Founding Fathers

of
Special
Education
Jean Mark
Gaspard Itard
• French physician noted for his work with
the deaf and with the “wild boy of
Aveyron.”
• Itard was one of the first to attempt the
instruction of mentally retarded children
on a scientific basis.
Samuel
Gridly Howe
• founding director of the New-
England Institution for the Education
of the Blind (later known as the
Perkins School for the Blind) and the
Massachusetts School for Idiotic and
Feeble-Minded Youth.
Thomas Hopkins
Gallaudet
• founder of the first American
school for the deaf.
Edward Miner
Gallaudet
• helped establish Gallaudet University, the
first institute of higher education for the
deaf.
• He was also known as a leading proponent
of manualism—the use of sign
language for teaching the deaf.
Edouard
Seguin
• He pioneered modern educational methods for
teaching the severely intellectually disabled.
• In 1839, Séguin opened the world’s first school
for the severely intellectually disabled, where he
developed a method of treatment, later widely
accepted, based on the then-
revolutionary premise that the intellectually
disabled had neither diseased nor abnormal
brains but simply suffered arrested mental
development before, during, or after birth.
Treatment, therefore, consisted of sensory
training designed to permit the patient to
function as well as possible in society.