Time of paradoxes : What was the 20th Century like for people with Intellectual disabilities living in Czechoslovakia / Czech Republic
Abstract
This chapter explores life in Czechoslovakia (later Czech Republic) in the 20th Century for people with intellectual disabilities. It opens at the time that the Czech lands were part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire.
This was a period marked by efforts to increase the quality of institutional care for people with intellectual disabilities. The authors then describe the period of communism.
They discuss the controversial nature of an Education Act (1948), which contained a well-established network of special schools for students with disabilities as a regular part of the school system, and yet it introduced the concept of "being uneducable" for students with severe and profound intellectual disabilities. The authors also debate the role of a parental movement in advocacy for the rights of people with intellectual disabilities.
The chapter concludes with the period after the fall of communism, when compulsory education was introduced for all children with no exception.