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*Read before the Pennsylvnia -sic- State Educational Association, Morristown, Pa., March 10, 1904.

BRIEFLY to enumerate the various points that teachers of normal may gain from teachers of defective children I should say:

FIRST -- HOW to study the child: (a) Through physical characteristics. (b) Through habits, special idiosyncrasies, and their effect. (c) Through temperament; whether traceable to heredity or en-vironment, or both.-

SECOND: -- How to discriminate and place in the several groups of normal, backward and defective.

THIRD: -- A knowledge of possibilities and of limitations in the several grades of normal, backward and defective.

FOURTH: -- To individualize standards for the day's work; requiring not so rigidly that each shall accomplish the same task, as that each shall exercise his or her capacity to its full meas-ure in the given task. In other words, to require the best the child can do and to demand no more.

In this connection also the teacher of the abnormal learns to note fatigue signs, and to discriminate between them and the play-off of mere trifling, of naughtiness, or of pure indolence.

In fact, necessity has given the teachers of defectives such constant practice in this individualizing that to one of long experience, insight becomes intuitive.

By means of it the teacher is not only enabled to detect what is within, but to assist the child also to detect and to reveal it by reproduction, and to seek stimulus in healthful competition with his fellows, so that he develops unconsciously through activities that, alternately assisted and independent, act naturally and without strain, co-ördinating to induce stability of purpose and of habit.

But, may not the teachers of normal children do this also? True, they may, but can they? When the attention is constantly impelled and directed toward promoting and graduating a mass, is not this condition of touch be-tween individuals the exception rather than the rule? And do not habits en-gendered by such daily practice become more those of a general directing force than those of a trainer or a promoter of physical and mental culture? There is neither time nor opportunity to cultivate both, and, as I understand it, a large proportion of teachers in public schools find that not only their repu-tation, but their very living depends upon ability to move the mass and to cover ground measured out by a system. So many shoved on to make room for so many more; so many books gone through in order to take up so many more. There is no time for noting assimilation or its absence; individualiza-tion is lost in the imperative necessity for generalization. The masses must move at whatever it cost. It is a great system! No greater we claim in any country, but that many children are its victims, we of the medical profes-sion have good cause to know. It is equally true that many good teachers are often sacrificed and absolutely forced away from that individualization which they themselves hold to be the highest art in their profession. It is in this very essential point of getting in touch that the teacher of the ab-normal has a decided advantage over her sister teacher.

Having seen how the pressure of necessity and of circumstance impels one set of teachers toward and the other away from the study of the child, we shall now by comparing, find the methods used by each in awakening and developing mental power to be also diverse. Briefly stated, one begins with physical activities inducing co-ordination and exhilaration physical and mental, and gives to study its periods of rest and recuperation -- a zest in preparing for future preconceived experimentation. The other begins with mental activities, inducing often in-cördination and exhaustion both physical and mental, and seeks rest and recuperation only, in physical activities.

The teacher in schools for normal children in this particular also, is ham-pered by a system; one modified in some slight measure by the partial intro-duction of manual training, but with comparatively few exceptions, her chief, often her only resource is the ubiquitous book. In fact, it has not been so many years since the schools seemed to have been created for the express benefit of publishers and book dealers. Fine they are one must admit. Too much cannot be said in praise of the modern school book, but at best, it can but give knowledge second hand; knowledge, moreover, that must be paid for in a corresponding exhaustion in lieu of a building up of mental energy. This the teacher of the feeble and the backward knows she cannot afford to risk, or to lose. She will tell you, moreover, that all knowledge is not bound up in books; that an accumulation of facts, making a mere storehouse of the mind may even prove burdensome and worse than useless unless built into the mental structure by applying and experimenting.

The futility of compelling attention for long periods by the mere superim-position of will-power has been satisfactorily demonstrated to her, nor would she -- save in exceptional cases of discipline -- do it if she could, feeling that with many, the result would be mere automatism or more frequently de-ception.

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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.

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There are others in the schools who are not of these types, yet are differ-ent from normal children; nervous under compulsion, easily confused in ordi-nary recitation and unable to keep up with the others. The backward children just on the borderline who may easily be precipitated into defect by mismanagement. Examinations will do it. or a multiplicity of studies. For these, as for the others we have been considering, the panacea is found in making haste slowly. Let us have fewer books and more music -- both vocal and instrumental -- more hand-work and physical exercises, remembering that hurry and worry are the two enemies of culture, and culture is what is most necessary to the period of immature growth. Knowledge is gained practically through growing experiences, and knowledge gained thus first-hand, is best for them now; facts relating to people and events they may glean later, or dispense with altogether. We cannot grasp everything in a limited time and if something must be dropped out, or left behind, let it be the system rather than the child.

Give the children time to grow as nature intends without getting over early solemnized into ill-conditioned men and women. It is a recognized fact that the longer the period of maturity is deferred, the later will be the period of decay, and the stronger and healthier will be the characteristics transmitted to later generations.

Overcrowded school courses and exciting examinations, nerve-strain and push -- the making haste to grow, has much to do therefore with the propaga-tion of poor stock, and the consequent retarding of race-culture. This press-ure of the strenuous life is a feature which a teacher in the public schools must hopelessly combat, while the teacher of defectives, dealing with a perpetual childhood, feels that she has time and opportunity to instill manli-ness into her boys and womanliness into her girls, without fear of their be coming premature "grown-ups" under her hand. In this, as in many things, methods and environment contribute to ameliorate her arduous task and to aid her in the study of the points we have enumerated. She has every opportunity of studying the child, his habits, temperament, and early history, aided by the diagnosis of physicians, and the records of former instructors, which are all open to her. Not only that, but if resident in a training school, where all engaged in the work live more or less with the children and with one another, much is gained by interchange. In dormitory and dining-rooms, school-rooms, work-shops, and play-grounds, the child is known; in his training, moral, industrial, intellectual and physical, many are concerned and all are interested, so that her opportunities are greater than are those whose conditions are more circumscribed. This, a seeming paradox is nevertheless true-that is compared with teachers in public schools, whose opportunities for study and approach are too often bounded by school-room walls. The appointment of medical inspectors, now becoming general, will naturally aid these in gaining an insight into family history of pupils and the influences of heredity upon habit and temperament if they have access to records. But to acquire facility in detecting signs of deterioration or of defect as well as a knowledge of the different grades of imbecility and the limit of capacity in each, requires inter-course with defectives in mass and conference with experts in training.

A few weeks thus employed will be an open sesame to many, enabling them to see more clearly how to avoid nerve-strain in themselves and their pupils and thus to maintain an atmosphere most conducive to progress.

The student of psychology studying for an examination would find an ounce of such practice worth a pound of theory.