By Anne M. Filiaci, Ph.D.
COMPULSORY EDUCATION LAWS OF 1903
In the early years of the twentieth century, Elizabeth Farrell’s special education teaching methodology continued to gain broader acceptance. New York City began implementing it in an increasing number of schools throughout the district. By 1903, ten schools in Manhattan and the Bronx hosted special education classes based on Farrell’s model.
School officials, however, encountered a number of problems in the process of enacting the programs. Since there was no one person in charge of selecting teachers, the quality of special education was uneven at best. This problem was exacerbated because special education teachers received “no training for their work and the salaries were not enough greater than those for the grade teachers to be a special inducement.” Teachers also had difficulty obtaining the special supplies they needed to teach, since their classes were not considered “a separate department of the school system.”
The 1903 Compulsory Education Law served to further increase the number of special needs students in the school system. The Law required the Board of Health and the Board of Education to coordinate their activities in the enforcement of education statutes, extended compulsory school attendance to age sixteen, and raised the age of legal employment for children to age fourteen.
Starting that same year, children who wished to get a work certificate from the Board of Health also needed to submit documentary proof that they were fourteen years of age and that they had attended school for at least 130 days that year. The Newsboy and Street Trades Law of 1903 further forbade children to work at these occupations at night and during school hours. The new laws also included penalties for those who falsified documents in order to get jobs.
The execution of these laws intensified the City’s need to strengthen school programs devoted to children with disabilities, and Elizabeth Farrell was the expert to whom they increasingly turned. Ever conscientious, she decided that she needed to learn more about her work before accepting an expanded role. She proposed to take a leave of absence for one month in June of 1903 in order to embark upon a research trip to study the latest methods used to educate the learning and developmentally disabled. Superintendent Maxwell supported Farrell’s plan, and the Chair of the City’s Committee on Elementary Schools made a formal request that she take the trip, stipulating that she was to submit a report of her findings upon her return.
That summer, Farrell traveled to Great Britain to study their special education methods. By the time of her visit, London had been officially grappling with the issue for at least a decade. In 1891, that City’s school board resolved to establish “‘special schools for those children who, by reason of physical or mental defect, cannot be properly taught in the ordinary standards or by ordinary methods….’”
Soon, Britain’s national government appointed an inspector to oversee these schools. In 1899, the country’s National Board of Education decided to investigate the special schools program, and as a result the Elementary School Law of 1870 was amended to recognize and assist these special schools. By that time it was estimated that about one percent of all school-age children in Great Britain had physical or mental disabilities.
Farrell took special notice of the methods that British educators and administrators used to identify mentally disabled children in order to assign them to the most appropriate educational facility. Teachers worked with a superintendent of special schools, inspecting all children under their care and referring children whom they deemed in need of special education to the Superintendent of the Instruction of Physically and Mentally Defective Children. The referred children were then given a more thorough examination by the superintendent and a medical examiner. If the more detailed examination supported the teacher’s assessment, the child in question was taken out of regular school and assigned to a special program in a separate facility. At this facility, each child was examined at regular intervals by doctors who wrote detailed reports on their findings.
Upon her return to the United States, Elizabeth Farrell, as promised, produced a report of her findings. The work, entitled “Report on the Treatment of Defective Children in Great Britain,” was published in the Fifth Annual Report of the Board of Education. This report shows that Farrell approved of the careful, methodical way that children were examined, assessed, and assigned. However, she did not agree that the best way to educate special needs children was to put them into separate facilities, instead positing that they were better served in separate classes within a regular public school setting.
Both of these opinions would be evident in Farrell’s later work as a leader in the field of special education. In the short run, however, she returned after her trip to her Henry Street classroom, where she continued to busy herself by teaching her ungraded class and experimenting with the ideas and methods that she was developing.
Bibliography
Chase, Lydia, “Public School Classes For Mentally Deficient Children,” by Lydia Gardiner Chace, Providence, RI, report compiled in Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction at the Thirty-First Annual Session Held in the City of Portland, Maine, June 15-22, 1904, Ann Arbor, MI: Univ. of Michigan Library, 2005, at http://quod.lib.umich.edu/n/ncosw/ACH8650.1904.001?view=toc
Current 4/4/17 (Chace’s report appears on pp. 390-401, see especially p. 398.)
Kode, Kimberly, Elizabeth Farrell and the History of Special Education, Arlington, VA: Council for Exceptional Children, 2002 (ERIC Document ED474364, full text available as PDF through ERIC. See especially pp. 35-38, 44.
Stambler, Moses, “The Effect of Compulsory Education and Child Labor Laws on High School Attendance in New York City, 1898-1917,” History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Summer, 1968), pp. 189-214. See especially pp. 190-191, 197-199.
Wald, Lillian D., Windows on Henry Street, Boston: Little Brown, and Company, 1934. See especially p. 136.
Illustrations
Farrell, Elizabeth, Photo/Portrait Link to Illustration Current 4/6/17
The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. “Messenger boy” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1896. Link to Illustration Current 4/6/17
The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. “Messenger.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1896. Link to Illustration Current 4/6/17
The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. “Newsgirl” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1896. Link to Illustration Current 4/6/17
The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. “Messenger boy.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1896. Link to Illustration Current 4/6/17
The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. “Bootblacks, City Hall Park, NYC.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1896.
Link to Illustration Current 4/6/17
The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. “Newsboys.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1896. Link to Illustration Current 4/6/17
The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. “Newsboy.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1896. Link to Illustration Current 4/6/17
The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. “Bootblacks.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1896. Link to Illustration Current 4/6/17
The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. “Bootblack.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1896. Link to Illustration Current 4/6/17
The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. “Bootblacks.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1896. Link to Illustration Current 4/6/17
The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. “Newsboy.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1896. Link to Illustration Current 4/6/17
The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. “Messenger.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1896. Link to Illustration Current 4/6/17
NYC DORIS, PS 1, Manhattan: exterior. Henry Street, Oliver Street, and Catherine Street, ca. 1900. Link to Illustration Current 4/6/17
Schoolboys in a toy-making class at P.S. 1, 1900. Courtesy of New York State Archives. Link to Illustration Current 4/6/17
Schoolgirls in a nursing class at P.S. 1, 1900. Courtesy of New York State Archives. Link to Illustration Current 4/6/17
Copyright Anne M. Filiaci 2017