Special Education’s Difficult History
Norena Hale.
What struck Norena A. Hale most as she dug into almost 200 years of special education history in Minnesota was the discrimination.
“We discriminated against kids with disabilities and their families, but also against women,” the former state director of special education said in discussing her latest project, a historical book about the evolution of special education teachers. “I had to start with how teaching itself began, because special education grew out of that, and at first there really was no training for teachers at all. Young females were hired because they were cheap.”
Over more than 500 pages, Hale wove oral interviews, professional journals, newspaper articles, legislation, public policies and other documents to create Special Education Teachers in Minnesota, 1840s to 2023: Roles, Qualifications, Training, Supply, and Continuous Shortages.
Published in May, the book was sponsored by the Institute on Community Integration under a grant funded through the Minnesota Historical Society. David R. Johnson, a former ICI director who passed away in July, was the project director. ICI’s Connie Burkhart was the graphic designer. Hale, who holds a doctoral degree in special education administration from the University of Minnesota, has written several other books about the field, including Dogged Determination: An Anthology of the 1957 Law Requiring Education for Handicapped Children in Minnesota's Public Schools—A First in the Nation.
“This is the fourth book I’ve worked on with Norena, and it’s a fascinating topic,” Burkhart said of the new work. “Just looking at the photos alone that she included, it’s amazing that these records were kept. Norena is an important voice in our state in the field of special education.”
Hale, who also served as assistant commissioner of vocational rehabilitation services in Minnesota, recounts how progress was gradually made to professionalize the field, largely due to legislation ensuring the rights of young people with disabilities to an appropriate education in a setting integrated with their peers. Throughout its history, however, the profession has also been plagued by dire labor shortages.
In the book, the author includes a guest editorial from a parent in a 1912 Minneapolis Star Tribune article decrying the use of untrained teachers to work with students with learning disabilities.
“If we are to take in hand to raise their less fortunate brothers and sisters…then let us have the most reliable and strongest, not the cheapest and weakest material to do it with,” the parent wrote.
Legislation made a dramatic difference in special education over the course of her 50-year career in the field, and the payoff is that students with disabilities today get to more fully participate in their own lives, Hale said, but the ultimate goal of the book is to share information about the discrimination and hurtful practices of the past with educators and policymakers, so they make informed decisions in the future.
“The lessons from this research show that we still need to grapple with labor shortages that are getting worse,” she said. “There have been shortages documented throughout history, and one of the downsides is the lowering of standards. I worry about how that affects students with disabilities today.”
Still, she is hopeful about the future of the teaching profession.
“Beyond the systems erected to comply with legislation, the heart that the most dedicated teachers continue to bring to the profession is the key to its future,” she said.