I always wondered what it was like back 50 or 60 years ago like back in the 1950s or 60s for kids that had learning disabilities. I know for kids with regular disabilities like Autism ADHD, Dyslexia. That many of them struggled and were had to work 75 times harder if they wanted to pass or succeed. My grandmother, who passed away in November. She taught third and fourth grade back in the 1950s. And I remember asking her what happened to kids who struggled and she told me that her superiors this was like back in 1955 or 56. She said that they would give the kids coloring books and she told me that she had one boy in her class who didn’t pay attention and her bosses just told her just don’t even bother with teaching him. Just give him a coloring book Or some building blocks. And even back then she felt really bad for him and she’s like no I’m not gonna treat him like a second class citizen I’m gonna challenge him just like all the other kids. obviously good on her. From what she told me, it was very calm and the kids would get held back back during that time.
But what about kids with not learning but intellectual disabilities. Kids that back in the day were classified by the name “mentally retarded”. I’m only using this from a historical precedent, not trying to be ablest here. But really, what happened to students who had like down syndrome. Or they had maybe not an intellectual disability, but they had a physical ailments like kids that were blind or deaf. Or ones with cerebral palsy. Is it true that they weren’t even able to go to school? Because my parents they’re both in their 60s. They were going to school in the 1970s and 1980s. My father told me that he never saw a person with down syndrome. Any time he was in school walking around. In fact, when my dad was little, he told me the story about when he was six years old. There was this girl who was about three years older she was like nine when he lived in south Windsor Connecticut, who had down syndrome. my grandmother was friends with her mother, and she didn’t even go to school or I guess she was homeschooled by her parents. What is it that bad they couldn’t even get free public education. Or if teachers didn’t want to teach them they could literally refuse education services to them.
