3. EDUCATING FOR EXCEPTIONAL CHILDREN
        
             The major methods for educating exceptional children are:
             (1)  Itinerant service: 
                       Speech therapists, school psychologists, remedial
                       reading teachers, learning disability specialists
                       and other special educational personnel may deal
                       with exceptional children on an itinerant basis.
             (2)  Special class and resource rooms: 
                       Classrooms for mentally retarded, gifted, deaf,
                       blind, visually impaired, auditorily handicapped,
                       or crippled children may be organized within a
                       school system.  If an exceptional child is
                       enrolled in such a class with a specially trained
                       teacher, and spends most of the day there, it is
                       usually referred to as a special class.  If the
                       exceptional child is enrolled in the regular
                       classroom and goes to the special room only for
                       special instruction, it is usually called the
                       resource room.  
             (3)  Special schools: 
                       Some school systems have organized special day
                       schools for different kinds of exceptional
                       children, especially the emotionally disturbed,
                       crippled, educably mentally retarded, and multiply
                       handicapped.  There is an increasing trend toward
                       organizing special class programs within
                       neighborhood schools and reducing the number of
                       special schools, at least for certain types of
                       handicapping conditions.
             (d) Residential schools: 
                       All the states have residential schools for
                       various types of handicapped children, including
                       the mentally retarded, delinquent, blind, deaf,
                       crippled, and emotionally disturbed.  These
                       institutions are sometimes private, but most are
                       usually state-administered agencies.
             (e)  Hospitals and homebound services:
                       Sometimes physically handicapped children are
                       confined to hospitals or to their homes for a long
                       period of time.  To avoid educational retardation,
                       itinerant teachers especially prepared to teach
                       the homebound tutor these children during their
                       convalescence in the hospital or at home (Kirk,
                       1972, pp. 32-34). 
        
             The term "special education" denotes those aspects of
        education which are applied to handicapped and gifted children
        but not usually used with the majority of average children. 
        "Special" is defined by Webster as "distinguished by some unusual
        quality; uncommon; noteworthy; extraordinary; additional to the
        regular; extra; utilized or employed for a certain purpose in
        addition to the ordinary."  These definitions are applicable to
        special education, which consists of the modifications of, or
        additions to, school practices intended for the ordinary child--
        practices that are unique, uncommon, of unusual quality, and are,
        in addition to the organization and instructional procedures,
        used with the majority of children.  It should be pointed out
        that special education is not a total program which is entirely
        different from the education of the ordinary child.  It refers
        only to those aspects of education which are unique and/or in
        additions to the regular program for all children.
        
             The amount and kind of special education which is needed by
        an exceptional child depends upon many factors, among them the
        degree of discrepancy between his development and the development
        of the ordinary child; the discrepancies in development within
        the child himself; the effects of the disability on other areas
        of achievement.  Special education, its quality, kind and amount,
        is dependent upon the growth pattern of a child in relation to
        his peers and the discrepancies in growth within him.
        
             Education often begins where medicine stops.  Fitting a
        visually impaired child with glasses or a hard-of-hearing
        youngster with a hearing aid is a medical concern.  Teaching the
        child to use what vision and hearing he has most effectively and
        aiding him in using his other senses is a special education
        function.  
        
             One of the general aims of special education is first to
        ameliorate the deficit by medicine, training, or whatever means
        are feasible, and then to compensate for the residual deficit by
        strengthening other abilities and providing specially adapted
        materials (Kirk, 1972, pp. 35-36).
        
             Educational authorities have recognized for some time that
        handicapped children do not always fit into neat, well-defined
        categories with uniform characteristics.  To make matters worse
        there are many children who are not deaf, not blind, not mentally
        retarded, but who are unable to learn under ordinary school
        instruction.  This is the group that has come under the heading
        of "specific learning disabilities."  
        
             The concept of learning disabilities has recently evolved to
        encompass the heterogeneous group of children not fitting neatly
        into the traditional categories of handicapped children. 
        Although these children form a heterogeneous group and fail to
        learn for diverse reasons, they have one thing in common:
        developmental discrepancies in abilities.  
        
             In general, the definitions of learning disabilities fall
        into two broad categories:  (a) those definitions involving
        functions of the central nervous system as they relate to the
        learning disability; and (b) those definitions placing emphasis
        on the behavior or learning disorder without specific reference
        to central nervous system etiology (cause).