Mentally Defective Children Part 3

Have we not here a very interesting confirmation of what we have already learned from the questionnaires? The exercise is one which certainly presents some difficulty, since the normal children forgot some of the pictures. If it had been too easy, one would not have been surprised at the fact that the two groups--the normal and the defective--were equally successful. Now, in spite of the difficulty, the defective shows no inferiority as compared with the normal. Any commentary would diminish the eloquence of this result.

Without lingering over each of the other tests, let us select from the group one which forms a remarkable contrast to the preceding. Just as striking as the equality between the defective and the normal in visual memory of pictures is the difference between them in memory for phrases.

The latter is a test of immediate memory. One repeats to the child a phrase of about twelve to fifteen words, and asks him to repeat it immediately afterwards. For this memory is necessary, and also voluntary attention, and some power of comprehension into the bargain; for if some of these phrases are quite easy to understand (_e.g._, Germaine has not been good; she did not want to work; she will be scolded), others, again, are a little involved (_e.g._, The chestnut-tree in the garden casts the quite faint shadow of its new leaves on the ground). The number of phrases which the defectives managed to repeat correctly is very small. It averages only two. Here are the figures:

IMMEDIATE MEMORY OF PHRASES.

Number of phrases repeated exactly-- { 7 years 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5.

Normal children { 9 years 2, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7.

{ 11 years 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7.

Defective children, 11 years 0, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4.

If one examines these results, one is surprised to find that some of the defectives are superior to normal children of the same age, since they repeat four phrases, although some of the normal repeat only three. In all experiments on groups one finds exceptions of this kind.

We are glad to give examples in order to show how complex everything is. In order to comprehend such anomalies, it is necessary to a.n.a.lyse the exceptional cases. One generally finds then that the defective who has broken the rule has made use of a pure sense memory, has repeated like an echo without understanding. If the repet.i.tion is delayed a little, he is lost. In other cases the defective is not far removed from the normal. Without stopping to discuss these exceptions, let us examine the group as a whole. When we do this we reach the important conclusion that our group of defectives resembles in a striking manner the group of children of seven years. On an average, they repeat practically the same number of phrases. The average for seven years is 3.1; that of the defectives of eleven years is a little less: it is 2.1.

Now, to sum up, let us compare just these two extremes, the memory of pictures and the memory of phrases. Is not the contrast remarkable?

And does one not here hit upon one of the princ.i.p.al differences between the normal and the abnormal? Give the defective a piece of work which interests him, which appeals to his organs of sense, and which is concrete. If the work is not too difficult, he will acquit himself tolerably well. If, however, the work involves words, phrases, composition--in a word, abstract ideas expressed in speech--the defective immediately reveals wherein his inferiority lies. Abstract thought, and all other mental operations that involve it, are to him a closed domain. The replies of the teachers to our questionnaires had already led us to suspect this. Our tests are a confirmation, and even an exact demonstration, of it.

The normal curriculum of primary education, as one can imagine, is therefore not suitable to the mental condition of the majority of defectives. Even by reducing it to its first elements, one would make only a bad fit, for if one were to diminish the abstract portion which is not intended for defectives, one would equally diminish the concrete portion, which, far from being reduced, when defectives are in question, ought to be amplified. It is necessary, therefore, to change the proportions of the different parts of the curriculum, and give the whole a special direction. We shall conclude our observations by remarking that, if we take the workshop in opposition to the cla.s.s, as the symbol of concrete work opposed to the symbol of verbal work, the workshop ought in the education of defectives to become a more important place of instruction than the cla.s.s.

A slight reservation, however, must be made as to the value of this conclusion. In spite of the existence for a number of years of inst.i.tutions for the abnormal, we have yet scarcely begun our researches. Everywhere we are up against the same ignorance, and shall be so for a long time to come. Our knowledge of these children is very imperfect. We do not pretend that anything we are about to say is in any way complete.

Thus, having set forth a quite general principle relating to concrete, intuitive, sensory education, let us hasten to add that in practice this principle must be applied to children of widely differing temperaments, and that nothing is more complicated than the pedagogy of defectives, if one desires it to be adapted to the numerous ends which it is necessary for it to attain. One will certainly bear in mind that a greater place must be given to intuition than to abstraction; one will bear this in mind in the detail of the education of defectives, as well as in its general direction, but without forgetting the numerous interests which it is necessary to satisfy.

There is no question but that there will be admitted into the special schools and cla.s.ses many children only slightly defective, who are destined to return as soon as possible to the ordinary school; and one would put an obstacle in the way of this return, or even make it impossible, if, from the day the child entered the special cla.s.s, a totally different direction should be given to his education from that of the ordinary school. This would be both serious and troublesome.

