By Anne M. Filiaci, Ph.D.
NEW YORK CITY CREATES DEPARTMENT OF UNGRADED CLASSES, APPOINTS FARRELL ITS HEAD
In 1903, Elizabeth Farrell traveled to Great Britain in order to study first hand their approach to educating the non-traditional student. Upon her return she produced a report of her findings, submitting it to the New York City school district. Her report was published in New York City’s Fifth Annual Report of the Board of Education.
The following year, Lydia Chace, armed with a master’s degree from Brown University and experience working with settlements and other philanthropic organizations, compiled an extensive report detailing various approaches to the new field of special education. Chace’s report was published in the 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. While Chace conducted her research in multiple locations, she highlighted Farrell’s methods and spoke positively about her growing influence.
Chace’s report also provided details on the evolution of Farrell’s ideas and methodology over the years she had been teaching special needs children. At first, Farrell told Chace, the purpose of her class was to concentrate on “backward boys,”* with the goal being to “pull a boy up to the requirements of a certain grade which he was to enter at the earliest possible moment.’” It soon became apparent, however, that “the backwardness” of many of these boys could not be remedied with intensive temporary tutoring– it “was directly related to a physical or mental defect” that would not go away.
Special education classrooms, Farrell soon realized, had to be seen as a long-term solution for specific types of children that would always have difficulty learning in a regular classroom. Once “this fact was established,” Farrell concluded, “it became necessary to change the whole character of the work.” It was no longer possible for teachers and principals alone to delegate “misfits” to special classes. It was instead, as she saw it, the obligation of the school system to get involved in a larger way and to “diagnose each case presented for admission.” After each diagnosis had been made, it was then up to trained professionals “to lay out a series of exercises that would meet the physical, as well as the mental development of the child.”
The New York City school district eventually came to agree with Farrell’s assessment. Its administrators began to adopt complex and long term approaches to educating non-traditional and special needs students, rather than treating the problem as an ad hoc and temporary one. As the City’s school Superintendent William Maxwell wrote in his 1905 Annual Report, the “time of experiment” for ungraded classes had “ended.” Declaring that the classes had “fully justified their existence,” he asserted that the next step was for “the wide extension of this system” throughout the school district.
On February 14, 1906, the City’s Board of Education approved an “ungraded class” (i.e., special education) program for its schools. Farrell was promoted to the position of system-wide Inspector for the newly-created Ungraded Class Department. Reporting directly to the Board of Superintendents, her new duties included supervising all ungraded classes, training and evaluating teachers, and helping to form new classes.
Farrell was also directly involved in the placement and removal of all students targeted for special education. This allowed her to implement her concept of individualization district-wide. She did so by instituting a policy dictating that before each child was placed in an ungraded class, he or she had to submit to a physical examination performed by an approved physician, as well as a mental examination under her own direct supervision.
Under Farrell, the City’s special education program flourished, fulfilling Maxwell’s direction for its district-wide expansion. In 1906, the year Farrell received her appointment, the City had fourteen ungraded classrooms. By 1911—only five years after the creation of the Ungraded Department with Farrell as its head—the number of classrooms had expanded to 131. Farrell was to lead the Department until shortly before her death in October of 1932.
Within the span of a decade, Lillian Wald had used her considerable influence and provided invaluable assistance to two residents of the Henry Street Settlement who made lasting changes to New York City’s public schools. Both greatly expanded access to education for all of the city’s children. Beginning in 1902, settlement resident Lina Rogers ensured that children would not be denied an education as a result of their physical health. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Farrell worked simultaneously to ensure that “every individual,” including those with ongoing special needs, “should be developed to the highest level of which he was capable.”
*Today many of the terms commonly used in the early twentieth century to describe special needs children are rightly considered offensive. I have decided to use these terms where necessary in order to preserve historical accuracy, but to place them in quotation marks in order to indicate that they are not the language I would choose.
Bibliography
Brown University, Historical Catalogue of Brown University, 1764-1904, Providence, RI: Published by the University, 1905. Biographical information on Lydia Chace, see p. 462.
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, scanned and online in full, 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 pp. 398-399.
Duchan, Judith Felson, “A History of Speech-Language Pathology; Elizabeth E. Farrell, 1870-1932,” Last revised: 04/20/2011 17:22:15 at http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~duchan/new_history/hist19c/subpages/farrell.html Current 4/10/17Hendrick, Irving G.and Donald L. MacMillan, “Selecting Children for Special Education in New York City: William Maxwell, Elizabeth Farrell, and the Development of Ungraded Classes, 1900-1920,” Journal of Special Education, v. 22, no. 4, Winter, 1989 [c2001], pp. 395-417, see especially p. 403.
