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Book review/Compte rendu
Vera C. Pletsch, Not Wanted in the Classroom: Parent Associations and the
Education of Trainable Retarded Children in Ontario: 1947-1969. London,
On.: The Althouse Press, 1997. Pp. 156.
Reviewed by Theresa Richardson
Written largely as an in-house history, Vera Pletsch’s pioneering work
shows the need for historical research on childhood disability and its
treatment, on the politics of school inclusion, and on how parents vie
with experts, government officials, and law makers over access and funding.
Despite its many flaws, this book makes two significant contributions to
the history of special education and special services for children in Ontario.
It is the first study of children labelled “trainable mentally retarded”
and excluded from public education altogether, including the segregated
special classes created by Helen MacMurchy in 1911 and the auxiliary classes
for slow learning children enabled by legislation in 1914. Second, it is
unusual in highlighting the role of parental lobby groups in forming school
policy.
Parent interest groups pushed for enabling legislation and the funding
of classes, yet we know little about the origins and activities of parent
associations on behalf of children with disabilities. Pletsch tries to
fill this gap by describing the grass-roots movement of nine parent associations
in Ontario and their struggles to open local experimental schools for children
thought to be uneducable. She interviews members of parent associations,
teachers, and school inspectors from Kirkland Lake, Toronto, Hamilton,
London, Windsor, Brant-Norfolk, Welland, Niagara Falls, and Petersborough.
She also studies organizations such as the Ontario Association for Retarded
Children (OARC) instrumental in educating the public and pressing for changes
in school legislation.
It is difficult to talk about the history, education or experience of children
labelled “mentally retarded” without discussing problems of classification.
Not Wanted in the Classroom begins with an apt observation:
[M]any histories that discuss mental retardation are extremely misleading
for two reasons. First, they fail to distinguish between concepts about
mental retardation and concepts about mental illness and, secondly, their
authors mistakenly apply labels interchangeably at various levels of mental
deficiency. (9)
Despite this warning Pletsch’s work is itself a case in point. She does
not take into consideration the fact that all classification systems used
to delimit populations for purposes of treatment, service, or education,
including “mental illness” and “mental retardation,” are social constructs.
Mental retardation is a twentieth century term that may or may not refer
to a clinical condition of biological origin (as in hereditary syndromes).
Educators use behavioural classifications, supported by intelligence tests
(IQ) and social assessments, to determine a child’s learning potential.
Behavioural classifications often lack any medical basis, nor are they
justified by an underlying biological or clinical condition, and thus are
subject to a variety of abuses and mis-diagnoses on the basis of social
class, cultural, linguistic, religious, or socially-grounded developmental
expectations for age groups. Classification systems may facilitate distribution
of public and private funds to provide services for people who can't live
independently. These classifications nonetheless remain groupings of convenience.
By their very definition they are of questionable validity, given the persistence
of human differences and the variation of the abilities and characteristics
of any single individual subject in any one category.
Pletsch accepts without question not only the classification systems but
also the intelligence test as a definitive means of identification. She
states that by the 1920s
the term ‘retardation’ had been clarified in the minds of most professionals.
The development of the Binet tests, which initially promised to be an almost
exact measure for separating the mentally defective child from the normal
one, indicated to what degree a child was retarded in mental development.
(26-7)
She treats IQ as a definitive indication of abnormality and the labels
as a reality, although she notes that “many professionals expressed reservations
about the dependability of the IQ as scientific proof of mental deficiency”
(27). Pletsch uses the archaic classification systems of the times she
discusses without acknowledging their complications or assessing who benefits
or is disadvantaged by alternative classification and labelling systems.
Boundaries between the categories of mental illness, mental deficiency,
and physical disability are in fact fluid and tied to contextual influences.
The same disability can be differently diagnosed depending on the affiliation
or discipline of the agency or individual doing the assessment. This is
one reason why social histories of evaluation and labelling are important
and why it is vital to examine how parents of children labelled “retarded”
contributed to changes in definitions and services.
Pletsch’s ambitious overview of the early history of special services in
Ontario is occasionally confused and sometimes misleading. For example,
she cites one of Canada’s leading mental hygienists, Clarence Hincks, as
an “environmentalist” (28) but fails to identify his important role as
medical director of the Canadian National Committee for Mental Hygiene
(now the Canadian Mental Health Association) and later general director
of both the Canadian and U.S. committees.
Her historical overview is of little help in clarifying the broader dynamics
of Ontario society from 1947 to 1969. The eugenics and mental hygiene movements
were then central to an intellectual climate that encouraged hereditarian
social thought and promoted segregation and custodial care of individuals
considered abnormal. Policies fostered by these movements shaped legislation
and the training of professionals as well as the attitudes of parents (especially
from the upper classes). These pressures shaped the ability of parent associations
to form and to organize effectively on behalf of their children.
How did the actions of these pioneer parent groups help and hinder efforts
to provide for the specialized needs of their children? The paradoxes of
parental attitudes toward their children by social class, culture, and
gender should be a central aspect of this story. What were the divisions
and internal politics of the parent associations? The complexity of the
struggles, confusions, biases, and triumphs of personal growth of these
individuals and groups are barely tapped, much less adequately explained
or analyzed.
Pletsch has opened a door. One hopes other social historians will take
up this important topic and tell this potentially rich story.
Theresa Richardson
University of South Florida
Historical Studies in Education/Revue d'histoire de l'éducation 11, no. 1 (Spring/printemps 1999)
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