Confronting difference: an excursion through the history of special education

some point at which different societies and cultures make a judgement as to whether an individual is normal or abnormal. Those considered abnormal are variously labelled exceptional, different, disabled, or deviant. While all societies have faced the fact of individuals who differed physically, intellectually, or socially, how these differences have been addressed mirrors the vibrant and shifting gestalt of societal dynamics and forms one critical indicator of a society’s humanity. However, because the markers for the moral correctness of a position stand in their own time and space, difference and disability have been conceptualized and addressed differently from era to era. It is the interweaving of many complex threads – social, political, economic, and religious which create a propitious climate – one that respects the rights of all individuals in a particular society at a given time. It also establishes the climate in which models of schooling and schools evolve in a particular society. It was not until the middle decades of the eighteenth century that Europe turned, for the first time, towards the education of persons with disabilities. The spirit of reform, crystallized in the philosophy and precepts of the European Enlightenment, created new vistas for disabled persons and the pioneers who ventured to teach them. Although special education emerged in a number of national contexts, France was the crucible where innovative pedagogies to assist those deaf, blind, and intellectually disabled emerged and flourished (Winzer, 1986). Following the French initiatives, movements to provide services for those in the normative categories of deaf, blind, and intellectually disabled were contemporaneous in continental Europe, Britain, and North America. And, taking into account national idiosyncrasies, the broad outlines of intervention were similar. For example, following a progression that has become a constant pattern in the development of special education provision, deaf persons were the first to be served, followed by services to assist those who are 2