Looking Back (Part 3)
(For the past two weeks I have been writing about my own experiences as a young education reporter. Here’s another segment.)
In my mind’s eye, I can still picture the vast, dimly-lit room. About half the size of a football field, it was filled with men, women and children strapped into wheelchairs or otherwise restrained. If I close my eyes, I can hear the wailing and moaning, rising and falling in a cacophony of animal sounds that I never would have imagined humans were capable of making.
This ‘snake pit’ was in New Mexico’s main facility for handicapped children and adults, the Las Lunas Hospital and Training School. How I ended up there in 1979 with my tape recorder requires some explanation.
When I arrived in Washington in 1974, handicapped [1] children were the center of attention. The Congress had become aware of our failure to educate some children simply because of their mental and physical differences. Out of the estimated eight million handicapped children, one million were receiving no formal education at all; some were kept at home, while others, abandoned by their families, were doomed to spend their lives in institutions like the one in New Mexico. Still more handicapped children went to special schools, which often provided little more than custodial care, or were isolated in regular schools.
Legislation was working its way through House and Senate committees. In the White House, Gerald Ford (our new President after Richard Nixon’s resignation) was hoping it would not pass, because, as a Republican, he felt that education was a state responsibility.
Despite Ford’s objections, Public Law 94-142, “The Education of All Handicapped Children Act,” passed easily in 1975 [2]. It told states they must provide a ‘free and appropriate public education’ for these children [3] in what was described as ‘the least restrictive environment.’ Schools must prepare an IEP, an individualized education plan, for every handicapped child, with the involvement of parents, and Looking Back (Part 3) | Taking Note: