The Marginalization of Students in Need

By O. Joseph Mahabir

This book surveys the exclusion of students with disabilities from obtaining an appropriate education in the early history of the nation to the current time. It finds that in spite of the tireless efforts of parents, advocates, court legislations and federal mandates, students with disabilities especially minority students and second language learners, still continue to be deprived of an appropriate education.
Research conducted in a mid-sized urban school district in Southern California found that teachers recommendation of minority students and second language learners for special education referral was not in compliance with state and federal mandates.
Even though there was an honest effort by both federal and state governments to improve the quality of education for children with disabilities this was not occurring at the school level. They still continue to be deprived of the opportunity for an education in the regular education setting and become candidates for referral to special education.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503583535

O. Joseph Mahabir

Author has a Bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education/Special Education and a Master’s degree in Elementary Education from Rhode Island College in the state of Rhode Island. He obtained his Ph.D. in Urban Education Leadership from Claremont Graduate University in the state of California. He acquired valuable experiences as a teacher in the areas of Regular Education and Special Education. In the area of Special Education he held positions as a program specialist, program coordinator and Director of Special Education in the Compton Unified School District in the state of California. Before his retirement he worked as a school administrator for the Los Angeles County Office of Education. At the current time he is the Graduate Academic Advisor/Adjunct Professor at Cambridge College in Rancho Cucamonga, California. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Pacific Oaks College in Pasadena, California.

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Copyright © 2015 by O. Joseph Mahabir.

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Rev. date: 07/24/2015

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Chapter One: The Exclusion and Stigmatization of Children with Disabilities

Chapter Two: The Emergence of Opportunities for Individuals with Disabilities

Chapter Three: The Beginning of an Opportunity for an Education for Individuals with Disabilities

Chapter Four: The Beginning of Early Intervention Services for Infants and Toddlers

Chapter Five: The Equal Protection under the Law for Individuals with Disabilities

Chapter Six: Categories of Disabilities

Chapter Seven: The No-Child-Left-Behind Act and Its Implications for Students with Disabilities

Chapter Eight: Meeting the Needs of Minority Students with Disabilities

Chapter Nine: The Author’s Research

Chapter Ten: Review of the Literature on Teaching African-American and Second-Language Learners

Chapter Eleven: Methodology

Chapter Twelve: Results of Data Collected

Chapter Thirteen: Interviews with Teachers

Chapter Fourteen: Interviews with Psychologists

Chapter Fifteen: Discussion of Results

Chapter Sixteen: Summary, Recommendations, and Suggestions

Chapter Seventeen: Conclusion

References

For my children, Lisa and Justin Mahabir

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many thanks to Ms. Mary Jean Bergman for her endless patience, support, and encouragement throughout the writing of this book. She was instrumental in making this a pleasant journey for me. I would also like to express my heartfelt thanks to my family and friends.

CHAPTER ONE

The Exclusion and Stigmatization of Children with Disabilities

In the early stages of the history of special education in the United States of America, children with disabilities were excluded from education in the nation’s schools. The nature of their disabling conditions made them objects of contempt, ridicule, and exclusion. These negative attitudes were due to the prevailing social and cultural norms at that period or time, and for the most part, these individuals were socially ostracized and stigmatized across the nation. Individuals with disabilities were marginalized, and as a result, they were relegated to in-house care and protection by members of the family unit a high percentage of the time.

The home was the only safe haven for these children. Parents felt the sting of embarrassment and guilt of having a child with a disability through no fault of their own in and outside of the home environment.

The history of disability at this period of time shows that children with disabilities were subjected to rampant discrimination, stigmatization, and exclusion. The schoolhouse was not the only place where children with disabilities were excluded. Parents dare not venture into the community with a child that had a disability. They openly became objects of ridicule, scorn, taunting, contempt, and hatred.

They were viewed as having a punishment inflicted on them by God for some sin they might have committed. An individual with a disability was viewed by some as a dangerous person to be feared and avoided. It was believed that because they were punished for a transgression committed by their parents, they may be evil and dangerous.

Literature on the early days of children with disabilities indicate that parents of these individuals were considered as having an association or connection with the devil and/or some other evil spirits, and their affiliation with these spirits was a punishment inflicted on their child as a result of divine intervention.

In spite of the fact that children living with disabilities stayed at home to be cared for by members of their immediate family, they fared much better than what children with disabilities were experiencing at the hands of their own families in some countries. As an example, from 750 BC, Greek was one of the most advanced countries in the world. However, in spite of its advancement and enlightenment, Greek custom and legislation dispensed the most cruel and barbarous treatment of children with disabilities.

At that period of time in Greece, children who were born with disabilities became victims of a practice that was known as exposure. They were left outside of their home during the night and day without food or water to die from the elements. The Greeks considered this practice a form of passive killing. Greeks believed that individuals reflected the respect, value, and image of their nation. They therefore wanted to have a nation with physically strong, energetic, and vibrant individuals, so there was no mercy or compassion shown to eliminating individuals with disabilities.

The ancient Romans, like their Greek counterparts, felt that children were born with disabilities because their parents made the gods angry. They also utilized the exposure treatment to individuals with disabilities. However, unlike the Greeks, the ancient Romans did allow some form of protection to children with mild to moderate disabilities.

The Establishment of Institutions

The first institutions in the United States of America were established around 1863 by the government to care for, train, and educate individuals with disabilities. At that particular period of time, if a child was born with a disability, the parents, medical doctors, and religious authorities would recommend institutionalization as the most appropriate placement for that child.

