TOPIC: Historical & Legal Foundations of Special and IE WEEK 2

UNIT 1 UNDERSTANDING DIVERSITY

Course Intended ❏ Share in-depth observations on the current status of

Learning Outcome special education in the country and discuss its
implications on the special and inclusive education
programs
❏ Demonstrate knowledge of special and inclusive
education policies that promote the development of
safe, secure and fair learning environments

Essential Question What is the history of special and inclusive education, and what
laws have been developed and exercised to make education
truly inclusive?

Overview This lesson is developed to acquaint preservice teachers with

the living conditions and experiences of people with disabilities
across history.

Learning Target/s At the end of the lesson, the students should be able to develop
a historical matrix on disability.

Induction of Prior Knowledge

Victor, the Feral Child of Aveyron
Access the links below to learn how the https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMYcUXN
discovery of a wild child changed the way UChs&t=7s
people view disability.
Victor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rlSH0BX
nPM

Dissection of Concepts
Read the PowerPoint Presentation
Week Two and read the History of
Disability in the links below.

A History of Disability
http://www.ncld-youth.info/Downloads/disabili
ty_history_timeline.pdf

How did these information change the way you view disability?
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 A recorded lesson is prepared for
you via Ma’am Z’ Virtual Classroom
YouTube Account. Visit the videoclip
to learn more about the week’s topic.

Past and Present Perceptions towards Disability

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2duqtIc1CU

Experiential Episodes
Victor: The Wild Boy of Aveyron
https://owlcation.com/social-sciences/The-Wild-Boy-of-Aveyron

“[The Savage] looks with compassion on poor civilized man -- no courage, no strength, incapable of
providing himself with food and shelter: a degenerate, a moral cretin, a figure of fun in his blue coat, his
red hose, his black hat, his white plume and his green ribands. He never really lives because he is
always torturing the life out of himself to clutch at wealth and honors which, even if he wins them, will
prove to be but glittering illusions. ...... For science and the arts are but the parents of corruption. The
Savage obeys the will of Nature, his kindly mother, therefore he is happy” -- Louis Armand

Such was the prevailing ideology in the late eighteenth century, forming the entire enlightened
Western world’s opinion on mankind itself. Humanity, popular thought opined, is corrupted and
made evil by the presence of society, and without the influence of civilization would be a kind,
selfless and enlightened race. However, one child would prove this entire philosophy wrong—a
feral child found in January 1800, known in his homeland as l’enfant sauvage.

Victor, as the child later became known, was likely born

circa 1788-1790 near Lacaune, France, and either
abandoned or lost in the nearby woods sometime between
1795 to 1797. He was spotted in these woods in 1798 and
captured briefly, escaping for a year before being captured
again for a week in 1799. On January 9, 1800, he was
captured once more in Aveyron, France, and cared for there
by the locals until August, when he was sent to the Institute
for Deaf-Mutes in Paris. There he was evaluated by many of
the most prominent Frenchmen of the day, such as Philippe
Pinel and Roch-Ambroise Cucurron Sicard.

The individuals there appraised him to be a horrifically

savage creature incapable of using almost any sense. Aside
from having basically no discernable cognitive ability,
Victor was initially assumed to be deaf. He responded to
absolutely nothing—not even loud, sudden noises—except
for sounds of interest to him, such as the cracking of his
favored nuts. Unsurprisingly then, he possessed no 15
capability of speech, uttering only guttural noises.
His senses of touch and temperature were no better developed. Victor had no qualms about picking hot
potatoes out of a fire and eating them before letting them cool, and running outside naked in the middle of
winter seemed to be a source of pleasure rather than pain. Cleanliness was a concept beyond him, as
demonstrated by his willingness to eat raw, dirty or otherwise foul food with an unbridled voracity and
tendency to urinate and defecate on himself without a care. Given all these disgusting, underdeveloped
features about him, it came as little surprise that Victor had no socialization skills. Indeed, Victor cared
nothing for people and was happiest left alone. People were mere objects to him existing solely for help in
obtaining things he wanted, and, should they not serve any real purpose to him, almost always ignored. In
all respects, Victor was a huge disappointment to all of whom examined him. Far from the noble savage
they had imagined from their readings of Rousseau, he was more akin to a beast.

