The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-06-01
THE FEEBLE MINDED.
New Department of School for
Defective Youth.
FREE TEACHING FOR IDIOTS.
Work to BE Done 1t State Institution
at vancouver-Chat With Assist
ant Superintendent.

]. Calvin Watson. assistant superintend-
ent Of the State School for Defective
Youth at Vancouver. is at the Grand ho-
tel. Mr.. Watson, though q young man,
has had over eight years. experience in
the work of training defective children. for
he first began work under his father, who
is now superintendent Of the institution.
He was for several years teacher In the
Minnesota state school, and when en-
gagged by the board in charge of the Van
couver school he was superintendent of a
similar institution at Winnipeg. The
Washington state school has departments
for the deaf aud dumb, the blind, and a
new building for the feeble-minded has
just been completed. 'These buildings"
SAID Mr.. Watson last evening"" are stu
ated upon the banks of the CO.
lumbia river. beautiful spot
about half a mile from Vancouver. The
building for the deaf, sdumb and blind has
capacity for 100 pupils, and there are
now sixty. The building for the feeble
minded, on which $4,000 has been ex-
pended, will hold fifty. 1t will be opened
in the fall.
1.-THE school is free, everything being
provided by the state. The department
for the deaf, dumb and blind is now fairly
we'll known throughout Washington. but
the new department for the Predetermined
has not, of course, had public attention
called to it. am now looking into the
cases of several children who have been
reported to me as possible pupils.
THE pan Of the trustees will be, pre-
sumo, to take no hopeless idiots. but such
feeble-minded children as may be. helped.
The place for the hopeless idiots, incapa-
bic of any improvement, is an asylum.
In a school they would simply have bad
effect upon the children who are capable
of advancement
"The number of deaf and dumb in a
community is one in every 800 of popu-
lation, the blind one in 1900. and the
feeble-minded one in 700. 1t must be re-
membered, however, that there are all
degrees of feeble-mindedness The diff
ference between an idiot and a crazy per-
son does not seem completely understood
by the average man. The crazy man has
all his brains, but part of them is touched
with disease, while in the idiot there is a
lack Of brain. The cells are undeveloped
and there is incapacity to understand or
to act.
''Our peculiar training helps to develop
these cells. The average feeble-minded
person We can improve so per cent. by
training. We can teach him to walk
properly, to use his hands properly, to eat
and drink and often to behave
SO we'll that the ordinary observer
would never suppose there was anything
out of the way with him. We teach him
these accomplishments by constant
training which makes the acts of ordinary
life second nature to him. SO that he
does them unconsciously. The work is
necessarily slow, but with patience on the
part of the teachers results which are
really astonishing can be produced. A
feeble-minded child, when left unframed,
is almost certain to develop into a GRIM
inal, for he has all the passions of man.
with no power to restrain them"
Mr.. Watson will be in Seattle for two
days more looking up cases of defective
children here.