Educa Tion of Subnormal and Feeble-Minded

In cases of this kind, which with different age figures are very common among the school population, the slow learning leaves the feeble-minded almost unaffected intellectually by the mass instruc tion in our public school systems. Each day's work is planned for the average child, and is too great for the retarded child to assim ilate. The more rapid learning of the normal children may, on the one hand, tend to discourage the feeble-minded if the latter have sufficient mentality to be affected by a recognition of their own deficiency. It may even bring about resentment and bad-temper.

Advantages of Special Classes.

There are well-recognized advantages in special classes for the feeble-minded both for them and for normal children. The normal is not held back by the retarded, and the instruction of the feeble-minded can be adapted to their degree of development. Because of this, many school systems have organized departments for their special care. It is also recognized that the public schools can care for those who have social characteristics, but not for those who are idiots or low grade imbeciles. The latter groups must be cared for in special institu tions, or in their own homes when institutional care is wanting or when parental prejudice prevents separation from the family group. Special classes and institutions are best adapted to the education of practically all feeble-minded, both because of the provision of interested and trained teachers, and because of special curricula—the direction of school energies towards the adaptation of their charges in social directions which are commensurate with the pupils' potential mental development. Special training makes for individual happiness and for social welfare. When the feeble minded are not pushed into intellectual and manual work beyond their capabilities, there is less tendency to personal conflict, and at the same time the pupils can be trained in those relatively simple activities for which greater mentality is a handicap.

Much, nearly all, of the education of the feeble-minded should be motor. It should be a training in behaviour directed to those occupations which require little judgment and little analysis, viz.,

those which are routine. Most factories and shops have work which can be done best by the routine worker, who may become self-supporting. In and around homes and hotels many household duties can be carried out successfully and with little supervision by those of little intelligence if they are given suitable training. These jobs should be selected in accordance with the physical make-up and interests of the individual, and in conformity with his home situation. Except with respect to the lower grades of the feeble minded the schools should not neglect the matter of instruction in reading, writing and simple arithmetic, because simple attain ments in these lines are fundamental to practically every occupa tion. The latter warning may appear superfluous, because in some quarters there is a tendency to try to develop to the highest degree the intellectual side of every individual, regardless of the difficulty or the ultimate value. A further effort to make the feeble-minded a part of society is being made in some communities by having after-care or supervision after school training. This excellent pro cedure insures a close co-operation between the school and the community in the solution of one aspect of the problem of feeble mindedness, and it achieves a better result for the individual as well as for society. Because all grades of the educable feeble minded are chronologically and physically older than the normal children with whom they may be instructed, they are apt to be detrimental to the latter. Their greater physical development, coupled with their lack of judgment, result in oppression or physi cal danger to the normal, younger and weaker children. Because of their greater physiological development they may prove a moral menace. Because of their less controlled emotional reactions they sometimes become brutal or bestial after the onset of puberty. It is because of an individualistic development that the feeble-minded may readily be led into careers of crime. The lack of inhibition coupled with sex impulses leads also to sexual abnormalities. Both of these results are unsocial or antisocial. See also MENTAL DE FICIENCY.