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Education was doing the best she could in the condition she was in. She began to realize that health and sanitation might have something to do with her failure. She called Compulsory Medical Inspection to help her, began to hire school nurses and established school lunches. She did a number of quite sensible things before she had the good sense to visit an oculist, only to find that she had been suffering all along from her own intellectual astigmatism. Then it was, her eyes in somewhat improved focus, she began to see and better to understand that her factory-made intellectual suits only emphasized the mental abnormalities and deformities of many of her children. Her compulsory school attendance laws were gathering up and forcing into the classrooms disqualified and difficult children for whom Education's system had no place or use. She began to see and understand their needs, to realize that she must have expert tailors to fashion and fit for each of such children an intellectual suit fitted to its individual needs and capacities.

Prior to 1900 comparatively little effort had been made to segregate difficult and handicapped children and to readjust the work of the schools to meet their special needs. There was no recognized method as yet, for the measuring of intelligence. Psychology was not quite ready to take its place as a science in Education's scheme.

Education began to look around for the special teachers such classes would require. There was scarcely a teacher in her schools who had not experienced the chagrin, worry and futility of trying to "pass" such children to a higher grade, but there were very few who had had opportunity for acquiring the knowledge and technique for special class teaching.

This situation and the necessity for meeting it gave to The Village of Happiness one of its greatest opportunities. At its Annual Meeting in 1903, Professor Earl Barnes, whose life had been and still is devoted to the general field of education, said he had found "inspiration and helpful information in frequent visits to The Training School since 1900." He called attention to "the relation of the work of The Training School to the general work of Education"; to the "changes taking place in our educational theories and practices in which The Training School is playing an important part." He said , "A feeble-minded child is an ordinary child seen under a microscope ...... students in your schools have been able to see and state facts of growth more truly than we could observe them in other schools. Especially has your constant insistence on physiological training played an important part in changing general education practices. It may very well be that the most ignorant shall teach us most."

He called attention to the movement to provide special classes for mentally retarded children in the public schools, -- Prussia in 1880; in 1900 in Germany over 6000 in these special classes; in 1900 in London 42 centers, with 85 classes and over 1200 children; the opening of such a school in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1894, with Boston, New York, Chicago and Philadelphia following.

These special classes were already showing the need for specially trained teachers. Said Dr. Barnes, "I know of no place in the world where teachers are especially trained for such work and yet there is no other educational work where training is so necessary and so possible. Why cannot this Vineland School become such a training school for teachers? The work must be done where there are feeble-minded children. You have them. It must be done where there are good buildings, generous grounds, an enlightened and progressive Board of Directors, a highly educated and experienced superintendent, a well trained and devoted force of teachers. You have all these conditions. With the addition of one expert scholar to your force it would be possible to commence in a modest way training the hundreds of teachers whom we must have faster than they can be prepared. If successful, such a departure would give to this School the stimulus of many young and ardent students passing through it; it would give the School an international reputation and it would greatly extend the beneficient work to which you are devoted."

For fifteen years The Village of Happiness had been working with mentally retarded and mentally deficient children. It had built up from its own experiences and that of others a technique for the understanding and training of such children. It had the equipment for the work. It had trained its own teachers. It was ready for one of its two (1) big missionary jobs and being ready it started forthwith.

At the Annual Meeting in 1904 the Superintendent, Professor E. R. Johnstone, reported to his Association: "As suggested by Dr. Earl Barnes,..... we have decided to give this summer a six weeks' course of training to public school teachers. .... Under the direction of the Principal of our school department, they will take charge of some of our classes during the regular school hours, have opportunity to study the children out of school, in cottages, at camp, at entertainments, on the playgrounds. Each school day the Superintendent will give a lecture on some phase of the work; a course of reading will be provided; in preparation for this our own teachers have been taking this course at their regular meetings during the winter." In 1905 he said, "Our Summer School for teachers is the first of its kind in the world."