By Heidi Johnson-Wright
2015 marked the 40th anniversary
of the Education for All Handicapped
Children Act (EHA), landmark federal civil rights legislation that allows
kids with disabilities to sit in school desks alongside non-disabled students. Before
1975, the U.S. was a nation in which the educational needs of eight million
“handicapped children” were not being met, with one million such children excluded
entirely from the public school system.
The most severely disabled
children were forbidden by law to pass through the schoolhouse doors. Among the
other seven million, most attended segregated schools with very rudimentary curricula
or were sequestered within segregated classrooms. Most were tasked with just
busy work and training for menial jobs.
Like the Sex Pistols sang in “God
Save the Queen”: No future, no future, no
future for you.
The EHA later evolved into the Individuals
with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which defines kids eligible for services
as those who have “a disability that adversely affects academic performance.”
Of the eight million children mentioned in the EHA, it’s likely that many had
orthopedic that didn’t impair the ability to learn but pushed them into
segregated settings. Today, approximately 95 percent of kids with disabilities
are attending regular public schools. About two-thirds pass school days
alongside their non-disabled peers.
But don’t uncork the champagne
just yet.
While U.S. law creates a
framework for an integrated setting, good intentions don’t always add up to a
meaningful education. Parents, students, school administrators and teachers
must still shape a free appropriate public education in the least restrictive
environment.
Intrigued? Check out Pentimento
magazine at: http://www.pentimentomag.org/issue-6-toc
My non-fiction memoir piece, “Crip
Cargo,” appears in the current issue of this literary magazine for the
disability community. An accessible, balanced platform where a piece about a
promising future can sit next to a glimpse into a bleaker reality. Readers look
together into the dark and the light and connect to both. To see and see again.
To see beyond disability.
Don’t expect the usual mass media-crafted
tropes of super-crip, inspirational gimp or pathetic victim. The pieces relate
indignities, triumphs, and moments of silent or not-so-silent joy. At the heart
of any education lies communication. Telling our stories makes us real, vibrant
and not-to-be-ignored.
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