日本の障害児教育における統合への志向 : 岡山県下小学校の盲・聾教育について(<特集II>インテグレーションをめぐって)

抄録

This article treats the development of integrated education for handicapped children in Japan, analyzing the social factors involved. As a consequence of the development of compulsory education around 1900, the integration-directed thought and movement in education for handicapped children had emerged in Japan as in European countries and U.S.A.. The, enforcement of compulsory school attendance law, strictly applied especially during the Russo-Japanese War 1904-1905, brought into schools deaf, blind and other handicapped children, though the Elementary School Decree of 1900 excused them from school attendance. To meet the growing educational need of these handicapped children, Okayama Prefecture took a significant step in 1905 inthe provision for education of the deaf and blind with the application of compulsory attendance to deaf and blind children of school age. The public school program for them was organized by the prefectural authority in preference to a special school program, partly because of the children's availability of schooling and partly because of economy in expenditure. An itinerant supervisor, trained in education of the deaf and blind, was appointed to give regular teachers a short-time in-job training course in special instruction and to assist them in teaching deaf and blind children. 116 deaf and blind pupils (about 48% of all school age deaf and blind children) were enrolled in 1906 in local public schools and educated with normal children wherever possible. Okayama Prefecture, however, changed and discontinued its policy mentioned above in 1907, when the extention of compulsory period for normal children and the reformation of school curricula became pressing national needs due to the rapid industrial and military expansion of postwar Japan. Without prefectural support, the public school program for fhe deaf and blind in Okayama gradually declined under unfavorable school conditions and was replaced by the special school for the deaf and blind established by a private body in 1908.