New Britain herald., 1918-04-22

be able to place her in the care of an
 Fer tent are Really Defective.
 The most conservative estimate places the number of mentally defec- tive cllldren Tn school system at , per cent. II you know the number of ch1luren Tn a system, you can feel per fectly safe iu stating that per cent. O that number are definitely IeeDle- minded. Iu New Haven We have 1000 school children, hence We have at least 300 feeDleminded children Only 9o of these are now in special classes
 There is a danger when the idea has permeated tneasehoo4ass stela, that troublesome child may be mentally defective; the danger or going to the other extreme and casually caIIing an& one who does not conform to the system, feebleminded. 1 have had boys sent to ne as candidates for the special class who could do percentage With lightning rapidity and, were oD- Nlously very bright, who had not been sufficiently occupied to keep out of mischief; other children have been sent in whose difficulties are due to insufficient Knowledge of English If
 
 nave an expert to sort out the defec- i've ChlidrGn. Current scales of in 1 telngence tests make it seem so easy but the tests are ValueleSs except as a tool i'll the hands of d thoroughly trained and experienced worker. In- experienced workers or those who have had aa six weeks summer course and consider themselves psychological experts have hampered the work in several places, I know Of a town in the middle West Where such work CT tested children and announced that 50 per cent of the children in the schools were feebleminded. The prjn- cipal thereupnn, said, That cang be so, I'll try those tests myself. He too was feebleminded according to her Judgment We must guard against any such state of affairs and be very sure that our children are tested by a competent person before they are placed in the special class.
 Tn adding special classes for de- fective children to the schools syst m the board of education, finds one huge difficulty. 1t is expensive. The classes are small. only fifteen childre~ 1T, each one because of individual work 1 that Is necessary: the equipment is eX- ! pensiVe; because there is such a var l iety of work the teachers have higher 1 salaries and are hard to get because 1 there are few women trained for the 1 work. Ii seems hardly fair that the 1 mentally defective child who will i never amount to anNt hing anyway ] should have so much more spent on 1 his education than the normal child does. If you stop there, the arg1l- l ment is convincing. That is only thinking the problem half through however. These children cost the community vastly more in money. from 1 regardless of their moral menace, from the time they are born untli they d!@ It is the feebleminded children who 1 crowd our orphan asylumns because their feeblcminded parents have found
 the struggle with life too great: who appear again and again in Juvenile courts and children'a buildings; who form such large per cent of those in our reformatories for boys and girls though0ut the state; who are cared
 for by the organizations looking after the welfare of young girls; who fill our alnshouses. prisons, jails. who arc 1 regular patrons of the organized cha c- 1 ities Tn every way they are an ex- pense to the communitT and the pub lie schools ust bear their share of the expense The school is the first agency
 to receive them, and as soon as theN
 are old enough for us to he sure that
 their lack of dcvelopment is not due
 to other causes, the schoo
 should remove them to specia l classes. Not only is 1t necessart
 for the vast improvement of tha
 schools but more important than this