Essay On Special Needs

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Greta Dahlen Dahlen1
Mrs. Wicks
Lit and Comp, 3
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Messy Question: How has the education, therapy, treatment, and legislation for people with special needs evolved to the 21st century? Special needs can mean a lot of different things to different people. The main definition of kids with special needs are kids who need more help than others due to medical, emotional, or learning problems (“Kids With Special Needs”). Some kids may require wheelchairs or braces to walk with while others may use hearing aids or specific apps to help them better understand what they are learning. Although some disabilities are easily seen, others can be hard to even notice. A child could have anxiety or dyslexia and it would be hard to spot unless it was blatantly said out loud.
Not all people with special needs require the same things. All of them have different needs and a different diagnosis. Some well known types of special needs include: autism, epilepsy, ADHD, asperger's, cerebral palsy, down syndrome, and …show more content…

There were some asylums for the “deaf and dumb, and to promote the education of the blind” (Horn). Because public schools were left to decide, 1 million children with special needs were denied enrollment in 1973. One of the first schools that opened for children with special needs opened in 1817 by Thomas Gallaudet for deaf children (Fiske). Gallaudet University is still open today as a private university in Washington D.C. In 1967, 200,00 disabled people were living in institutions and not receiving proper medical attention or education. In 1970, only one and five people with disabilities were enrolled in school, some states even had laws excluding certain disabilities from attending school (

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