DPEP - Empowerment Through Education: Identification and Enrollment of Children with Special Needs in DPEP March 2000

Abstract

The history of special education dates back to the last decades of the 19th century when Christian missionaries established the first school for the deaf in Bombay in 1883 and the first school for the blind at Amritsar in 1887. At that time, it was believed that children with special needs could not be educated alongside others. Therefore, special schools were offered as the only option. Education of the mentally retarded children began in a similar fashion, but much later, in the late thirties. Education of the children with learning disabilities and autism is still in the initial phases of development.