About Marc Gold

During the late sixties, Marc Gold—then a special education teacher in East Los Angeles—began to formulate a conceptual framework of instruction based on a few fundamental beliefs:

• Students with significant disabilities had much more potential than most people assume;

• All people with disabilities must have the opportunity to live their lives as they choose to, in pursuit of their own goals and interests; and

• Everyone can learn if we can figure out how to teach them.

These beliefs led Marc to formalize a system of teaching skills to persons with severe disabilities, especially people labeled “mentally retarded,” by the jargon of the time. By the early seventies, Marc was teaching at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, and lecturing throughout the United States and Canada. He presented three day workshops on a new systematic training approach called Try Another Way. This system provided a values-based organizational framework and instructional strategies for teaching persons with even the most significant disabilities to perform sophisticated tasks. The professional literature of the human service field during the mid 1970's contains a rich collection of Marc's research validating his approach and the belief that all people can learn. Based on this success, Marc founded a company that would focus on Try Another Way and Employment Services: Marc Gold & Associates.

Marc passed away from lymphoma in 1982 at 43 years old, but his legacy lives on through MG&A. His contributions to the disability field have been honored by TASH, of which he was a founding board member, in the form of the Marc Gold Employment Award. This award is presented annually to an individual who has contributed significantly to increased access to community and integrated employment for persons with significant disabilities.

For more, please see “The Legacy of Marc Gold,” a presentation by Michael Callahan, available here.