Jean-Marc Gaspard Itard

https://owlcation.com/social-sciences/The-Wild-Boy-of-Aveyron

Given this, Pinel, a well-known physician specializing in the

mentally ill and retarded, deemed the boy retarded. Clinging onto
the idea of the “noble savage,” he asserted that the child was, in
fact, not feral at all, but just another “incurable idiot” like the
many he saw at the asylum he ran in Paris. Sicard, the headmaster
of the Parisian Institute for Deaf-Mutes, briefly attempted to teach
the boy and enroll him the Institute, but soon found him un-
teachable and left him to wander the campus of the Institute with
no instruction. However, the young twenty-five-year-old
physician Jean-Marc Gaspard Itard took issue with Victor’s
diagnosis and vowed to civilize the boy the experts had deemed a
hopeless case. A strong believer in Locke’s popular tabula rasa
theory, Itard felt that the effects of Victor’s unfortunate childhood
could be reversed and his mental faculties restored if Victor were
only taught in an effective manner.

With this philosophy in mind, Itard took Victor into his home and set up an education program focused
on expanding his senses, increasing his dependence on other people, teaching him to speak, enhancing
his cognitive abilities, and giving him the ability to interact with other people. With the help of Mme.
Guerin, a local Frenchwoman who served as Victor’s caretaker, Itard would work with Victor for six
years. The supposedly unteachable, bestial Victor would eventually make great strides and surmount
many obstacles in his social and cognitive development under his tutelage. However, to his immense
and obvious disappointment, Itard would never able to return Victor to any degree of normalcy.

The first task Itard tackled with Victor was that of sensation and perception. Victor was wholly unable
to appreciate or even discern the difference between sensations, reacting in the same way to differing
temperature and sounds and apparently having no threshold for pain. To remedy this, Itard and
Guerin would subject Victor to long, hot baths for several hours a day, every day, and massaged him
while cleaning him. Over the course of three months, Victor began to finally differentiate hot and cold,
and with this discovery came a literal explosion of other developments of the senses. He began to
insist on his bath being the appropriate temperature, ceased wetting himself at night in favor of being
dry, began to finally wear clothes, sought and enjoyed physical affection, and, most momentously,
began to sneeze and cry for the first time. 16
Jean-Marc Gaspard Itard
https://owlcation.com/social-sciences/The-Wild-Boy-of-Aveyron

Following the enhancement of Victor’s sensations, Itard began work on his speech. As Victor
seemed almost deaf to the human voice, Itard first began with training Victor to discern
individual phonemes. Victor took to this instruction quite quickly, though his recognition of these
phonemes did not translate into his ability to form them himself. Indeed, Victor could only ever
articulate the sounds “o,” “li,” “la,” and “dieu,” leaving his actual vocabulary at a pitiful three
words: “eau” [water], “Oh, Dieu” [Oh, God!], and “lait” [milk]. Itard was delighted in particular at
Victor’s ability to say “lait,” as he initially believed that Victor, who tended to first say the word
when being presented with milk, was attaching significance to the word. However, it soon
became apparent that “lait” was in fact a sound Victor made in response to the milk, and hence
would not ask for milk using the word or recognize that it even meant milk.

Victor would later begin saying “lait” in response to many things that made him happy or even simply
saying it at random. Itard, who had placed such emphasis on speech in Victor’s development, finally
reluctantly gave up teaching speech to Victor after several years, as it eventually became readily
evident that Victor could neither make most sounds nor attach any semantic meaning to the sounds he
could produce.

Following this defeat, Itard turned his focus onto the written word. This attempt was initially met with
frustration, as Victor could not tell the difference between the letters’ shapes and therefore could
obviously not attach semantic meaning to them. Itard thus introduced physical reproductions of the
most elementary shapes and worked with Victor until he could discern these shapes, and then more
complicated shapes such as letters. Victor quickly grasped the concept of spelling together letters as
given by Itard, and was able to attach semantic meaning to at least the written form of lait. However,
again, Victor’s abilities were limited, and Itard supplemented with visual signs and pictures of things to
get ideas across to the boy.

