THE JOURNAL OF SPECIAL EDUCATION VOL 27/NO. 4/1994/pp. 521-530 THE PULL OF SOCIETAL FORCES ON SPECIAL EDUCATION

Special educators are inclined to believe that what academically or socially, before being assigned to they think and do is having a major impact on the special education). This is, in part, encouraging American educational enterprise. Actually, articles special educators to put their charges back into such as those by Dunn and by Deno seem to have the regular classroom and to embrace the idea of been merely a part of a larger societal movement, inclusion. How inclusion fits into the concept of rather than its driving force. One major outside a differentiated curriculum is a major unsolved force influencing special education today is the issue. In fact, special education has a huge respon-disproportion of minority students in some of the sibility—as of yet unmet—to provide a develop-programs, which produces a consequent fear of mental and integrated curriculum for its major charges of discrimination (this despite the fact that programs. children must fail in the regular program, either It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to comment on the current nature of the special education enterprise as seen by a series of highly capable leaders and to reflect upon the impact of the articles by Lloyd Dunn and Evelyn Deno from the perspective of 25 years later. As suggested in a number of the articles in this volume