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This last fall, the principals were again asked to make a careful canvass of their classes to ascertain whether there were children in the schools who were incapable of making adequate progress in their studies, to such an extent as to necessitate special treatment. Those reported were referred by the district superintendents to Dr. Elias G. Brown of the department of physical training who had been appointed to examine such children and to act in an advisory capacity in the formation of ungraded classes. During the year. Dr. Brown has examined between 1,300 and 1,400 children.

The work in New York for mentally deficient children is in a formative but chaotic state at the present time. The terms "ungraded" and "special" classes are used synonymously, and cover-those for wayward, backward, and mentally deficient children.

It is impossible to tell how many there are for the latter, for backward and mentally deficient children are often in class together. There are, however, at least five where the majority of the children are mentally deficient, and where the work is planned for such pupils.

The formation of classes depends upon the principals and the district superintendents. Not all educators in the city, however, approve of such work; some consider it simply a fad. In certain parts of the city where the classes are most needed (for the parents cannot afford to hire private tutors for their defective children), the schools are so overcrowded that the prinicpals are unwilling to place one hundred normal children in part time classes in order to make provision for twelve or fifteen who are abnormal.

Unfortunately the teachers of the ungraded classes are selected by no one person; therefore, some are good and some are not. They receive no training for their work and the salaries are not enough greater than those for the grade teachers to be a special inducement. The supplies are difficult to obtain, for the ungraded classes are not a separate department of the school system.

The education of mentally deficient children in the City of New York is at a critical point. Are these classes to become dumping grounds? or will the educators of the city help Dr. Brown to carry out his plans and make the three following divisions to the ungraded (or special) classes?

a) Training class (for mentally deficient children).

b) Coaching class (for backward, delicate, or slightly exceptional children, such as need special help).

c) Disciplinary class.

In spite of all the difficulties, there is excellent work being done in more than one class in the city for mentally deficient children. I should like to speak somewhat in detail of the class at P. S. No. 1 on the lower East Side of New York City.

This class was started several years ago, and for over three years has been in charge of Miss Elizabeth Farrell. She says:

"The class was organized primarily to care for backward boys, but it was apparent to those most interested that the backwardness was directly related to a physical or a mental defect. With this fact established it became necessary to change the whole character of the work. Instead of working to pull a boy up to the requirements of a certain grade which he was to enter at the earliest possible moment, it became a duty for some one to diagnose each case presented for admission, and upon that diagnosis to lay out a series of exercises that would meet the physical, as well as the mental development of the child."

Miss Farrell was, I believe, a graduate student of philosophy at Columbia when she took charge of this special class. Starting out with no actual experience in teaching mentally deficient children, through her study and observation of children and methods at schools and institutions for the feeble-minded in this country and abroad, she has built up a most excellent work.

The class has been a difficult one to teach: in the first place, it has usually numbered eighteen or twenty; then the boys have been very ungraded, at times, some more wayward than backward. At present, there are nineteen in the class, twelve of whom are mentally deficient. The youngest is six and a half years of age and the oldest seventeen. In work they range from "sub-kindergarten" to the second year of the grammar school. Nothwithstanding these difficulties, each child is studied individually and his education fitted to his needs.

The chief aim is to create in the boys a love of work so that when they go out into the world, they will not join the ranks of the criminal class. For this reason, everything is related to manual training and made subordinate to it. They always have some subject as a center; at present it is the farm. In woodwork, they are making a house and barn, fences, furniture, and flower-boxes. They are weaving the rugs for the floor, making a hammock, doing- raffia work and basketry. They went to the country for the soil to plant their miniature fields, and sent to Washington for the seeds. In painting, their subjects have been apple blossoms and violets with an illustrated trip to Bronx Park. In picture study, they have taken "Oxen Plowing," "The Angelus," etc. In arithmetic, the older boys measure in a concrete way, the rooms of the house and the fields. In their written work in English, they are having stories of farm life, and reports of personal observation; in reading, stories of dogs, horses, making hay, and so on; in spelling, words relating to manual occupations, e.g., "soil, seeds, leaves, barn." In nature work, they are studying soils, the earthworm, buds and seeds. This is simply suggestive of the excellent work that the boys are taking up at present. The subjects are chosen and the different studies related to the center with the purpose of developing the social instincts in the boys.