Early Educational Exclusion: “Idiotic” and “Imbecilic” Children, Their Families, and the Toronto Public School System, 1914–50

Abstract

This article uses pupil records and patient files from Toronto, along with other sources, to examine the interconnected rise of special education classes and the complete exclusion from public schools of children labelled with a form of mental deficiency referred to as “idiocy” or “imbecility” or later represented by an intelligence quotient below fifty. It was the first provincial special education laws that also enabled schools to legally exclude some children not just from the new special classes but also from public schooling altogether. Drawing on eugenics and the ideas of mental deficiency experts, school officials justified exclusion by claiming that some types of disabled children were “ineducable” – they could not learn or their presence in schools would harm others' learning. The article looks at student experiences to show how exclusion curtailed their schooling. It also examines how families responded to the exclusion. Families were historical actors, despite the limitations imposed on them by their circumstances, by the policies and prevailing attitudes about class, gender, and single mothers, and by the nature of their family member's disability. The article contributes to “the new disability history,” a growing subfield.