The amount of abstract material in the lessons should be diminished simply in proportion to the mental deficiency. There is no reason why the slight cases should not be taught in the special cla.s.s in accordance with a programme little different from that of the elementary school, except that it gives them the benefit of greater individual attention. Such individual attention is still more necessary in the case of the ill-balanced, of whom we have scarcely spoken in this chapter. It is not their insubordinate spirit which sets them against anything abstract, and one would do them a very poor service by depriving the more intelligent of them of the ordinary curriculum, and all the more as the majority of the ill-balanced are destined to improve considerably. Thus there are many reasons why, in the case of certain cla.s.ses of the abnormal, one should not lose sight of the usual curriculum. These reasons are as follows: the slight degree of the deficiency in certain cases, or the existence of instability without r.e.t.a.r.dation, or the necessity of sending the children who improve most back to the ordinary schools. Such are the reasons which are important from the school point of view. There are others with a social bearing which are more important still. At the present day it is necessary, especially in towns, that everyone should be able to read, to write, and to express himself in suitable language. It has been remarked, and justly, that reading is the triumph of abstraction, and that a defective may require two years to learn to read by syllables, and very poorly even then. No matter: if the thing is possible, even with considerable effort, such a defective ought to learn to read. This is demanded, not by the state of the child's intelligence, but by the society in which he lives, where illiteracy would bring shame upon him. In questions of this kind the indications of psychology and pedagogy should be subordinated to the needs of life. Necessity makes the law. All instruction given to defectives must be dominated by the question of its practical usefulness. A pedagogy which should be fitted easily to the measure of their intelligence would be dangerous, in that it might result in making them useless. It is evident, therefore, that the problem is very complex, and it would be quite useless to attempt to express it by a single formula. The nature of each individual case must be taken into account, and one must aim at an essentially practical training, a pedagogy of ends rather than of abstract principles. Our advice, consequently, is that in the meantime no definite curriculum should be fixed upon, but that the teachers of defective children should be allowed some freedom, under the cautious control of the primary school inspectors. We ask that all intelligent initiative should be accepted and encouraged, and that the teachers in special schools should frequently meet together in order that they may compare their experience. In short, we should give to the schools and cla.s.ses for defectives such freedom and elasticity that the kind of education best adapted for such children would be able to evolve and perfect itself like a living organism.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] On the other hand, Dr. Abadie found 309 defective to 134 ill-balanced.

[3] At the _Laboratoire de Pedagogie Normal_, 36, Rue Grange-aux-Belles. For details of the work of this laboratory see _Annee Psychologique_, tome xiii., pp. 1, 233.

[4] [See vols. xi., 1905, p. 191; xiv., 1908, p. 1; xvii., 1911, p.

145. Also _Bull. de la Soc. pour l'etude de l'Enfant_, 1911, p. 187.]

[5] [The results of later observations are embodied in the tests published in 1911, which are given complete in the Appendix.]

CHAPTER III

PEDAGOGICAL EXAMINATION OF DEFECTIVE SCHOOL CHILDREN

When legislation provides special schools and cla.s.ses for the benefit of defectives, it will be imprudent to make use of legal force to bear down the will of the parents. It will be better, in the first instance, to have recourse to persuasion. It will be pointed out to the parents that their children are behindhand in their lessons. The parents, as a matter of fact, know this quite well. It will be explained to them that cla.s.ses of forty pupils are too large for children like theirs, and that the teacher cannot devote sufficient attention to them. It will be explained also that cla.s.ses are being organised for ten to twenty pupils at most, in which it will be possible to give individual attention. Before instructing their child, it will be necessary to begin by awaking his intelligence, which involves the teacher devoting himself to him with method, order, and patience. One will appeal to the heart of these parents, and will surely manage to persuade them, especially the mothers. For such interviews we must rely upon the school teachers and the inspectors.

It will only be necessary to warn them to avoid the use of certain expressions. It would never do to say to the parents that their child is an idiot, an imbecile, a fool, or even abnormal. The admission of their son or daughter into a special school should be represented to them as an advantage or even a favour. Their consent should not be demanded in too formal a manner. This would make them think that it is they who are giving something, and many would refuse. In a word, much can be done by prudence, sympathy, and a little tact; and the personal experience that we have acquired has shown us that it is not difficult to gain the parents to the cause of special education.

=Composition of a Board of Examiners.=--We have now to consider how the selection of the children is to be made. It has been determined by statute that the examiners shall be three in number--the head of a special school, an elementary school inspector, and a doctor. As to the manner in which this committee is to carry out its work, the law preserves an absolute silence.

