Library Collections: Document: Full Text

As to the third condition necessary to the effective training of defectives -- the careful selection of teachers for the work -- I can scarcely lay enough stress on this point. Many teachers whose efforts with normal children are most satisfactory find it impossible to adapt themselves to the needs of the defective schoolroom. Their patience is soon overtaxed by the slow mental processes and the nervous physical organism of the atypical child and they often find that the physical strain of contact with this class is too great a drain on their own nerve power. It requires no small amount of patience, skill and intuition on the part of a teacher to find just the factors in the educational process that make a real appeal to the struggling atom of mental activity imprisoned in the brain of the defective. Above all, it is only the experience of years that gives a teacher of defectives the true insight into ways and means by which the individual -- (for it is as individuals and not as a class that pupils in such a school must be regarded) -- under her charge can be reached and benefited.

Refinement of manner and feeling are almost as necessary as intellectual qualifications for the teacher of defectives, as it is impossible to overestimate the immense influence of the personality of their superiors to this class. The classes should be small in numbers as it is impossible to do justice to these children if they are to be treated en masse, besides which, it is altogether too severe a strain to put upon the physical and mental organism of the teacher.

A very cursory review of the points presented in this paper will make apparent the importance of what I stated was the first condition in making the training of defectives of effective value to society, namely: That they be segregated permanently from society, and in conclusion I wish to add a few more remarks upon this basic necessity.

It must be distinctly understood that there is no hope of curing mental deficiency. It is not like lunacy, a case of brain affection as liable to respond to treatment as any physical ailment. It is an ill that is beyond the skill of medicine. No surgeon can supply the missing brain center or create an intellect any more than he can produce sight through an artificial eye. Weak sight may be helped by glasses of varying power. Weak brains can be stimulated to mental endeavor, but a person born without eyes cannot be made to see, nor can a mental defective be given brain power and brought to the level of the normally intelligent being.

Realizing this, can it be deemed wise, either for society or the defective himself, to turn him loose after some years of training to make his fight for existence on his own behalf? No matter how seemingly clever he may have become in his chosen line of activity, would it be reasonable to expect him to compete successfully with skilled labor? No amount of moral training during his school life can render him capable of judging points of morality for himself or make him proof against temptations to which his natural tendencies incline him to yield. The end will almost inevitably be that he will drift back into the care of the state, but through the gates of crime. To avoid this as an economic measure and as a safeguard to public morality, the state should see that the defective, on passing school age, should be transferred to a home or colony wherein he can prove his social efficiency by being of use to others and himself.

He is a member of a community of his equals, a sharer in a democracy and a help instead of a menace to society at large. The economic return from a defective must necessarily be very small, yet a colony for feeble-minded of various grades can be made partially, if not entirely, self-supporting. That is to say, outside the cost of establishment and direction, the inmates can be trained to do most of the labor connected with its maintenance. The highest grades of defective boys, under supervision, of course, can take care of the farming, dairy work, gardening, shop-work, carpentering, etc., while the girls of similar grades can be employed in housework, laundry, serving-room and kitchen, most of them being very apt at these branches of industrial work. The lower grades can do easier forms of the different employments, raking the grounds, carrying clothes, grading walks, etc. In these colonies a strict classification of the varying degrees of mentality should be insisted upon, as contact with the lower grades will rapidly sweep away the fruits of the years spent in training the educable feeble-minded for a useful sphere in life, as unfortunately this type of being retrogrades much more rapidly than he advances. After the eighteenth year he receives but few new mental impressions and, if removed from careful supervision or forced to associate intimately with defectives of a lower grade, he speedily reverts to his original instincts and sinks to the level of those around him.

But, if a certain classification be maintained, the different classes of mental defectives may be associated in different sections or homes in the same colony. On Randall's Island we have defectives of every type, from idiots to high grade mental defectives, but the contact between the different classes is of the most superficial. They meet at church entertainments and outdoor sports, but never come in close contact with each other.