Mentally Defective Children Part 2

_Charles_ cannot sit still, nor keep in rank, and his heedlessness prevents reproof having any effect.

_Albert_ never obeys but with a bad grace.

_Martha_ always puts on an astonished look when she is checked.

_Maurice_ receives any criticism with impatience.

_Susan_ receives it with anger.

_Eugenie_, by tossing her head. She mimics her teacher, and makes the others laugh, so that they have to hide their faces.

_Octavia_ replies, "What do I care!" She bursts out laughing and continues to do what she has been forbidden.

_Leontine_ quibbles, answers back, and expresses aloud her bad humour.

_Raoul_ flies into a pa.s.sion when he is reprimanded. He poses as a martyr, a victim of injustice, and sometimes even utters threats. Punishment makes him give vent to intemperate language.

_Victor_ a.s.sumes an att.i.tude of revolt, turns pale, and refuses to obey when anyone checks him.

_Lucy_ broke her pen in a fit of temper.

_Helen_ in the same circ.u.mstances upsets everything in her neighbourhood.

_Louise_ strikes her elbows on the desk, and one day she even kicked her teacher.

_Leon_ is quarrelsome and his companions are afraid of him.

_George_ does nothing but tease his companions. He destroys their copybooks, tears pages from their books, and puts the blame on them.

_Charles_, who is rendered obstinate by strictness and merely irritated by punishment, seems happy when one takes an interest in him.

_Eugenie_, who is greatly excited by punishment and who smiles at rewards, loves to be flattered and picked out to do some little service.

The three following traits are constantly met with in the descriptions of the ill-balanced: they are turbulent, boastful, and incapable of attention. To this may be reduced the psychology of the less strongly marked cases. They have an instability of body, of speech, of attention, which may result either from an excessively nervous disposition, or simply from a nature whose restlessness rebels against sedentary and silent study. But in many cases other features are present. In addition to the preceding symptoms, there are found impatience of discipline and a tendency to annoy their comrades. The ill-balanced are spoken of as brutal, deceitful, cruel; and as to their obstinacy, the abundant details in the questionnaires show that these children have left a disagreeable impression on the school staff. It is especially on their account that an outcry for special schools has arisen. The way in which these children react to discipline is very interesting. We are told that they are very little influenced by rewards, which they often receive with disdain, laughter, or irony, if they do not refuse them altogether.

Punishments, on the other hand, produce a bad effect. The ill-balanced nearly always become angry, and rebel against punishment, so that the teachers strive to avoid coming into conflict with them. Here we have a trait which is very interesting for psychology, but very embarra.s.sing for pedagogy. How, then, can the ill-balanced be subjected to any discipline whatever? This is an important question, which it will be all the more necessary to solve because it is the ill-balanced who profit most by special education; it is for them that one would have most hope. Our advice is that, in order to control these children, account should be taken, in the first place, of their dominant tendency. The study of the answers to the questionnaires shows us that the chief thing to which one can appeal in these cases is their amour-propre, their pride, their vanity--in a word, the whole range of the egoistic sentiments. On natures of this stamp punishment cannot have much effect, seeing that it is opposed by an often indomitable pride. The end may be reached more directly, not by breaking the resistance, but by giving it a different direction. It is better to praise the ill-balanced when he has done well than to punish him for his faults. It is desirable also to show him some appreciation, or even to trust him with some duty of a very modest kind, which he may perform under discreet supervision.

=Mental Apt.i.tudes of the Defective.=--Having briefly sketched the moral apt.i.tudes of the abnormal, let us now examine their mental apt.i.tudes. We have here a very captivating subject of inquiry. The study of individual apt.i.tudes ought to have been undertaken long ago in the interest of education. Everyone is crying out for it. No one, or almost no one, undertakes it. In the case of the abnormal there is even more urgent need that it should be undertaken, for the younger or less intelligent the pupils, the more depends upon educational methods. When a mind is of a superior kind, very little really depends upon the culture supplied to it. If a Berthelot or a Pasteur should even have had imbeciles as their first masters in chemistry, they would none the less have turned out men of genius. It is those of average intelligence who have need of good methods of instruction. It is the young children who really require intelligent methods.

