Disabilities in History
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Wolran Kim
April 2012


Modern welfare for disabilities is the recollection of the accumulation of events from all ages passed down from past achievements rather than springing out at any point in time. Various facts about disabilities of a bygone era have had impacts on modern welfare systems, both positive and negative. Historical research for disabilities is important because good effects have been developed and negative impacts have been eliminated by the reflection.

In the pre-modern agricultural society, the labor force was an indispensable condition necessary for survival, and people needed this condition for their livelihood. Thus it was natural that people with disabilities were abandoned and alienated, because they could not equip these conditions and help to maintain family livings. A healthy body was a determination of the human value in ancient society, and disabilities were excluded because a healthy body was associated with the means of production and the competition for survival. Eventually, the need for education about disabilities was not recognized because they were removed from the labor standards in the battle of survival. A historical fact has been shown that the ancient city-state accepted disabled infants by throwing the body off a cliff. The birth of disabilities was not significant by the legal effect of Roman law (Hentrich).

There were differences depending on the region by the degree of cultural specificity. The mainstreams of the treatment of the disabled were filled with superstition, prejudice, neglect, and abuse in ancient society. These phenomena alienated the disabled, considering them as being incompetent, and were continued as a universal social consciousness until the Middle Ages. However, conceptions about protecting those with disabilities based on religious motives can even be found in societies where there were abuse and abandonment.

The protection theory of the disabled and the weak in ancient Christian history has ideological roots in disability rights protection from the medieval times and human rights of the West. The theory in the Bible, especially the image of God, was the central stem of human rights ideas and thoughts within the natural law of the West. The Old Testament mentioned that humans were created in the image of God, and were provided a basis for human dignity, including those with disabilities. The view of disabilities in the Bible is expressed as a positive and active perception, and also serves a lot of ideas in the Middle Ages despite the limits of the era (Lord).

Medieval society was the quickening period of relief and protection for poor people and disabled people based on Christian teaching. Protection charities and disabilities relief efforts began to sprout from the influence of Christian religious thoughts, despite the common phenomenon of abusing and rejecting those with disabilities. Under this background, churchmen of the early Middle Ages began to establish protection facilities for them. The Renaissance was a movement of awakening of humans and self-discovery, centered on the revival of the arts and sciences of the ancient Greek Romans.

This movement tried to return to modern human centrism, overcoming all the medieval world views from asceticism to naturalism, from authoritarianism to rationalism, from ecclesiastical spiritual to secularism, and from God to humanism. Humanists, who were affected by the Renaissance, rationally understood the nature and true character of those with disabilities having to overcome prejudices and superstitions of the medieval and ancient times. They also gave impetus to explore the possibilities of education for the disabled. Leonardo da Vinci clearly stated that the deaf can read, and Rudolf Agricola said that deaf and blind people can be educated by sensory replacement.

By the mid-16th century, religious reformation movements were led by Protestantismmainly to Germany in northern Europe. Reformer, Martin Luther, thought that God and human beings combine through experiential, independent, deep faith, because God is innate in the soul of the individual human. Thus, all people with disabilities such as blindness, deafness, and even mental retardation can be Christians through contact with God in the natural good heart. Martin Luther’s view of disabilities was an important opportunity to innovate the social treatment of disabilities that was handed down so far with superstitions and prejudices. Reformation educational ideas had great significance in terms of national education of general education systems, and this has become an ideological basis for school education for children with disabilities (Miles).

Entering the late Middle Ages, medical science became highly developed as a secular study. The progress of medical science was a significant contribution to the scientific understanding about children’s disabilities through a scientific explanation of the physiology and pathology of “disabilities”. The scientific understanding of children’s disabilities helped overcome fatalism about human disorders, and helped people understand disabilities on the basis of science and rationality.

In early modern times, representatives of the renaissance, humanism, and the Reformation attempted achieving education for children with disabilities, and this education began to take place in private or experimental locations with the Protestant monks as leaders, particularly in the 16th century. British empiricist, Bacon, established the correct ideological foundation of traditional views of disability, and asserted the understanding of human beings by claiming to wipe out any prejudice and superstitious beliefs.

In the 18th century, a counter plan of children’s education was provided for the common people as part of the State Administration of Education and Generalization movement. Then an interest in special children increased, and special education has been promoted due to the development of physiology, medical science, psychology, and sociology with finding causes of disabilities in the late 19th century. Disability facilities opened up all over Europe in the early

19th century, and these were entrusted with protection. These institutions combined special education and protection. In England those days, eugenics movements, which tried to inhibit the birth of inferior factors, moved lively and started genetic studies to explain the occurrence of offenders in the eugenics views. This study set the genetic underpinning of mental retardation, given the features that crime, corruption, and poverty came from mental retardation. This also gave a basis for isolated accommodation.
Special institutional developments for people with disabilities did not appear in the modern era either. Disability welfare in the modern sense took form after World War I and II.

This system was prepared to begin mainly with medical rehabilitation, education rehabilitation, and vocational rehabilitation in the United States, Britain, Sweden, and Australia after 1945. In the 1960s, the framework for modern disability welfare was comprised, and the social integration of the disabled was settled. Since the 1970s, the international trend started to shape the reflection from medical rehabilitation, education rehabilitation, and vocational rehabilitation. In 1971, the UN declared to the world that people with disabilities shall have the same equal rights as citizens of the same age regardless of the cause of the failure and the degree of specialty, in their ‘Declaration of the Rights of Mentally Retarded.’ Modern disability welfare started to reform toward social integration after the 1980s.

In the 1990s, this welfare system started to improve as the concept of a whole system, with education for the man with a disability for social integration into families, residents, and governments, as well as experts of medical, education, psychological, vocational, and social work for rehabilitation. To ensure social access, improvement of the buildings, houses, child care systems, and psychological sense of community residents began to take shape. The UN adopted ‘The Standard for Equal Opportunities for Disabilities’ to encourage every country with the motto, ‘society for all people’ and ‘in practice from recognition (Standard).’

Sweden, Australia, and England enacted prohibition laws of disability discrimination, in 1993, 1992, and 1995. The ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) was established to prevent discrimination against people with disabilities in the United States in July 1990. According to this law, work places, roads, telephones, and telecommunications services should be prepared properly for people with disabilities, and mandated that companies with 15 or more employees hire people with disabilities. This also indicates the appropriate environments for working conditions, guarantees the physical access, and provides special equipment with interpreters for various kinds of disabilities. This law comprehensively regulates the physical environments of communities such as the employment of non-discrimination, transportation and public services, provisions for public facilities, and communications-related regulations (The Americans).

The rights and welfare of people with disabilities have been accomplished through the spirit of self-help of disabled people for a long time as can be seen in the implementation of the ADA and independent living philosophies. We can see that human rights have been universally expanded in history. An isolated and marginalized social class ensured their rights as a dignified existence through a result of long struggles over a long period of time. People with disabilities fully show that they are protagonists of progress throughout human history despite days of frustration. This seems to be part of the process of maturing in any country regardless of the differences between the rate and pattern. The history of disabilities is rapidly changing into a disability-oriented paradigm, and the change of perception of deeply embedded prejudice against people with disabilities, is necessary for bright future of human society.