The Emotionally Disturbed Adolescent: Development of Program Alternatives in Secondary Education

Abstract

A major dilemma confronting public education today is how to provide an appropriate education for adolescents who exhibit a variety of behavior disorders. The Education for All Handicapped Children Act (Public Law 94-142) has the potential to dramatically change the educational prospects of this previously neglected secondary level group. University personnel, state directors of special education, public school administrators, and teachers have begun to direct attention toward discovering and developing educational procedures that will be effective with disturbed and troubled youth. The time when these youth can be rejected by or expelled from the public schools is passing.Although the law states that all children must be served by the public schools, the "how to's" of an appropriate education for secondary age handicapped youth are in the beginning stages of development and, in all likelihood, will take many more years to evolve. In the meantime, educators charged with the responsibility of developing and establishing programs for adolescents with behavior disorders need to take stock of where the field has been and what is currently known. Until more relevant research is forthcoming, sharing of information pertaining to successful programming strategies is critical if the full potential of the law is to be realized.Throughout most of man's history, individuals with physical or behavioral differences were systematically abused, neglected, and excluded from important segments of society. Efforts to provide services for what we now term exceptional or handicapped persons began in Europe approximately 150 years ago. The first real efforts in the United States to educate exceptional persons occurred in the latter half of the nineteenth century with the establishment of residential schools. A majority of these schools, however, did not address the needs of emotionally or behaviorally disordered children.