Honouring Lou Brown

Lou Brown was a remarkable educator, advocate, rule breaker. He shattered both practical and social barriers of practice – and beliefs. He set out the change the culture and was a catalyst in the movement for people with disability labels to be fully included. One of his most in-famous comments was “The unintended consequences of PRE”. Lives of disability were hugely relegated to ‘preparation’ for lives they were completely excluded from. Lou eliminated ‘pre’ from many vocabularies. Enjoy these powerful clips of one of the inclusion pioneers – who preceded the word inclusion.

Dr. Lou Brown: The unintended consequences of “pre”

Dr. Lou Brown: The unintended consequences of “pre”.

Dr. Lou Brown: The “ultimate functioning” guidepost or where does this all lead?

They must know, then, that the above-named gentleman whenever he was at leisure (which was mostly all the year round) gave himself up to reading books of chivalry with such ardour and avidity that he almost entirely neglected the pursuit of his field-sports, and even the management of his property; and to such a pitch did his eagerness and infatuation go that he sold many an acre of tillageland to buy books of chivalry to read, and brought home as many of them as he could get.

Dr. Lou Brown: Raising the expectations to support community services

But of all there were none he liked so well as those of the famous Feliciano de Silva’s composition, for their lucidity of style and complicated conceits were as pearls in his sight, particularly when in his reading he came upon courtships and cartels, where he often found passages like “the reason of the unreason with which my reason is afflicted so weakens my reason that with reason I murmur at your beauty;” or again, “the high heavens render you deserving of the desert your greatness deserves.”

Dr. Lou Brown: Raising the expectations to support community services

Dr. Lou Brown…as important then as now in the field of developmental disabilities…

An article by Greg Sundell acknowledging the impact of Lou’s work – then and now.

TASH Remembers Lou Brown

Lou Brown was one of the founding fathers of TASH – along with Wayne Sailor (both above). This link is the TASH tribute.