Library Collections: Document: Full Text

Conditions of apathy or of excitability in various stages have indicated to her the necessity of winning and holding attention by means of varied occu-pations that shall either arouse or repress the nervous nature as the case may demand, yet tending to stimulate in both the creative faculty.

Accepting the natural method demonstrated by the child himself, he is encouraged to give expression to ideas which he has already conceived means of construction and picturing.

The home and outer environment, the gaining of food, shelter and clothing, and the observing of animal and vegetable life, have already given him many experiences, and the teacher invites him to recount them with divers materials and in many ways, accepting whatever is given however crude for she is well assured that the working hand will strengthen, not exhaust the working brain.

In proportion as his store of objects in clay or paper, wood or straw increases, does self-hood increase, and in the happiness of accomplishment and of growing capacity, the child becomes gradually aware of the truth "not what I have, but what I do is my kingdom."

From the drawing of the object, the step is short to drawing its name. Signs associated with things are never entirely abstract, and reading and writing begun as a part of hand occupation is inseparably linked with it, and becomes in time a source of preparation for added achievements. For each stage of development has its luring and enticing occupations. The knitting, netting, weaving, card-board, and wood-construction in endless variety, not to mention the many industries of house, farm and garden which open means of development to many to whom books are, and will ever be, but a dead language.

This brings us to a knowledge of possibilities and limitations in the several grades of defect, and how to discriminate and assign so that each may go to his own place.

Thus while subjected to an atmosphere of culture common to all, con-ducing to good morals, good manners and good taste -- often during that time developing some talent latent and unsuspected -- the child is taught and led to pursue some one of the occupations in which experience has proven many of his class have found a useful and contented existence.

Here is another point upon which our teacher will enlighten you. For she may look around your school-room and designate children who can never learn to read or write, notwithstanding all the vital energy you have expended upon them. She will tell you also just the occupations in which they can attain any efficiency. For example, she will say: "This one is a low-grade imbecile; most probably you have not been able to teach him anything. You may possibly have taught him to read and write a few words, but they will never be of any use to him, and doubtless next week he will have forgotten them. He may learn to knit or weave, or he may help you around the house, working under direction -- but don't hope to make a responsible servant of him. That he will never be."

Of another of the same characteristics she may say: "He will help you and serve you faithfully, and just as faithfully will he obey a villian -sic-. For a mere beast of burden he follows where he is led. He has no will-power and is simply the slave of a higher intelligence."

"That girl who has learned to read, write and cypher a little, you say in five years, I should judge to be an imbecile of middle-grade, who has reached her mental limit with books and will doubtless never care to use them. She ought to have been able in that time to learn to sew, to knit, to weave -- might have become expert in basketry, or may yet be very efficient in household service, but she must be always carefully guarded and protected, for she, too, has no will-power and will prove an easy victim of the vicious."

"That boy who looks so bright and yet does so little, lacks application; has ability, but trifles over first one thing and then another. He is a high. grade imbecile; doubtless he has reached his limit about the intermediate school class sometime since, and school exercises after that have tended to stultify and to deaden mental processes. Had he had manual and physical training from kindergarten up, he might now have been expert in type-writing, or type-setting, or cabinet-work, an interested and useful mechanic and pos-sibly further advanced mentally than he is now. Certainly more interested in books, for he would seek them with a definite aim.'

There is hardly any teacher who is not called to deal with the leaders of mischief. Take, for example, one who has no conception of the rights of others. If there are two ways, he will choose the crooked always, rather than the straightforward. Things disappear, and can always be traced to him, and yet he is an attractive child, one of the brightest in his class. One cannot believe he means to be naughty. The teacher recognizes the type from the description -- a moral imbecile. In a certain sense he does not wean to do wrong; he simply cannot help it. He is born without the moral sense, and notwithstanding all his mental equipment, he is a ship at sea, rudderless at the mercy of every nerve storm. He is powerless to resist any temptation that assails. A disturber of the peace of any school-room or of any com-munity will he be always, and mental acquirements will all be used to that end; therefore for him, the fewer the better. Permanent sequestration, con-stant, congenial occupation under the most cheerful conditions possible, is the ultimate safe-guard for him and for others.