Los primeros pasos hacia la enseñanza especial en Costa Rica / The first steps towards special education in Costa Rica

Abstract

This research was approached from the historical discipline, a study based on documentary sources of the National Archives of Costa Rica which allowed to know different factors involved in the emergence of special education in Costa Rica in the period 1880-1940, as well as stakeholders who participated in this process. In addition, from records of students of the School of Special Education, a segment of the school population has been characterized by age, date and reason of admission, place of birth and residence, number of children in the home, family background and employment status of the parents. Among the most noteworthy finds found an interest early to observe and record the physical, physiological and mental conditions of children in school, as well as, since the Decade of 1930, expressly in the legislation and from individual initiatives, interest in founding a school of special education. It is concluded that the first steps that led to the creation of the School of Special Education in Costa Rica in 1940 occurred since the 1910s.