Ethical Dilemmas in Special Education

The ethical issues involved in special education are manifold. In many cases, the students are unable to perform certain activities unimpaired, and in many cases they will not ever attain a legal majority or emancipation. This already puts the educator in a more proprietary position than the mere invocation of in loco parentis could ever hope to capture.

Yet this seems to point toward a greater degree of potential paternalistic condescension on the educators part, something which we might consider as a particularly bitter irony about the state of special education overall, based on the origins of the present system of special education in America as being among the legal and educational reforms prompted by the Civil Rights movement inititated by African-Americans in the 1950s and 1960s. Congress' 1975 passage of the Education for All Handicapped Children act would remedy the earlier shocking statistic that...
[ View Full Essay]