Library Collections: Document: Full Text

From time to time small private schools for the retarded spring up. Some states investigate such projects before giving licenses or approval. This is not universal, however. This Association at present is not equipped or financially able to investigate and report on such schools. Perhaps at some future date we can assume this responsibility to the public and investigate these projects. Minimum standard for approval might be within the scope of the Committee on Education and Training.

Psychological research in this field has perhaps made the greatest progress and contribution to the accumulated knowledge. For this we are indeed indebted to several of our own members. Out of these studies have come a wide variety of tests most of which have been well standardized. It is no longer felt that a simple Binet test is an adequate psychological study. Not that the Binet has lost its intrinsic value but it needs supplementation and confirmation by a battery of other manual, verbal and non-verbal instruments of psychological measurement.

Of these advances our Association may be justly proud. This work will continue and other tests will be developed. Perhaps we may hope for psychological methods of analysis that will be less time consuming. A critical analysis of the tests proposed and in use seem to be in order. Overlapping is unavoidable and yet it would seem that certain condensations might be made in the effort to produce an economy of time without disturbing the value of results.

Lastly, it seems to me that we are going through certain phases of transition. There was a time when institutions received all gradations of defectives from the profound idiot to the borderline types plus a goodly number of defective delinquents, pre-psychotics and epileptics. There is developing certain, quite clearly, demarcated trends whereby the higher grades of defectives who are perhaps more salvageable are considered chiefly a community problem for the jurisdiction of the special classes. Most of us feel that is a sound policy basically, yet some of these cases can and do do better with a few years of institutional care and training. It is an unwise policy which draws hard and fast lines of demarcation for institutional placement.

This trend means to the institutions a need for reorganization of the curricula gearing it lower to meet the needs of the lower grades of defectives. The end result will be that fewer cases will be eligible to parole and the institutions will require more employed help to care for those less capable of self-aid. All of this will have a bearing on costs. Legislators will need to be made aware of this shift and the accompanying need for additional appropriations to meet the added financial burden.

The war and particularly the war industries made the institutions more conscious of wage scales. It has been proverbial knowledge that institutional personnel are poorly paid. During the war some attempt has perforce been made to raise the level of the compensation for institutional help. In spite of this it is safe to say that many institutional employees are still underpaid, it is to be hoped that we may be able to see the time when institutional salary scale will attract a better class of individuals, particularly in the attendant group.

In considering the horizons as far as institutions are concerned there are, or were, certain trends in the decades between the wars that seemed good in theory but have proved to be poor at best in practice. For example, in the 30's there was considerable agitation for civil service examinations and appointments for all institutional positions. Such laws or regulations were put into action in several states. Perhaps the Board of Directors of Letchworth Village in their reports in 1942 and 1945 have best told the story of such rules of practice.

In the 1942 report from Letchworth Village we quote: "The State Civil Service Commission is doing its utmost to cooperate and to facilitate the employment needs of the Village. The Commission deserves all sympathy, for the task laid upon it is an impossible one. Some day, unless we miss our guess, the parents, relatives and friends of our children will demand of their representatives that they secure the repeal of regulations which instead of benefiting the inmates of Letchworth are having just the opposite effect. We urge the speedy repeal of these unworkable regulations."

The Board of Visitors at Letchworth Village in their 36th Annual Report discuss at some length New York's Civil Service. They state: "With the Civil Principle there is universal accord. The administration of Civil Service is, however, quite a different matter and if we achieve the goal which Governor Dewey sets before us there is a real fight ahead, for the tentacles of the civil service octopus never let go."

"An entrenched bureaucracy, not familiar with the details of administration in our state hospitals and schools is, however, so obsessed with the fetish of uniformity that the farther down one goes, the administration of civil service becomes less and less human and more and more a mechanical thing. It is not possible to fit people into categories and expect equally satisfactory results from all."