The accustomed procession of fallen ones, with its familiar types, has halted at our doors. The waif, the drunkard's daughter, the pretty weak one, the child with inherited taint, the lover of fine dress and of ease,—all these, helpless and ignorant, worsted in the conflict with sin, trampled and crushed in its mire, often only the faint hope of a something better with us, they hardly know what, holding them back from suicide,—all these have come, and to these we have ministered as best we could, in body and soul.
Superintendent of Chicago's Erring Woman's Refuge, 1880
Johnny Carson recently observed that he could tell that the new academic year was about to commence because the maternity boutiques on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills were having their “Back to School” sales. This comment nicely captured a profound, if still theoretical, transformation in the way Americans have responded to pregnant and wayward adolescents, for it was not until the late 1960s that they were permitted to attend school at all. Even then they were ordinarily segregated in isolated facilities to diminish their contaminating effect on other adolescents. An examination of the evolution of the education of “girls with special needs,” to employ a current euphemism, must consequently consider the organization of private-sector programs and voluntary agencies to provide rehabilitative services for a population most Americans considered to be too degraded or demoralized to enroll in regular classrooms.