ABSTRACT
While children and adolescents labeled as mentally ill, emotionally disturbed, or behaviorally disordered are educationally the responsibility of special education, they ipso facto have been classified (diagnosed) as ill and therefore also require medical (or psychological) attention. Except with children with the most extremely disordered behaviors, the tendency on the part of school authorities, as well as parents, is to leave it to the schools to deal with the youngster's daily problems. What a New York Times (1991) article said recently about the education of poor children applies equally to those who are handicapped:
What America expects of its public schools these days is nothing less than miracles. Never mind that the children who show up for their first day of kindergarten may have lived their five years in chaos. Give them a good teacher, a
decent classroom and an introduction to the alphabet, the reasoning goes, and those children should be on their way out of poverty and into productivity. Not true. It will take a lot more than a strengthened school system, desirable though that may be.
