The Barre daily times. (Barre, Vt.) 1897-1959, 1912-04-04
STATE SUPERVISION
OF FEEBLE MINDED
Importance of the Plan Impressed on
Conference on Conservation of
School Children by ]. H.
Van SICKLE.

I South Bethlehem, Pa, April Al. ii.
1 Van Syckle, superintendent of schools
of Springfield, Mass, delivered an adj
dress here to-day before the conference
| on conservation Of school children, held
under the auspices of the American
Academy of Medicine. His subject was
the care OF feeble minded children by
the public schools, and he spoke in part
as follows;
In the most pr, gressive communities
the control and care of the positively
feeble minded like that OF the insane,
is state function. BOYS of this class
ii left to themselves, being unable to
sustain themselves in competitive indus
try, drift into criminality and come
upon the state for support in our penal
institutions. 1t is now seen that state
supervision over these boys should be-
gin before criminal tendencies have been
allowed to develop.
To prevent the marriage of feeble
minded girls and to shield them from
temptations to which they are notorI
ously easy prey is obviously a duty.
This duty the state can perform more
effectively and at less expense than the
local community. At what point shall
the state take up this burden?
While feeble minded boys are with
in the usual compulsory attendance age
and are under the watchful eye OF
teacher and attendance officer the local
community may properly assume full
responsibility for their training. Feeble
minded girls become a menace earlier
than feeble minded boys, but for
number of years both boys and girls
OF this class may with safety to them
selves and others be taught in the pub
lie day schools They should, however,
be grouped in special classes where their
characteristics may be carefully studied. |
In border line cases. several years may
pass before il can be determined with
certainty whether a child is positive
ly feeble minded or merely backward, /
hence the special class in the public |
school serves a highly useful purpose
as clinic in which suspected cases arc
slowly and carefully diagnosed. From
the special class the child of temporary
rCtardation Is returned to the grades |
Some of the border line cases of feeble |
mindedness and the high grade cases |
pass from the school to employment |
Those who 90 from the class to the |
state school for the feeble minded are
removed from the community to which |
they are menace, are themselves pro- |
tected, and are taught to assist the |
state toward their own support in 80 |
far as they are capable of doing so. Elk. /
cept in the exceedingly small number of /
instances where the feeble minded child /
has good home, local communities can
not safely retain feeble minded children
beyond the age of adolescence
The public school can render its best
service by teaching the feeble minded
not ordinary academic studies, but such
elements of simple industry as will most
nearly render them self supporting when
at about the age of adolescence they
go to the custodial home.
The teacher of the special class should
have the ability to enter into SYM
pathetic relations with parents of feeble
minded children. gradually and gently
them with the child's real
and with the advantage which
the state institution offers, and finally
securing their consent to transfer.
While in the special class each child
should be put into as good physical con-
iition as possible. This is prerequisites
in determining the child's mental condi
ton.
The public school is one of our social
and as such it may Justly
be expected in work with the feeble
minded to do whatever its publicly pro-
vided facilities can accomplish without
its other functions BY gath
aring sub-normal children into special
,lasses and fitting them for partial self.
support in institutions, the school rem
iers only reasonable service, for the
segregation of the feeble minded is
equally in the interest of the normal
children whose progress they would 9TH
arwise impede.
Another Address on Same Subject.
Henry II. Goddard. director of research
n the Vineland, n. J., training school
o. backward and delinquent children,
an address and spoke in part
Is follows:
Out of every hundred school chill
lren, three are feeble minded, and two
II these have inherited their feeble mind
.dness and will transmit it. Those are
lot the idiots and imbeciles. commonly
recognized as such, but are the high