When the three examiners meet in order to judge the degree of r.e.t.a.r.dation of the children who are presented to them, is this absence of a definite programme embarra.s.sing? We do not think so. A committee which is duly authorised always manages to do something. The work is done more or less empirically, perhaps, but it is done. Tell the jury to find defective children, and they are sure to find them. The only question is, What will be the value of their selection? and, above all, How can so delicate a quest be saved from empiricism and rendered exact? It is to be hoped that at first there will not be too many mistakes. This would have a bad effect upon the new inst.i.tution. It is unfair to a normal child to send him to a special school, just as it is unfair to a defective to keep him in the ordinary school. It is better to make such mistakes as seldom as possible. Moreover, it is of the greatest interest to try to forecast the exact way in which errors are most likely to arise. In every machine there is a point of least resistance which requires to be watched. In every human inst.i.tution there is a detail of organisation where fraud and charlatanism are most liable to occur.

Since we have supervised the organisation of some cla.s.ses for defectives, and have been able by some preliminary observations to take account of these dangers, we take it upon ourselves to give warning of them in advance. We fix buoys to the rocks that they may be avoided.

It seems to us that the selection of defectives calls for three varieties of experience--that of teachers, of doctors, and of psychologists. We shall proceed to indicate the services which these various persons may render. In this chapter we shall speak only of the pedagogical examination. The duty of making the first selection among the school-children and indicating those who are suspected of being defective belongs partly to the teachers and partly to the school inspectors, whose respective roles, it seems to us, can easily be defined.

A. THE RoLE OF THE TEACHER: TO SELECT THE CHILDREN SUSPECTED OF BEING DEFECTIVE.

It is out of the question to make an entire school pa.s.s before a committee in order that 500 pupils may have their mental faculties a.n.a.lysed. Such a task, at once troublesome and useless, would require several months. One should rather, in the first place, adopt a rapid method of picking out the children _suspected of mental defect_. It is quite sufficient that they should be suspected. Such a selection once made, the committee will have before it only a moderate number of candidates upon whom it will be possible to concentrate attention.

Let us proceed to show how the teachers may make their selection:

=A r.e.t.a.r.dation of three years indicates a child who should be regarded as a suspect.= A child enters the elementary school at the age of about six years. Each year he ought to advance one cla.s.s. From six to nine years he is in the elementary course; from nine to eleven in the intermediate course; from eleven to thirteen in the senior course. All are not quite regular. Some are a little in advance, some are behind, but the majority conform to the preceding scheme. When a school is well managed, when the a.s.signation of the children to their respective cla.s.ses is made by means of suitable tests, and without too great regard to the demands of the parents, the cla.s.sification which results is very good. There is then no better means of finding out whether a child is intelligent or not than to take into consideration his age and his cla.s.s. Intelligence, so extraordinarily difficult to judge, is indicated in the above way with a really curious exactness. A child two years behind his age, when irregularities in attendance, absence on account of illness, etc., do not explain his backwardness, is very likely to be less intelligent than one who is in, or in advance of, the usual cla.s.s for his age. This amounts to judging intelligence by the degree of instruction. Theoretically, such a method is open to plenty of meticulous objections, of which the most important is that we are confounding intelligence and memory. To this we shall reply that the stage of instruction reached is not the result of memory alone. It presupposes also some degree of application, some facility of comprehension, quite a collection of diverse apt.i.tudes. The child's success in his studies is, in fact, the best indication we have of his capacity to adapt himself to the school environment. If the child is unable to keep up with the cla.s.ses suited to his age, if he is unable to profit like other children from the education provided, this shows that he has not the same degree or the same kind of intelligence as his companions, and there is a presumption, if not an absolute demonstration, that his intelligence is inferior to the average, or that his character is different.

From these statements, which we have expounded at length elsewhere,[6]

it follows that not only the head-master, but an entire stranger, can determine which are the less intelligent children, the less well adapted to that school, without taking the trouble to interrogate them all individually. It is only necessary to compare their position in school with their age.

We thus obtain no merely subjective appreciation, but a simple statement of the actual condition of things. The only thing one must be careful about is to make allowance for irregular attendance.

Backwardness in school instruction is significant only when it coincides with regular attendance. At the present time the regulations as to school attendance are very little respected. In country districts there are children who do not go to school till they are eight or nine years of age. It is not surprising that they cannot read, when no one has taught them. Allowance must also be made for long illnesses. When the absences have been considerable, their total amount must be subtracted. A child of nine, who has come to school at the age of six--_i.e._, the usual age--and who has been absent for about 250 days, should, from the present point of view, be counted as eight. The school authorities will have no difficulty in making such estimates. That is their business, and they will quickly make up their minds even in a difficult case. One will, of course, bear in mind that the number of cla.s.ses differs in different schools, and that certain cla.s.ses are parallel. Lastly, one must remember that a defective may, on account of his age, be placed in a cla.s.s too advanced for his knowledge. This, indeed, is often the case.