As time progressed, institutions were fast becoming avenues for the isolation and containment of individuals with disabilities. Individuals with disabilities or mental illnesses were placed in state institutions which provided insufficient food, clothing, and shelter. Rather than being identified and provided with appropriate assessments and an education that met their needs, they were just being merely accommodated.

It should also be noted that institutions were being established at a period and time in our country when our nation was in the stage of the Industrial Revolution. Human labor was scarce and essential. Every able-bodied citizen was in demand. Jobs were easily available, and the income to be earned improved the living standards of most families. Institutions therefore became the most attractive decision to rid parents of the burden and stress of caring for their child with a disability so that they can earn an income working in mills or factories.

The removal of individuals with disabilities from the care of their immediate families as a result of the establishment of institutions robbed the average citizen without a disability to understand, interact, and familiarize themselves with these individuals to know them better. Misinformation and misunderstanding of individuals with disabilities were rampant at this period of time in the country.

Social theories abounded that as a result of the below average intelligence of individuals with disabilities, they were more inclined to indulge in criminal activities and engage in immoral sexual behaviors, even though they were institutionalized. As a result of this stigmatization, sterilization and eugenics were promoted by the scientific and medical communities.

At a certain point in our nation’s history, individuals with disabilities were blamed for poverty, crimes, and illnesses that accompanied the urbanization that was occurring, and a fearful and distrustful attitude developed toward individuals with disabilities. There was great support from the nondisabled population to eliminate the possibility of the cycle of individuals with disabilities to reproduce so as to purge the reproduction of heritable traits from occurring.

The scientific and medical communities championed the cause of sterilization and eugenics as a way to eliminate the undesirables from the reproductive gene pool in the communities of the disabled. A few books were even published that reinforced the heritability of the reproduction of feeblemindedness.

Laws were then enacted in several states to ensure that every female member in the population of the institutions in the nation was sterilized to prevent unwanted pregnancies. What was even more appalling was that during this period of time, if a child was born with birth defects, medical treatment for that child was withheld until the child died. The death was seen by the medical community as more acceptable than the pain, suffering, and misery that the child would have to undergo if that child were to be kept alive.

With the implementation of psychological assessments, many individuals with disabilities were diagnosed, and institutionalization was recommended, which sharply increased the number of individuals with disabilities in institutions across the nation.

As institutions around the country became more populated, the standard of care in institutions began to deteriorate. Complaints began to pour in from parents and advocates for the disabled. The news media were saturated with complaints from parents and other stakeholders. This drew the attention of U.S. policymakers. Investigations were launched, and what the investigators found were truly repulsive.

Investigators found that a majority of the institutions were overcrowded, understaffed, and unclean. The majority of individuals with disabilities living in these institutions were living in squalor and receiving substandard care, supports, and services. They found some individuals sleeping on cement floors in or around excrement. Others were walking around aimlessly. Most of the individuals seemed malnourished. Their body odor, eerie sounds, incessant crying, lack of personal hygiene, inadequate clothing, etc., were appalling and sufficient to move the conscience of any one to advocate for better care for these individuals with disabilities.

When the living conditions of what investigators found leaked out, there was a storm of protests all around the country. There was a huge public clamor for the abolishment of institutions housing individuals with disabilities. Some enraged parents openly shed their shame, secrecy, and guilt of having a child with a disability and publicly advocated for better treatment of their child in the respective institution in question.

Americans were appalled by what they were reading and hearing in the social media at that time. They were learning about the substandard existence of institutions and how some individuals with disabilities who were housed in these institutions were deprived of adequate nutrition, exercise, clothing, drinking, and eating utensils and how their personal hygiene were disregarded and/or ignored.

The overcrowding, understaffing, lack of cleanliness, and lack of education and training forced U.S. policymakers to revisit the establishment of institutions for individuals with disabilities. To compound matters, joined by advocates and other stakeholders, parents were clamoring for deinstitutionalization, family care, government assistance and access to education, and community programs for their children.

The depiction of institutions as a place for permanent segregation of children with disabilities drew the ire of many critics in the nation who clamored for its abolishment. They advocated for the return of children with disabilities to small manageable group homes or to the care of the family unit as the most appropriate and viable alternative.

There were some critics who opposed the policy of deinstitutionalization for individuals with disabilities. To keep alive the discrimination and segregation of individuals with disabilities, they claimed that institutionalizing individuals with disabilities was good for the safety, protection, and betterment of the society as a whole.

It took until the year 1961 for a presidential committee to be formed to examine and find solutions for the needs of individuals with disabilities and to address the issues of deinstitutionalization and community integration. Prior to the establishment of the presidential committee, parents and advocates were actively protesting and lobbying for the expansion of the rights of individuals with disabilities for access to education and for legal rights for their protection.

Organizations and support groups, such as the Association for Retarded Children (ARC), joined ranks with parents and advocates to strengthen their fight to advocate for the rights of individuals with disabilities and to better educate the public at large. To counteract the negative stereotypical images projected to the public about individuals with disabilities, in the eyes of advocates and other support groups, it was essential that the public become educated about individuals with disabilities.

Travelling circuses and shows seen by many had brainwashed some to think that individuals with disabilities were freaks. It was unfortunate that their exposure to individuals with disabilities came from a negative perspective to devalue the worth of these individuals. It was not until Pres. Franklin Delano Roosevelt got elected to office as the first physically disabled U.S. president in 1933 that there was national acceptance and tolerance to some degree for individuals with physical disabilities.

CHAPTER TWO

The Emergence of Opportunities for Individuals with Disabilities

In the dark period of the mistreatment of individuals with disabilities, there were some positive gains made. The first American School for the Deaf was established in 1817. It was the first known school of its type on the world stage. In 1864, Pres. Abraham Lincoln signed legislation that authorized the Columbia Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf