ABSTRACT
Probably the most significant event in drawing attention to children’s learning difficulties was the establishment of a system of compulsory education. In the later decades of the nineteenth century, in most developed countries, schools and teachers met for the first time with the full range of reluctant learners, a meeting which focused attention on learning difficulties. Whether the education system’s demands for literacy and numeracy caused these difficulties or revealed them is a matter for philosophical debate. What cannot be debated is that the solutions proposed by the various committees set up to deal with the question were based mainly on the principle of segregation, i.e. setting up separate schools and classes for the reluctant learners.