Consequently we should give the defectives the best teachers. Every fault of method committed in their education may have consequences which will prejudice them later on.

In order to discover the apt.i.tudes of the mentally defective, we have three means of interrogating our questionnaires. In the first place these contain the following question: _Does the child show any particular apt.i.tude either at school or outside?_ This question has evoked replies which vary very little, for amongst the apt.i.tudes of the children scarcely anything is mentioned but bodily occupations--errands, domestic duties, gymnastics, sewing, and drawing. In the same questionnaire another question, placed on the following page, is almost identical in form with the first: _Is there anything in which the child is particularly interested?_ The replies to this second question have been a little more numerous than to the previous one. It is true that the two differ by a shade--the distinction between interest and apt.i.tude. One may interest oneself in something for which one has no apt.i.tude. The following table shows the distribution of the replies to the two preceding questions:

THE MENTALLY DEFECTIVE.

_Apt.i.tudes._ _Interests._ Pupils. Pupils.

None 19 None 11 Practical life 7 Writing 8 Sewing 7 Drawing 7 Gymnastics 1 Sewing 6 Drawing 1 Gymnastics 5 Arithmetic 3 Recitation 3 History 2 French 1 Music 1 Singing 1 Reading 1 Object lessons 1

These two lists are not superposable, but if we take them together we shall notice that sensori-motor occupations, such as gymnastics, "practical life," sewing, writing, and drawing, are those which are most interesting to these pupils. Sewing, writing, and drawing are, indeed, their favourite lessons. We should have expected that singing would not have left them indifferent, for other investigations have shown us that the majority have a good voice; but it is quite apparent that singing is less attractive to them than drawing. A very characteristic feature is the absence of any mention of composition.

Some of the abnormal are fond of arithmetic; none shine in composition. This fact, though negative, seems worth consideration.

Speaking generally, we never find that a child who is good at composition is mentally defective.

We have mentioned that there is a third method of weighing the apt.i.tudes of defective children. In our questionnaire we asked the teachers to give marks showing the relative ability of these children in the different subjects. From these marks it appears that in four subjects they are more successful than in others. These are gymnastics, drawing, writing, and reading. We regret that we did not include in our list sewing, manual work, and object lessons. Here are our results in figures. These indicate for each pupil the two subjects in which he has obtained the highest marks.

Pupils. Pupils.

Reading 23 Arithmetic 6 Writing 18 Spelling 5 Drawing 11 Singing 3 Gymnastics 11 Recitation 3

It is not at all uncommon for a defective to take the first place in writing or in drawing. This is quite a remarkable fact, although we must hasten to add that in such cases the defective is usually the oldest child in the cla.s.s.

All these observations are sufficiently uniform, and lead to the same conclusion. The dominant features in the defective are the senses, the concrete perceptions, and motor ability. These are the faculties which are normally developed. His constant weakness in composition shows that the function of speech is quite evidently inferior to the sensory and motor functions. Let us weigh these facts and sum up. What a great mistake it would be to give to children of this kind the syllabus of instruction which has been made to suit normal children. This syllabus harmonises with the development of all the faculties. How, then, could one make children follow it whose apt.i.tudes are limited?

Inquiries by questionnaire have one defect which has often been noted.

They bring together statements furnished by correspondents who are often unknown, and whose judgment and accuracy it is impossible to estimate. Each of their observations, taken by itself, has little authority. It is the sum of concurring observations which should alone be taken into consideration; and even then it is necessary to be cautious before drawing any practical conclusion, because an agreement in the replies sometimes indicates nothing more than a general misconception.

Such doubts, which are known to all investigators, led us to decide to make direct observations on our own account upon abnormal school-children, and to compare them with normal children of the same age--a long and difficult task, as all pioneer work is. We have collected facts which we were not seeking, whilst we often failed to find what we expected. It would be impossible to summarise here everything which contact with reality has taught and suggested. We shall extract from our observations only what concerns the apt.i.tudes of the abnormal, and shall even limit ourselves to a single category of these. It happens that we have methodical observations relating to twelve defective children of between eleven and twelve years of age.

