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Authors: Margaret Drabble
Tags: Contemporary
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needs, financed by the local authority. An offer of a place in Enfield had come up, and Jess had been worrying herself about whether or not to accept it. Anna was growing up. Anna had left our local primary school in Plimsoll Road when she could no longer cope with the lessons, even with Miss Laidman’s special attention—I think she was about nine when she moved on—and she was already outgrowing the special class that she’d been attending, one attached to a larger state primary up in Highbury that gathered together most of the special-needs children of several North London boroughs. I think she was already at the Highbury school when Bob arrived in our lives.
Secondary school, Jess knew, would be a tougher proposition than primary school, and the local options for special needs weren’t immediately attractive. Maybe Anna would be happy at a boarding school, where she would benefit from expert professional attention. (So, plausibly, reasoned Bob.) She could learn to be a little more independent, learn skills that would help her to survive better, in the long run, without Jess. The local authority agreed to fund her transfer to Enfield at this stage, and was committed to funding her until the age when she became the concern of the social services rather than of the education department. All in all, it seemed a sensible move to make.
Bob didn’t press it, but it was clear that he was in favour of this move. We didn’t quite know what to think. Most of us sent our children to the local state schools, although one or two of the more privileged and better-off amongst us had reverted to their ancestral type and opted to pay fees. My Jake went to the local comp, and Ike would soon follow him. I reasoned that Jake was such a bright lad that he’d do well wherever he went. Bright Tim Bowles had become a weekly boarder at Harrow; his father took the opposite line from me and thought he was too clever for a comprehensive. We didn’t approve of that. Stuart and Josh Raven would also be sent to public school, and we wouldn’t approve of that either. We were good at disapproval.
My husband and I didn’t really see eye to eye about education, but he allowed me to make the decisions. He was, I sometimes thought, too busy with his work, his stressful decision-making work, to notice much of what was happening on the domestic front, and that suited me quite well. But happily that is not part of this narrative.
Anna, we all realised, was in a category of her own. Her needs were different. Her needs were special. The comfortable new phrase ‘special needs’ was to fit her like a nice warm woollen glove. She didn’t have Down’s syndrome, she wasn’t a cretin or a moron or an idiot or an imbecile or even a High-Grade FeebleMinded Girl, but she did have special needs.
Well, perhaps that’s exactly what she was, in the language of that earlier day. A High-Grade Feeble-Minded Girl. Lionel Penrose at Colchester would have recognised her, would have liked her. He liked most of his patients.
The debate about whether to educate special children in integrated classes within the mainstream system or by themselves in separate institutions is an old one, and, despite waves of reform and new education acts, it is never finally or satisfactorily resolved, because there is no final or satisfactory solution. There is no solution that fits all, as that warm-glove-word ‘special’ fitted Anna.
It was in 1913 that the Mental Deficiency Act was passed, which required ‘defective’ children to be taken out of elementary schools and placed in schools for the ‘feeble-minded’: a decision that was reversed by the Warnock Report of 1978, although that reversal is under constant review. No need to try to spell out this long, ongoing debate or to dramatise it here, although the
dramatis personae
are an interesting bunch of characters. The medical experts, the geneticists, the psychiatrists, the educationalists, the psychometric testers, the
Secondary school, Jess knew, would be a tougher proposition than primary school, and the local options for special needs weren’t immediately attractive. Maybe Anna would be happy at a boarding school, where she would benefit from expert professional attention. (So, plausibly, reasoned Bob.) She could learn to be a little more independent, learn skills that would help her to survive better, in the long run, without Jess. The local authority agreed to fund her transfer to Enfield at this stage, and was committed to funding her until the age when she became the concern of the social services rather than of the education department. All in all, it seemed a sensible move to make.
Bob didn’t press it, but it was clear that he was in favour of this move. We didn’t quite know what to think. Most of us sent our children to the local state schools, although one or two of the more privileged and better-off amongst us had reverted to their ancestral type and opted to pay fees. My Jake went to the local comp, and Ike would soon follow him. I reasoned that Jake was such a bright lad that he’d do well wherever he went. Bright Tim Bowles had become a weekly boarder at Harrow; his father took the opposite line from me and thought he was too clever for a comprehensive. We didn’t approve of that. Stuart and Josh Raven would also be sent to public school, and we wouldn’t approve of that either. We were good at disapproval.
My husband and I didn’t really see eye to eye about education, but he allowed me to make the decisions. He was, I sometimes thought, too busy with his work, his stressful decision-making work, to notice much of what was happening on the domestic front, and that suited me quite well. But happily that is not part of this narrative.
Anna, we all realised, was in a category of her own. Her needs were different. Her needs were special. The comfortable new phrase ‘special needs’ was to fit her like a nice warm woollen glove. She didn’t have Down’s syndrome, she wasn’t a cretin or a moron or an idiot or an imbecile or even a High-Grade FeebleMinded Girl, but she did have special needs.
Well, perhaps that’s exactly what she was, in the language of that earlier day. A High-Grade Feeble-Minded Girl. Lionel Penrose at Colchester would have recognised her, would have liked her. He liked most of his patients.
The debate about whether to educate special children in integrated classes within the mainstream system or by themselves in separate institutions is an old one, and, despite waves of reform and new education acts, it is never finally or satisfactorily resolved, because there is no final or satisfactory solution. There is no solution that fits all, as that warm-glove-word ‘special’ fitted Anna.
It was in 1913 that the Mental Deficiency Act was passed, which required ‘defective’ children to be taken out of elementary schools and placed in schools for the ‘feeble-minded’: a decision that was reversed by the Warnock Report of 1978, although that reversal is under constant review. No need to try to spell out this long, ongoing debate or to dramatise it here, although the
dramatis personae
are an interesting bunch of characters. The medical experts, the geneticists, the psychiatrists, the educationalists, the psychometric testers, the
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