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PUBLIC school classes for mentally defective children were opened as early as 1867 in several German cities. In Prussia since 1880 these special classes have been obligatory in cities of twenty thousand or more inhabitants. Norway, Sweden, Denmark, France and Switzerland have made similar provision.

In England a class for defective children was established in London in 1891 in accordance with the suggestion in the report of the Royal Commission of the Blind, Dumb, Deaf, etc. Afterwards other classes were opened in Leicester, Bradford, Birmingham, Bristol, Nottingham, etc. General interest in this subject was awakened by the remarkably able reports of Dr. Francis Warner in 1889 and 1894 concerning the mental and physical condition of one hundred thousand school children, which showed among other things that at least one per cent of these children were so deficient mentally as to need special instruction.

The report to Parliament in 1898 of the "Committee on Defective and Epileptic Children" discussed the question in great detail and recommended certain definite legislation, which finally crystallized into the Parliamentary Elementary Education Act of 1899 which provides power to determine what children are defective; provides for an extra grant of money for the maintenance of special classes or schools for defective children; provides for compelling feeble-minded children to attend these special classes and generally provides for the management of these schools by the local school boards.

A few quotations from the admirable 1898 report will illustrate the sharp distinction made in England as to the use of the term "imbecile" and "feeble-minded.'

Throughout this report the word 'feeble-minded' denotes only these children who are not imbecile and who cannot properly be taught in ordinary elementary schools by ordinary methods."

"That children exist who, on the one hand, are too feeble-minded to be properly taught in ordinary elementary schools by ordinary methods, and, on the other hand, are not so feeble-minded as to be imbecile or idiotic, is assumed in the terms of reference to us. With this assumption we are in entire agreement. From the normal child down to the lowest idiot there are all degrees of deficiency of mental power; and it is only a difference of degree which distinguishes the feeble-minded children, referred to in our inquiry, on the one side from the backward children who are found in every ordinary school, and, on the other side, from the children who are too deficient to receive proper benefit from any teaching which the school authorities can give. The great majority of the thirteen hundred children whom we have seen in special classes have been tried in the ordinary schools, and have been shown to be incapable of receiving any proper benefit from the instruction, having for the most part learned little or nothing beyond certain habits of discipline. On the other hand, these children show themselves capable of receiving considerable benefit from the individual attention and the special instruction given in the special classes. By the age of thirteen or fourteen they may sometimes arrive at a stage of elementary instruction, equal perhaps, to that attained by ordinary children of eight or nine years of age, and they often show themselves capable of being trained in some manual occupation. Thus there is a fair prospect, that, with favorable surroundings, they may take their place in the world and may not become inmates of workhouses, asylums, or prisons."

"Though the difference in mental powers is one of degree only, the difference of treatment which is required is such as to make these children, for practical purposes, a distinct class. Public feeling would revolt, and rightly, against the permanent detention of these educable children in institutions, and therefore it is better that they should not be sent to institutions during their childhood, but should become familiar with the world in which they have to live, and should, if possible, by individual teaching and suitable training be put in the way of making their living. They would obviously take harm from association with low-grade imbeciles and ought to associate with ordinary children as much as is consistent with their receiving the special and individual care and training which they require. Feeble-minded children should therefore be considered a distinct class from those imbeciles whose mental deficiency is such that their seclusion for life in institutions is highly to be desired in the interests of society as well as in their own. The treatment of low-grade imbecile children requires to be directed, not towards enabling them to take their place in the world, but towards making them as happy as their affliction permits. They do not suffer from association with other imbeciles, and the individual teaching which is required for feeble-minded children would be wasted on them." * * *

"Thus the feeble-minded children referred to in our inquiry exist as a distinct class from imbeciles; they are not, in fact, certified as imbeciles; they are not provided for as imbeciles: they are not classified as imbeciles by most scientific authorities; and they differ, both from ordinary children and from imbeciles, in the treatment which they require during their school life."