These form a sufficiently h.o.m.ogeneous group from the point of view both of age and of mental ability. We shall inquire what are the best marked apt.i.tudes and the most apparent deficiencies of this little group. Without denying individual differences or forgetting that defectives cannot easily be reduced to a single type, we have thought it more interesting for the present to emphasise their resemblances rather than their differences. Let us, then, compare them _en bloc_ with a group of normal children of the same age and the same social position, attending the same schools, in the same district. This equivalence of conditions is necessary if we are to lay our finger on the distinctive characters of the defective child.

We have subjected our twelve defectives to certain tests as speedy and precise as possible.[3] We devised these tests before studying the returns furnished to our questionnaires, and the latter were tabulated before our observations. There have, therefore, been two studies absolutely independent, both in their mode of execution, and in their aim. Consequently, any points in which they agree will be very significant.

Our collection of tests of mental deficiency is already known to readers of the _Annee Psychologique_.[4] In vol. xi. we described at length the details necessary for making use of our method of experimentation. Since then Dr. Decroly, who specialises on defective children in Belgium, has tried our methods, and verified our conclusions. The end which we have constantly set before ourselves has been to bring to light the intellectual capacity of the child, taken by itself, as distinct from what the child actually knows. Our psychological examinations are consequently the very opposite of school examinations, which test chiefly the candidate's memory, his judgment very little.

We have made numerous observations in this way. The best way to explain our method, and more especially our results, will be to describe a few of the experiments.

_Memory of Pictures of Known Objects._--The children are allowed to look for thirty seconds at pictures of thirteen objects, which they are then told to enumerate from memory.

_Comparison of Short Lines._--Two lines for comparison are drawn in ink side by side on the same sheet of paper, so that they can both be seen at a glance. We have a whole series of such pairs. Between the lines, whose average length is 30 millimetres, there is a variable difference.

_Estimation of Weights._--Five little boxes, weighing respectively 3, 6, 9, 12, and 15 grammes, are to be arranged in order of weight.

_Memory of Figures._--This test consists in repeating a series of figures immediately after having heard them.

_Memory of Phrases._--The child is asked to repeat a phrase of twelve to fifteen words immediately after having heard it.

We do not wish to insist on the details of these observations. They are still very incomplete. It will be necessary to experiment for a long time[5] before it will be possible to say exactly what it is that is wanting, or that is wrong, in the mental machinery of the defective. No doubt when the cla.s.ses for defectives shall be under way, when a great many such children are brought together in conditions which suit the convenience of the experimenters, the latter will be able after persevering effort to see daylight in this matter.

In the meantime we must be content with a general survey. But however superficial, however defective, our first attempts may be, they may at least give us a start.

Let us see, then, what results have been obtained from our tests.

These results clearly separate the tests themselves into two groups.

To the one set the defectives furnished replies practically equivalent to those of normal children. To the other, on the contrary, they gave answers which clearly exhibited their r.e.t.a.r.dation, or rather their defect. This difference would be deprived of all significance if any of the tests presented no difficulty to a normal intelligence. But in all cases the difficulty was so great that even the normal made many mistakes, and we can affirm that, whilst for the one set the two groups of children were practically equal, for the other, on the contrary, the inferiority of the defective is quite clear.

The tests in which the defectives are on a par with the normal are--(1) The comparison of short lines; (2) the memory of pictures.

Let us give some details of the latter test, which appears to us typical. Each child individually was shown a sheet of paper, on which were pasted thirteen pictures of known objects. These pictures, drawn in black and very simple, almost reduced to outlines, represented a nose, a head of hair, a rose, two cherries, a bed, a barrel, a nail, a key, an omnibus, some eggs, a bell, a sun setting in the sea, and a mouth. We have here a test of sense memory, for the child is asked to recall a visual impression. Something more, however, is necessary, for he must understand the picture and give it a name. But this const.i.tutes no real difficulty, and the whole exercise is a test of sense intelligence. We were quite surprised to find that in this case our defectives were at the level normal for eleven years. The average of their replies is seven, which is exactly the normal value. This is shown in the following table, which gives the comparison between them and normal children of eleven:

NAMING BY MEMORY THIRTEEN PICTURES.

Number of pictures remembered-- Normal children 4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10.

Defective children 4, 4, 7, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9, 11.