The First Crusade for Learning Disabilities: The Movement for the Education of Backward Children

Abstract

There exists among those who work in the area of learning disabilities a widely shared view of the historical development of their field. Learning disabilities, according to this conventional wisdom, is thought to have emerged out of the research of Alfred Strauss and Heinz Werner with brain injured, mentally retarded children during the late 1930s and early 1940s. In this chapter, I argue that this is a flawed history. It is a history that sees learning disabilities as a problem within the individual, the result of a brain injury or other neurological dysfunction. What is missing from this account is any link between the appearance of learning disabilities and events in the larger society, particularly changes in existing political and economic arrangements. In this chapter, I offer a revised history of learning disabilities that traces its origins to the early twentieth century movement for the education of backward children. Looking at the development of the ungraded class program for backward children in the Atlanta public schools during the first two decades of this century, I show how what today we call learning disabilities first appeared on the scene as an educational response not to a problem of brain injury but to serious disruptions and dislocations that resulted from the nation’s transformation into an urban, industrial society.