Despite all of Victor’s intellectual limitations, Victor made great strides in socialization. Contrary to the
aloof, egoistic manner Victor had initially presented when he first came to the Institute of Deaf-Mutes,
the Victor that emerged under Itard’s care was empathetic and interested in people. The same boy
who had sat by himself and only interacted with people when hungry or tired was undeniably attached
to both Itard and his caretaker Guerin, showing shame and guilt when punished by either and
expressing happiness at their return. When Victor once ran away for two weeks, he burst into tears at
being reunited with Guerin, and, after cautiously trying to ascertain the sterner Itard’s reaction, cried
and hugged Itard upon reunification as well. He also developed an ability to feel empathy, which was
most poignantly shown following his caretaker Guerin’s husband’s death. Accustomed to setting a
certain number of plates on the table for dinner every day, Victor set out a plate for Guerin’s husband
as usual, but following Guerin bursting into tears, wordlessly took away the plate and never placed the
plate on the table again. For a child so hopelessly retarded in all other aspects, Victor’s ability to sense
that something was wrong was truly momentous.

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End Result
https://owlcation.com/social-sciences/The-Wild-Boy-of-Aveyron

Unfortunately, after six years of working with Victor, the once-hopeful Itard finally had to concede that he
had achieved the most he ever would with Victor. Despite tens of thousands of hours of work with Victor,
Victor seemed to have reached a plateau in development and as incapable as ever of being able to speak or
at least reach some degree of normalcy. Nonetheless, Itard still hung onto his environmentalist ideology,
feeling that if he had only begun work with Victor a few years earlier, he might have been able to reverse
Victor’s poor upbringing. He left Victor in Guerin’s care and continued with his research of deafness. Victor
never made any further progress, instead quietly living with Guerin until his death at age 40 in 1828. In his
later years, Itard would change his mind about Victor and call himself a fool for ever thinking he could
have cured Victor of his retardation

Controversy Victor and Itard’s Legacy

https://owlcation.com/social-sciences/The-Wild-Boy-of-Aveyron https://owlcation.com/social-sciences/The-Wild-Boy-of-Aveyron

Itard was not alone in criticizing his work
with Victor. Many reading his work since
have questioned why Itard never tried
teaching sign language—which Itard
obviously knew fluently as an educator and
researcher of the deaf—to the mute Victor.
Several modern psychologists have also
opined that Victor was not in fact feral but
mentally retarded, psychotic or autistic, and
was abandoned in the woods because of this.
As Roger Shattuck notes, it was not
uncommon for French families to abandon
their mentally handicapped children in the
woods, and there was a persistent rumor
going around in Lacaune, France, that a local
family had abandoned their child in the
nearby forest because he was mute (R.
Shattuck, 1980). Victor’s thin scar across his
neck is testament to some human contact,
undeniably the result of a murder attempt.
In any case, critics agree that Victor had been
in the woods in complete solitude for several
years.
Regardless of the reason for Victor’s retardation, Victor
of Aveyron would have merely faded from memory had
Itard’s work with him had as little significance as Itard
later attached to it. Itard’s work, in fact, had great
ramifications for psychology, philosophy, linguistics, and
special education. Most obviously, the idea of the “noble
savage” died along with hopes of curing Victor. If
anything, Victor proved Hobbes’ opposing theory that
man is disgusting, selfish and crude without society
correct. Less obviously, Itard’s limited progress with
Victor ignited interested in the teaching of the mentally
retarded. Previously, the mentally retarded were seen
as hopeless, and no one bothered to teach them
anything. Victor made it clear that although faculties
might be limited, a person of deficient intelligence can
still be taught rudimentary concepts. The techniques
Itard devised to teach Victor are still used today in both
special education and in Montessori schools worldwide.
Finally, Victor served as one of the many testaments to
the future “critical period” theory of linguistics, which
asserts that children who are not exposed to language
after a certain point in development will never develop
any language ability. The education of Victor may not
have been a success, but his legacy continues to affect
thought today.

How did the discovery of the wild boy change the society’s view on disability?

