Society and Culture
In most developed countries, since the early 20th century many people with Down syndrome were housed in institutions or colonies and excluded from society. However, since the early 1960s parents and their organizations, educators and other professionals have generally advocated a policy of inclusion, bringing people with any form of mental or physical disability into general society as much as possible. Such organizations included the National Association for Down Syndrome, the first known organization advocating for Down syndrome individuals in the United States founded by Kathryn McGee in 1960; MENCAP advocating for all with mental disabilities, which was founded in the UK in 1946 by Judy Fryd; and the National Down Syndrome Congress, the first truly national organization in the U.S. advocating for Down syndrome families, founded in 1973 by Kathryn McGee and others.
Read more about this topic: Down Syndrome
Famous quotes containing the words society and/or culture:
“The woman who does her job for society inside the four walls of her home must not be considered by her husband or anyone else an economic “dependent,” reaching out her hands in mendicant fashion for financial help.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“Both cultures encourage innovation and experimentation, but are likely to reject the innovator if his innovation is not accepted by audiences. High culture experiments that are rejected by audiences in the creator’s lifetime may, however, become classics in another era, whereas popular culture experiments are forgotten if not immediately successful. Even so, in both cultures innovation is rare, although in high culture it is celebrated and in popular culture it is taken for granted.”
—Herbert J. Gans (b. 1927)