Hodnota historického nadhledu pro současnou speciální pedagogiku
The value of historical overview for the contemporary special education

Summary/Abstract: Special education, as a scientific discipline that either theoretically or practically solves the problem of education of persons who are disadvantaged by the negative results of health impairments and sociocultural influences, has got a short history, which is, however, accompanied by specific changes. The measure of special education within the Czech conditions has been defined in an educational way since the beginning. The Czech conception did not accept the medical aspect as an indicating attribute, though it admitted its supporting aspect. The didactic and methodical focus of special education was accented, even during the period, in which its segmentation according to the dominant defects prevailed. Since November 1989, we have observed two trends that are implemented into the still integrally created discipline under external pressure: First, it is a penetration of irrational approaches and methods in a form of various pseudo-therapies to charlatanry that miss the contemporary level of knowledge. It is shown again, that the people of a higher level of education are not immune to this trend.Second, it is largely and, in individual cases, non-critically conceived inclusion of disabled and disadvantaged pupils into the general educational stream. The approach to the inclusion, which is affected by an ideology, begins to discredit this principle. Special education has also always sourced from the knowledge of position of the disabled and disadvantaged persons in the society as well as from taking care of them. It is demonstrated, that the development in this direction has not been definitely positive, and it even can be proved that already in prehistory, there was a help provided for the disabled individuals, without which they would not have survived. The enlightenment schemes have no value in this case.It is thus remarkably useful, even in special education, to remind the quote of an American philosopher George Santayna: “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

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