Itard’s hardworking are not fully paid off in Victor’s case but still the study he started to teach him and
pushed him to normalcy, creates a controversy to help disabled people to learn. Criticism leads to the different
methods of teaching disabled. Victor’s case gave the opportunity for the disabled to treat equally and had a
slot in education.
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 Authentic Assessment
Worksheet #2
Historical Foundations. What will be the view and treatment of Victor, the wild boy of
Aveyron, if he was discovered in the following periods?You may submit your work as
hard copy or soft copy (recorded audio or written) via PNU-LMS or the following options:

Google Drive Courier

Google Mail Messenger

ERA VIEW TREATMENT

They view disabled person as an In China, a treatment of infanticide,
Era of
Extermination
abnormal person who destroy the idea disposing unwanted children including
of beauty and intelligence. Society abnormal babies. In Greek, they embrace
sees them as a pest in the human beauty, intelligent and perfection, in result
perfection consider as an irrational disabled are got killed, some are exiled.
animal.
The rise of Christianity where Jesus Society follows the teaching of Christ in
Era of
Christ shows compassion and some extent reducing the killing and
Ridicule
humility. He did not show criticism in producing hospital and charitable facilities.
disabled person instead he embraced On the other hand, not all disable has
and heal them. privilege that’s why some are exiled.

Disabled are viewed as a person who Disabled person are subjects to

Era of
needs medical treatment. Disabled experimentation. They give a proper
Asylum
person sees now as a client, patient treatment for their certain condition. Queen
and subjects to experimentation. Elizabeth passed a law requiring taking care
Disability is not a sin or a cursed. poor and disadvantage including PWD.

Disabled are viewed as a person who They give a proper education and facility to
Era of
needs education to help them acquire learn and acquire normalcy in some extent.
Education
normalcy in some extent. Also the Different studies are done in order to create
birth of different methods and equipments on a particular disability.
equipments for teaching disabled.

In present, some are still experience Government give concerns for these
Present
discrimination especially those who disabled creating human right laws,
are in poverty line and unprivileged. programs, facilities and inclusion. They also
But some are in giving different treated equally especially in the field of
programs, incentives and proper education.
treatment to cure such impairments.

Worksheet no. 2: HISTORICAL FOUNDATIONS 19

 WHAT I LEARNED THIS WEEK WEEK 2
Disabled experience through the history is tough and inhumane. They are killed and
exiled, seeing them as a plague of a society. Disabled are destroying the idea of beauty,
intelligence and perfection.

Rise of Christianity helps the treatment of the disabled in some extent. But still the
discrimination, the imperfection, seeing disabled as a cursed person. Disability is a sin,
making the disabled exiled.

Specialist tries to create experiments and different studies to cure the disabled. Seeing
disability as a problem rather than a sin. Disabled are subject to experimentation
creating trial and error.

The birth of education started by Jean Marc Gitard Itard on Victor’s case. Spending
thousands of hours teaching Victor, a series of test, resulting a few significant change.
This leads to criticism, producing different hypothesis in Victor’s case.

From the past to present, disabled are now given special treatment, they are also treated
equally in societal aspects and in the field of education. Equipments, facilities, and
programs are now issued for the disabled.

Disabled are now enjoyed many

privileges, from the facilities, discounts,
and education. They also had given proper
treatments to a certain condition.
ERA OF KILL, ERADICATE, In societal perspective, some are
EXTERMINATION INFANTICIDE,SLAY still experience discrimination, exclusion
and unprivileged. But certain laws are
passed now to protect them, and in some
case, society adores them in their different
ERA OF RIDICULE ABANDONMENT,
unique ability and perseverance.
DISCRIMINATION,
Instead of treating them as a
EXILE
burden in the society or a dead meat, they
are now part of the employment, and give
ERA OF ASYLUM SUBJECT, CLIENT, also equal opportunities.
PATIENT, The constant study and
EXPERIMENTATION experimentation are still present to give a
proper medication for the special needs,
finding a cure to achieve normalcy. But for
ERA OF TEACHING, now society give what it has to help them
EDUCATION METHODS, and provide at its best.
EQUIPMENTS

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