One who believes in a system of instruction in hygiene or physical training or what-not is naturally interested in its results when applied and therefore women have watched the effects of attempts at changed curricula on the children themselves. Both the teachers and the promoters of change have had a common interest in these results. It has not taken long to discover that children represent unequal foundations in their physical and mental make-ups for grasping instruction of any kind.
First there are the little crippled children for whom hard physical exercise is an impossibility and upon whose minds their physical condition has undoubted reactions. Crippled children seem first to have been given special educational opportunities in 1861 by the efforts of Dr. Knight and his daughter in their own home in New York City. Their home became a combination of school and hospital and furnished the stimulus for the Hospital-School for the Ruptured and Crippled in that city two years later. This was the first institution in America, it is claimed, to employ teachers of crippled children.
The next task, and women assumed that eagerly, was that of seeking out the little patients, and the Visiting Guild for Crippled Children of the Ethical Culture School was started in 1892 to insure continuance of instruction when the children were discharged from the hospital. Several societies developed then to care for crippled children, to feed them, supply them with orthopedic apparatus, and to carry them to and from schools. In 1906, “the Board of Education joined forces with two private guilds. The school equipment and teachers were supplied by the Board of Education; the building, transportation, nourishment and general physical care were looked after by the guilds. This attempt proved successful, and a further advance was made a year later, in 1907, when classes for crippled children were added to the regular public schools whenever rooms were available. At present there are twenty-three classes for crippled children in the public school system of the city of New York.” Provision was made for crippled children in the Chicago public schools in 1899, and in the schools of Philadelphia in 1903.