Library Collections: Document: Full Text

-*Presented at the 3rd Annual Convention, Canadian Association for Retarded Children, Montreal, September 15th, 1960.-

I appreciate greatly the privilege of discussing with you to-day problems of institutional care with particular attention to the so-called trainable young child. As is being brought out in this Conference, we are facing broad challenges in every area of the care of the mentally retarded, but no where are these challenges harder to meet than in our institutions. The reason for this is two-fold; institutions are built of brick and mortar, and an unwieldy, out-dated, three-story, mass housing monstrosity of a building just continues to sit there as a road block to progress. Compare this with the situation in the public schools, where your obstacles might be an out-dated curriculum, inadequate teacher training, inferior testing programs, all matters that can be remedied in much shorter time and with much greater ease.

Secondly, unfortunately most of our institutions for the retarded are very large, hence any changes such as in staffing, for instance, require a major effort and very considerable funds.

I make these points because as one who has spent many years in institutional work I am well aware of the difficulties facing the institutional administrator, and am also well aware of the tremendous progress that has been made in spite of these obstacles in the thirty years since I first became acquainted with a mental retardation institution.

Some of the matters I will be discussing here to-day may appear to you as too far-fetched, too remote from the realities of to-day. However, institutional planning is a slow and cumbersome process and many of the institutions being built right to-day are out-dated by decades before the plant is completed.

Even considering that bureaucracy in Canada may not be as encrusted and sluggish as that in the United States, I am sure I need not detail for you how difficult it is to get public funds appropriated for structures that deviate substantially from the pattern to which state architects and appropriations committees have been accustomed. The institution of tomorrow has long since been on the drawing boards. We must turn our attention now to the more distant future if we want to effect some definite changes, long overdue.

With the understanding then that I am well aware and appreciative of the real progress that has been made in institutional work in our field, but that our eyes here to-day are set on the future, let me turn to the specific task assigned to me by the C.A.R.C. Institutions Committee: the Lost Years of the Institutionalized Trainable Child.

Several months ago I visited a new mental retardation institution in the United States. I saw attractive buildings with a fine program for the higher grade, so-called educable child. There was an excellent and extensive educational plant with classrooms for academic, vocational and home-making instruction and a very fine activity program provided stimulation during leisure hours. However, when we came to the cottages for the younger, more severely retarded, so-called trainable children, we found them sitting and lying on the floor in a large day-room with a minimum of toys and equipment. Subsequently I learned that there are storage closets full of toys but it was found "too difficult" to put them to use. Windows in those buildings were set high because, I was told, the children might damage them or smear them.

This striking differentiation between these two groups of children can be observed of course not only in a good number of other institutions but also in many community programs. Indeed, as you undoubtedly know, one of our most distinguished leaders in special education. Dr. Cruikshank, of Syracuse University, dismisses the entire group of trainables from any consideration by the public schools because he insists they are incapable of making a contribution to society, and hence are not worthy of the educator's attention.

It is at this point that I must respectfully enter a disagreement with Dr. Rosenzweig whose excellent address yesterday I not only listened to with great interest but have since read and re-read with profit. Dr. Rosenzweig emphasized that three separate, complete programs seem to encompass the needs of almost all retarded children and then he lists the educable, trainable and custodial. Let me first state with regard to the last classification that I am most vigorously opposed to the term 'custodial'. Language has meaning, and conveys a mental picture of things and ideas and I need only ask you what picture comes to your mind when some one mentions to you the term "custodial institution". This is a quite respectable term as well I know having been a custodial officer in prisons and correctional institutions for delinquents, but it certainly does not convey the picture of nursing care and of the limited but significant training of which so many of these most severely retarded individuals are capable.