The Search for Excellence: An Encore

This conference has been in the planning stage for a long time, and it is a source of satisfaction to me that the plans have been consummated. I am told that this conference grew out of one or more of my earlier writings, and, if true, that is indeed a compliment (Cruickshank, 1975, 1978, 1983). It certainly is a topic in which I have had a long-standing interest and concern. I do not intend to speak to every issue facing Special Education. For example, I do not intend to discuss differences in teaching methodology. I am not going to speak to the misunderstood relationship between learning disabilities and remediation versus learning disabilities and developmental education. To do so would involve too long a paper, for in the face of negative attitudes on the part of national political elected leadership, human services, including those for handicapped persons, are not now a high national priority, nor will they be for some time in the future. I shall speak to a select few of the problems in which we are entangled, and leave others to other persons who are undoubtedly more capable than I in providing solutions. The title of this conference bothers me considerably, although I understand its rationale. I have worked in interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary settings for all of my professional life. I find few professional differences which are irreconcilable whether they be in learning disabilities, administration, dentistry, education, law, or other disciplines related to our specific area of interest. What I do find is that persons of good will and intent, who make personal power subservient to the good of the profession, can with considerable ease positively excogitate differences and erase divergent views. Some divergent views are wholesome, and upon these, as history illustrates, rests the imaginative development of a discipline and progress in services to humankind. If, however, myopic personal drives for power and control of a program, a discipline, or an organization become omnipotent, then hope for positive future creative development becomes more than a little elusive. I have started in print so often that the field of learning disabilities needs excellence that it seems redundant to repeat the concept again. However, we see the whole field of learning disabilities in children, youth, and adults in nothing short of a crisis state, so once again we shall approach this problem. This time, however, I am going to be much more blunt than ever before, for hard words are necessary as a possible aid to those of similar mind who are seeking to accomplish programs for these children and youth which are of the highest professional order and are devoid of selfish personality motivation. Leadership.—I would first like to speak to the problem of leadership. In my thesaurus a leader, whether organizational or individual, is variously indicated to be a "chief, ringleader, ruler, captain, supervisor, superintendent, commander, commandant, director, manager, head, rector, dictator, overseer, overlooker, foreman, boss, flugelman, agitator, shepherd, chairman, chair, speaker, demagogue, head man, superior, dean, principal, despot, monarch, king, ad inf." In the field of learning disabilities, we are afraid quite realistically that, with the exception of a "flugelman" or "shepard," the field is characterized by some or all of the synonyms for leadership, many, however, very negative. In what should be a highly professional program and skilled personnel dealing with one of the most complex of all problems in young people, this series of partially negative characterizations is indeed sad, although within the definitional series are a few very positive terms which may characterize some leadership—some who have devoted their entire professional lives to the solution of the problems of these children and youth. Although we are personally concerned about individuals who purport to be leaders, especially those who are driven into leadership positions by personal drive for power, who read little of the research and theory, who are basically mediocre and at worst incompetent, we are at this point in this discussion more concerned about organizational leadership. Here we shall discuss, very briefly, the issues of non-categorical special education and mainstreaming, while somewhat more fully later in this paper. For now, however, it is sufficient to state that experience is proving that neither is the universal answer to the education of exceptional children, and certainly not those with learning disabilities. When one listens to the complaints of parents, of teachers, and of adolescents and young learning disabled adults themselves, and when one is cognizant of class-action law suits being developed by parents in behalf of their children and against mainstreaming (and to a lesser extent against non-categoricalization), one has to ask where has our special education leadership been all these years to allow these completely inadequate and oftentimes inhumane policies to develop. For years, since 1939 exactly, I have written in defense of selective mainstreaming of some types of exceptional children. Chief among these are the blind, some orthopaedic children, and some of many other clinical types. Such articles under my name have appeared one or more times every decade since the 1930's. We have never advocated the wholesale mainstreaming of total special education groups of children, an approach too often taken by thoughtless leadership in public school systems, state departments of education, and to a lesser extent implied in the former U.S. Office 'This paper was prepared while the author was a Visiting Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and also held the Guglielmo Endowed Chair in Mental Retardation at California State University, Los Angeles, 1984-85.