From Backwardness to L.D.: Behaviorism, Systems Theory, and the Learning Disabilities Field Historically Reconsidered

Abstract

This article examines the approaching dominance of behaviorism and systems theory in the contemporary learning disabilities field in light of the conventional historical interpretation of the field's origins to which most learning disabilities theorists subscribe. From this perspective, which locates the origins of the field in the work during the 1930s on brain-injured children, behavioral and systems management procedures appear as new innovations in our understanding and treatment of learning disabilities that direct the field toward progressive and humanistic ends. A more accurate history of the field locates its origins in the work of American educators from the turn of the century through the 1920s on the problem of backwardness. From this historical perspective, behavioral and systems management procedures turn out to be long-standing practices of American educators. They also turn out to be directed to profoundly conservative social and political ends that belie the progressive and humanistic orientation claimed for them. This revised history of the origins of the learning disabilities field can temper the willingness of contemporary theorists to accept behaviorism and system theory and thus retard the emerging dominance of this twin perspective.

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