy Visiting Institutions in NY 1965.