Thoughts on Education a Historical Perspective

The following will be an essay in a series of posts on the topic of Sheltered Classrooms that was originally designed by my father and his staff while he was principal of Rothesay Junior High School in the 1960's and 1970's. It is the result of numerous conversations that he and I have had on the subject of special education. I hope that it will inspire some response from other educators that may take the time to read it. 

The Background:
One storm day in New Brunswick my dad and another educator named Clark Phillips sat in my dad's office meditatively smoking pipes and discussing ways to best serve struggling students. The conversation, which in modern terms would be considered a brainstorming session, resulted in the broad brush strokes being laid for what was to become known as The Sheltered Classroom.

To this day I have a mental image of these two sage individuals, whom I have always been inspired by, smoking meditatively and delving deeply into their collective knowledge of student development and best practices in education.

The conversation ended with Clark looking across the desk at my father and stating in his very matter of fact way, "This is all great Dan, but you know that they will never let us do it."

I think that my dad must have taken this as a challenge - because instead of letting the matter die on his desk he pursued it to the point of integrating it into his school; this model was later studied by several university education departments.

In a time, in Alberta, when all of the buzz words on the future direction of education revolve around the idea of inclusion of all students it may be beneficial to examine the wheel that has been left to us by other educators.

Let the journey begin!