Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemA history of education at Kew Cottages: 1887-1940( 1999)The development of education at an institution for intellectually disabled children does not occur in isolation. In this thesis I propose to show the context from which formal and informal educational services developed at Kew Cottages in Victorian colonial times. This context includes the reasons for the establishment of the institution of Kew Cottages for children from its parent institutions at Kew and Yarra Bend, as well as the evolution of educational services at the Kew Cottages, once it was established in 1887. The history of services for the intellectually disabled is indeed varied across different cultures and different ages. It was not my intention to write a history that simply criticised the shortfalls of institutional life, in an unorthodox educational setting, from the perspective of our so called more enlightened times. Murray referred to this sort of history as an 'inspirational' view of history. Histories of this sort tend to pluck out evidence that support the author's views, and tend to see the present as the apex in knowledge and practice in a certain area. While I can not escape my own cultural upbringing and values, I hope that I have presented a history that accurately portrays many of the issues, in a manner that not only explains, but also is a useful encapsulation of the development of education at Kew Cottages, for future historians. My own biases lead me to view the ideologies and practices regarding people with intellectual disabilities as very specific to the times they were set in, and I can foresee times in the next hundred years when our present dominant ideologies and practices are considered antiquated. Developments in the area of genetics, as well as in artificial intelligence, and other computer technologies, will have great implications for society in general, but perhaps even more for people with disabilities. The future is another story, however, and I will leave that up to historians even further into the future to record. A well rounded history can and should, I believe, have an influence on present debates and development of policy and practice. While it is true that present power brokers in any area are likely to be very selective in their use of history in current debates about policy and practices concerning the intellectually disabled, the role of the historian should be to be as free from those blatant biases, as possible, or at the very least to state clearly the value system they are using when writing their history.