Exception may be taken to the role that we have a.s.signed to the teachers. We may be reminded that about two years ago, when statistics concerning defectives were being collected by circular, many of the head-masters replied in a notoriously unsatisfactory manner. Even in Paris one school was stated to contain 25 per cent. of defectives, whilst not a single one was acknowledged in another in the same neighbourhood. This amounted, as M. Bedorez ironically remarked, to an average of 12 per cent.

We shall reply, in the first place, by asking whether a mistake has really been committed. This cannot be taken for granted, since the proportion of defectives varies enormously from one school to another.

But let us admit a mistake, and ask who is responsible. The master of the school understood badly what the circular had explained more badly still. In these circulars we actually read the following definition of defectives: "Subjects who are in a condition of mental debility, possessing only a limited intelligence and a limited responsibility, which do not admit of their acquiring, at the ordinary school and by the usual methods of education, the average elementary instruction which the other pupils receive." If one interprets this badly constructed formula literally, it is evident that half the children of France must be defective, being of necessity below the average. If the teacher is to work intelligently, he must have more precise directions. After having explained to him that a defective child is one who does not adapt himself, or who adapts himself badly, to school life, one will tell him that the degrees of non-adaptation vary indefinitely; for it is quite exceptional for even a defective child not to adapt himself at all, and to learn absolutely nothing at the ordinary school. It remains, therefore, to decide what degree of r.e.t.a.r.dation or of non-adaptation is to be recognised as determining a defective.

According to a convention accepted in Belgium, which we modify slightly, _the r.e.t.a.r.dation which determines a child as a defective is two years when the child is under nine, and three years when he is past his ninth birthday_. Here we have a very precise rule, easy to apply to all children, with the corrections already indicated relating to school attendance. The rule is, perhaps, a little rigid, we admit, but it will always be possible to make allowances when examining closely the individual cases to which it will have to be applied.

Thus, the method which we have just indicated permits the making of a first selection.

This selection will be good, without being final. It will be good, for it is based upon a wide experience extending over several years. Just think what it means in the way of inattention and want of comprehension if a child is three years behind. For our own part, we consider this evidence from experience of the greatest value. It is the obvious point of departure. We can and should try to interpret it and to complete it, but we are not justified in taking no account of it. Let us even say boldly that if, by some unhappy chance, other finer methods should conflict with this, and indicate as defective a child who has shown himself well adapted to school life, it is school life which should be considered the more important test. How, indeed, could one call a child defective who succeeds in his studies and profits by the instruction in the normal way? Thus we sum up by remarking that _we possess a very simple method which enables us to recognise all the children whom we have any right to suspect of mental deficiency_. _This method consists in taking account of the r.e.t.a.r.dation of the children in their studies._

For the recognition of the ill-balanced children the rule is the same.

The head-master must pick out those children whose undisciplined character has kept them from submitting to the ordinary school regime, and has made them a continual source of disturbance. Whilst the simply defective fail to adapt themselves to school life by reason of their mental deficiency, the ill-balanced fail owing to their inco-ordination of character. In the second case, as in the first, there is a similar defect of adaptation, and the best proof that this defect is present in a particular child is the continued evidence of several years, the testimony of different masters, who declare that, with the best will in the world, they cannot break in the recalcitrant child to rule. But it must be recognised that the appreciation of want of balance is more delicate, more subjective, than that of r.e.t.a.r.dation. The latter is indicated by a definite incontrovertible fact--the insufficiency of instruction. On the other hand, lack of balance has only a slight effect on a child's intelligence and his success in his studies. It is indicated to outsiders especially by the complaints of the masters. And the latter, to tell the truth, may be led to exaggerate a little, especially if they see a means thereby of ridding themselves of children with whom they have not much sympathy.

We shall see in a little, when we speak of the role of the inspector, how the latter must check the statements of the head-masters.

=Distribution of the Pupils in a School.=--To put into practice the principle which we have just formulated, a circular is distributed to the schools asking the head-masters to arrange the children in each cla.s.s according to age upon a blank table furnished to them. The work is easy, and the return should be required in a maximum period of eight days. Within this period twenty elementary schools in Paris supplied us with the information which we asked for through their inspectors. We give one of these returns, which we shall examine briefly, insisting only on the essential points.

We ask, then, that on the table, of which a blank copy is supplied, the head-master shall give the number of children who on October 1--that is to say, the first day of the session--were of such and such an age--_e.g._, six or seven years. The normal ages for the different courses or standards are as follows:

Preparatory or infant 6 to 7 years of age.

Elementary, first year 7 to 8 " "

Elementary, second year 8 to 9 " "

Intermediate, first year 9 to 10 " "

Intermediate, second year 10 to 11 " "