Handicapped Child — Facts of Life

Abstract

I do not need to remind my readers that the handicapped child is a subject, not an object; a person, not a thing. likewise, variation from the norm or average can be troublesome. Many of us, through ignorance or wish-fulfillment, often do not separate healthy, normal divergence from the deviance which should be of concern. There is sometimes a thin dividing line in terms of interpretation. Powerful and interested groups are newly involved in the care of the handicapped society with its compassion and guilt is heavily into the act, as are government, education, science and medicine. What some people call research in this area should not be dignified by the word, and I am sure Claude Bernard with his experimental method and Koch with his postulates would turn over in their graves were they able to see some of it. On the other hand, dead certainty is the enemy of strategic gain in the therapeutic area.