ABSTRACT
Formal experience of teaching children who learnt slowly or little accrued in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, but reporting and replication were limited. Perhaps the earliest extant teaching material for children with learning difficulties, it influenced Middle Eastern and European folk tales through multiple translations. Information formally communicated and exchanged about children with learning difficulties since 1960 exceeds the total of previous human exchange on the topic. The phrase ‘children with learning difficulties’ is used by some European educators to describe, in an educational context, some of the phenomena. Nations with compulsory schooling and where enrolment exceeds 95 per cent, usually have a country-wide system to register births and so to know children’s age. Some children have difficulties only in a specific context, for example, at school. Development of educational facilities specifically for children with learning difficulties in India began in the 1940s, but there was little growth until the 1960s.
