How do changes in the treatment of students with special education needs over time show society’s changing understandings of disability? The 19th century initiatives to provide supports for people with disabilities, including the founding of schools for students with cognitive, hearing, or vision disabilities, were an important component of the social reform movements in the period before the US Civil War.

This is a great simple civics lesson with three distinctive case studies: marchers with disabilities who took over federal buildings in a historic sit-in in 1977 (the 504 protests), young American volunteers in the Spanish Civil war in 1936, and a 12-year-old mill worker who was inspired to lead a walk-out in 1898. The lesson addresses new content in the 2018 US History II Framework for Massachusetts as it asks students, “did the protesters go too far” and invites them to consider the constitutional underpinnings of individual and collective civic engagement.

The Eugenics movement in the early 20th century United States, a pseudo-scientific amalgamation of social Darwinist philosophy and animal breeding management, gained widespread approval across the country and influenced many internationally, most notably in the the Nazi racial policies of the era leading up to World War II.