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Daniel Defoe
He wrote books and articles in support of those with intellectual disabilities. One of his first influential publications was called 'An Essay Upon Projects', which led to him proposing that those with high intellectual abilities pay for places to house others that are born with low intellectual abilities. He called them fool-houses. -
Defoe, Swift, and Peter the Wild Boy
Defoe and Swift were interested in the Peter when he was found uncommunative and living in the wild on his own. They did an assessment of him before he was later adopted and cared for until he died at the age of 65. Swift and Defoe disagreed with other findings that Peter was incapable of improvement. -
Jonathan Swift
He served those with intellectual disabilities by leaving his all of his fortune to a Dublin hospital that cared for people with intellectual disabilities. -
Itard and Victor
Victor was another "Wild Boy" found to be living in a forest. He was cared for by Jean Marc Gaspard Itard who was charged with helping him learn to live in society. Itard's study of how Victor learned and the help that he gave him is thought to be the beginning or initial start of the larger concept of special education. -
Christmas in Purgatory
This was a photographic essay on the awful, inhumane state of the hospitals and homes that people with disabilities were being institutionalized in. It was written by Burton Blatt and illustrated by Fred Kaplan as a research project into five institutions for the developmentally disabled to determine the reality of life within an institution. The pictures had to be taken secretly because the institutions didn't allow photography due to the treatment they knew would be recorded in photos. -
Rehabilitation Act of 1973
This act guaranteed civil rights to all people with disabilities and required that the necessary accommodations were given to students with disabilities in schools. -
Public Law 94 - 142
Also known as what started out as the Education of the Handicapped Act and has slowly turned into IDEA through ammendments of this first article. -
Least Restrictive Environment
LRE was added to an amendment of the law and I believe was one of the biggest steps forward in special education law history to date. -
EHA to IDEA
Due to changes being made to EHA the law was rebranded as IDEA and was established with the new revisions in 1997. The last revisions to IDEA was made in 2004. IDEA established the use of transition plans and put an emphasis on the importance of IEPs for all students within the special education program. -
IDEA
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act was established in 2004. The four main points are equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency for individuals with disabilities.