This thesis examines the development of special education services in South Australia from 1915 to 1975. It explores the factors which positioned the 'mentally retarded' child, (today known as a child with an intellectual disability) previously excluded or marginalised from schooling, and his or her family, within the modern school system. It also seeks to understand the part played by the human sciences of medicine, psychology and sociology in the production of the 'mentally retarded' child as a visible figure of knowledge and administration. Although many historians have written about the history of 'normal' childhood, less is known about intellectually disabled children. This is partly because until the last two centuries, most did not survive. What their lives have been like since then, how the state viewed them and their families and the issues behind the development of special education are questions addressed in this thesis. By examining changes in society's attitude to the family during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the role and treatment of children and the broad social and economic settings in which these changes took place, the study analyses in overall context the place of 'mentally retarded' children. In particular, it focuses on the changes in societal discourses and responses to the 'mentally retarded' population, especially their schooling. The research has been influenced by the work of post- modern theorists, particularly Michel Foucault, in terms of the relationship between the emergence of particular forms of knowledge/ language and the exercise of particular forms of power, particularly with regard to the 'mentally retarded' population. In constructing my argument, the author juxtaposes the moderate threads of post- modern argument with those advanced by more conventional critics. Data collection has included interviews with parents of some of the children who attended the first special school in South Australia as well as Education Department staff. Although the state and the parents may have had different expectations regarding schooling for these children, it was the persistence of the parents and their formation of the Mentally Retarded Children's Society that finally brought about the opening of the long awaited special school in 1954.