Evening star., 1925-03-01
PARENT-TEACHER GROUPS VOTE
FAVORS CHILD-GUIDANCE CLINIC
Executive Committee,
Columbia Junior
High, Acts.
Supports Expert Vie,t
Held By Various
Hygiene Leaders.

The executive committee of the Co.
lumba Junior High School Parent
Teacher Association voted approval
of the establishment of child guild
ance clinic in the public schools of
the District at a meeting held at the
school on Friday.
Miss Alice Deal, principal of Co
lumbia Junior High, presented to the
gathering some of the more impor-
tant facts in connection with the
needs of the problem child, as she
sees them in her own school.
Recent evidence of the interest of
the Washington branch of the Amer
lean Association of University Wom-
en- in the establishment of such A
clinic was the appropriation of $500
from its treasury to help pay the
salary of a psychiatrist to head a
corrective consulting department
handling problem" children.
Speaking before the District Public
School Association, DR.. William A
White contended that the child who
brings home a report with a d. in
the department column instead of an
E is not bad or mischievous be-
cause he wants to be that and nothing
else, but that he is handicapped some
times by physical defects which are
not recognized and sometimes by the
surroundings through misunderstand-
ing.
should Know Both.
In the opinion of DR.. White, who is
internationally known as an author
ity on mental healing, attention to
the mental health OF a child Is more
important even than that given to his
PHYSICAL health. But since the two
are so closely linked DIR. White takes
the position that a psychiatrist who
Knows both the physical and the
mental side is best fitted to determine
wherein the difficulty lies
The psychiatrist Is capable of dag
nosing such conditions as deafness.
near-sightedness, adenoids or indi,
Gestion and Of determining, after
proper treatment, whether these
actual remediable defects were the
sources OF Johnnie's inattentlon dur
ing class hours or his exhibitions of
pad temper on the playground
III after close physical examination.
no source of bodily ill-heaIth is found
the psychtatrist endeavors to get at
the viewpoint OF the boy who goes
ABOUT stealing the other children's
apples or who lies consistently with
no apparent sense of doing wrong.
often through study, the childs rea-
sons for his badness" can be arrived
at, and where this is possible, later
trouble for the community in which he
nVes is avoided A study of the
childs condition by the psychiatrist
also reveals whether his mental state
Is a permanently defective one or
only condition which may be righted
through changing his outlook.
Interested I'm Clinic.
DR.. White, member of the national
committee for mental hygiene, is in
terested in the establishment of the
proposed child guidance clinic in
Washington schools, because his
years of study have forced him to the
conclusion that a great number OF
criminal and insanity cases could be
entirely cured and their victims made
useful members of the community IL
they were carefully handled when the
first evidence of incorrigibility and
maladJustment with the social scheme
appears.
Since the observation of the mental
hygiene committee is that such NAL
adjustment begins early in childhood,
a child-guidance clinic In the schools
would form the first constructive
factor in determining the causes and
allaying the consequences of misbe-