The School of Abnormal

In 1910, the Spanish Ministry of Public Instruction established what became known as the National Council for the Deaf-Mute, Blind, and Abnormal. The Patronato Nacional de Sordomudos, Ciegos y Anormales.

It was one of the first attempts by a national government to formally respond to children who fell outside the expected norms of the time.

On paper, this was progress. Children who had previously been invisible to public systems were brought into view. Responsibility shifted away from scattered charity and isolated institutions toward something more organised.

But there was a problem embedded in the foundation.

The system was built to classify, manage, and correct.

The child was rarely at the centre. What occupied the centre were categories, expert assessments, diagnostic labels, and administrative decisions made by others about who these children were and what should happen to them.

Spain will come up often in this work. Not as a coincidence. The country produced some of the most extraordinary minds in the history of neuroscience and education, and then watched much of what they had built be dismantled by war and ideology. The story of what was nearly possible is one of the reasons the work being built now feels so necessary.