Setting the Stage: Context and Method

Abstract

This book offers a historical account of special education discourse within American public schools from the viewpoint of 15 mothers with children labeled learning disabled (LD). It is a version of history in which mothers, representing diverse generations, social classes, races, and ethnicities, describe their lived experiences within the established structures that provide a free and appropriate public education for children with disabilities. Their collective narrative spans a period of 40 years—a time frame that begins in the 1960s (before the passage of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act [PL 94–142]) and concludes shortly after the turn of the new century.