Mona Gleason

At the turn of the twentieth century, medical and educational professionals in numerous national contexts solidified their relationship as partners against the challenges posed by disabled children. In the United States, as was the case in much of Western Europe, eugenic thinking suggested that biological solutions provided answers to social problems posed by ‘abnormal’ bodies. While American and British contributions to the fate of children labeled disabled over the twentieth century have garnered scholarly attention, the English Canadian experience suggests additional, yet often overlooked, affinities. Physical and mental ‘defectives’ or ‘cripples,’ as they were described in the context of the time, were judged largely ill-suited to the demands of public schooling, particularly as it was conceived and configured before World War II in English Canada. Yet, even by the 1920s, manual training was held out as a possible solution to the ‘management’ of the young ‘mentally defective,’ as numerous medical and educational professionals suggested. While children with physical impairments caused other kinds of social anxieties, English Canadian professionals engaged in similar patterns of hand wringing over their fate as well