Kode, Kimberly, Elizabeth Farrell and the History of Special Education, Arlington, VA: Council for Exceptional Children, 2002 (ERIC Document ED474364). See especially p. 39.
Wald, Lillian D., Windows on Henry Street, Boston: Little Brown, and Company, 1934. See especially pp. 134-136.
Illustrations
Baker, Josephine, Photos from NIH, National Library of Medicine, Changing the Face of Medicine: Josephine Baker Biography Photo Gallery, Link to Illustration Current 1/18/17 and Link to Illustration Current 1/18/17 Can also be accessed at bottom of bio, Link to Illustration Current 2/6/17.
Bensel, Walter, MD, Sanitary Superintendent Dept. of Health, NYC, 1911. Photo from the John Shaw Billings Papers, University of Southy Carolina, South Carolina Library. Link to Illustration Current 2/6/17
Hanink, Elizabeth, “Lina Rogers, the First School Nurse,” Working Nurse nd. Link to article with image Link to Illustration Current 2/6/17 Link to image only:
Link to Illustration Current 2/6/17
“Family making artificial flowers,” by Jacob Riis, c. 1890 CE. http://www.college.columbia.edu/core/content/%E2%80%9Cfamily-making-artificial-flowers%E2%80%9D-jacob-riis-c-1890-ce or for image only Link to Illustration Current 2/6/17
Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy, The New York Public Library. “Inhabited kitchen.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1902 – 1914. Link to Illustration Current 2/6/17
“”Italian Mother and Baby” [Photograph],” in Children and Youth in History, Item #334, https://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/primary-sources/334. From Jacob Riis, “Italian Mother and Baby,” in How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York (1890). Annotated by Miriam Forman-Brunell. (accessed February 6, 2017). Image at Link to Illustration
Perfect babies at University Settlement, corner of Eldridge and Rivington Sts., New York, N.Y. July 11, ca. 1913. Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, Link to Illustration . (Accessed February 06, 2017.)
Hine, Lewis Wickes, photographer. [1 P.M. Family of Onofrio Cottone, 7 Extra Pl., N.Y., finishing garments in a terribly run down tenement. The father works on the street. The three oldest children help the mother on garments. Joseph, 14, Andrew, 10, Rosie, 7, and all together they make about $2 a week when work is plenty. There are two babies.Location: New York, New York State]. January, 1913. Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, Link to Illustration . (Accessed February 06, 2017.)
[Mothers and children in a city park on a hot day, New York City]. [between 1908 and 1919, ca. 1908] Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, Link to Illustration . (Accessed February 06, 2017.)
Hine, Lewis Wickes, photographer. [Mrs. Tony Racioppo, 260 Elizabeth St., N.Y. 1st floor rear, finishing pants in dirty tenement home. Although it is a licensed house, the whole place is very much run down. The ahllway i.e., hallway is in the same condition as that one at 266 Elizabeth see photo. Baby had bad cough. Mother said recovering from measles.Location: New York, New York State]. February, 1912. Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, Link to Illustration . (Accessed February 06, 2017.)
Hine, Lewis Wickes, photographer. 6 P.M. Callabria family, 647 E. 12th St., N.Y. see schedule Mother finishes clothing. The children paste needle packages onto cards and said they all work at times until 10 or 11 P.M. They are 9, 12, 14 and 15 years old and all go to school. They are undersized. The baby in the cart is one month old.Location: New York, New York State. February, 1912. Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, Link to Illustration . (Accessed February 06, 2017.)
Hine, Lewis Wickes, photographer. Cutting out embroidery on the dirty kitchen floor. Battista family, 259 E. 151 St. N.Y. On the right is the married daughter, who lives down stairs and usually works there. On her right next to the boy is Flora, said to be 9 years old and very much stunted in size. “Been sick.” Next to her is the mother and next is Linda, 11 years old. The baby, dirty and covered with sores, was being handed about. Probably has impetego.Location: New York, New York State. January, 1912. Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, Link to Illustration . (Accessed February 06, 2017.)
Hine, Lewis Wickes, photographer. [Mrs. Raphael Marengin, … St., first floor rear. Pepine, 10 yrs. old, cracking nuts with her teeth. The mother had just been doing the same. Carmine, 8 years old, has cross eyes, and with the boy about same age works too. Some of them work until 8 or 9 p.m. at times. Boy holding baby is foolish. Husband works on railroad part of the time. 10-year-old-girl cracking nuts with her teeth. The mother had just been doing the same. 8-year-old child has cross eyes and works, as well as the boy. New York City, 1911. Manufacture of food in tenement homes is now prohibited in New York State.Location: New York, New York State]. December, 1911. Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, Link to Illustration . (Accessed February 06, 2017.)
Copyright Anne M. Filiaci 2017