ABSTRACT
We are in the midst of a revolution in the education of children with disabilities. Historically, special education programmes were developed to protect, nurture, and teach children in whom the presence of a disability made them a burden to general class teachers and vulnerable to failure in school work and to ridicule from classmates. From the outset, the predominant special education strategy was to organize programmes that were segregated by handicapping condition and isolated from the mainstream, on the assumption that such programmes were beneficial. Now, questions are being raised about the efficacy of these segregated placements and about the morality of excluding pupils with disabilities from regular schools. Models of service delivery which seemed logical and appropriate in the past are being challenged. New models are being proposed.
