Excerpt Number One
Disability History in America
The history of people with disabilities in America is a rich one that has not always been acknowledged. For most of our shared history, people with disabilities have been marginalized and invisible; there are a couple of reasons why this may be so. Nondisabled people see those of us who are and often see the things they fear most, such as an inability to control their individual lives or anatomy. Fear of these things can have a profound psychological effect on people, and people avoid what they are afraid of. Another reason disabled people have been left out of history is the medical view of people with disabilities.
For many of the people who write history, disability has been a medical issue, not a cultural one. Rehabilitation, medicine, special education and other, similar areas of approach to viewing and interacting with people who have a disability have become the common place. Disability has been the realm of the professional in association with a medical model. Even in the liberal arts, a disabled individual is often viewed as a deviant subject instead of with interest in their social structures. Do not be misled into thinking that disability does not have a place in history; though, disability has had a very large part in American history.
...Efforts to assist people with disabilities changed over time, and by the turn of the twentieth century, disability was being redefined in America. Around 1890, some of the first institutions perhaps best referred to as, 'Hospital Schools,' as well as the first vocational programs for the training of, 'cripples,' emerged along with the approach known as rehabilitation. The years 1890 through 1920 were an important period in disability history because they acted as a bridge between nineteenth century supernatural views of disability and the post 1920 medical model of disability. During this time period cripples were referred to as people who had mobility impairments, such as paraplegics and amputees, but were also financially dependent on other members of society for support. Cripple's reliance on charity caused them to become immoral characters that drained the lifeblood of the economy, it was believed. The path to elimination of cripple's dependency was through rehabilitation, according to the reformers of the time.
Some reformers, referred to as, 'social rehabilitationists,' promoted the need for social and cultural change, and did not see any real need to change the disabled person through surgery or physical therapy. Other reformers, referred to as, 'medical rehabilitationists,' took on the opinion that the person with the disability was the problem, and focused their efforts on orthopedic surgery and moral education, as well as other solutions involving the repair of the person. Scholars in the field of disability studies believe that the actions of the medical rehabilitationists helped to define the medical model of disability.
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ISBN Numbers
ISBN13: 978-1-4363-4858-4 (Trade Paperback)
ISBN: 1-4363-4858-7 (Trade Paperback)
ISBN13: 978-1-4363-4859-1 (Hardback)
ISBN: 1-4363-4859-5 (Hardback)
Pages: 255
Copyright © 2008
by Thomas C. Weiss, M.A.
