756 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Equally useful to the girl in the workroom as to the boy in the 

 shop is this training of a ready eye, this quick intuition of balance and 

 proportion, this practice of obedience of hand and arm to brain, until 

 it becomes automatic. To both, therefore, the value of such prepara- 

 tion will be incalculable. It is noticeable that boys of this grade 

 turn out as good workers in the ordinary crafts of shoomaking, car- 

 pentering, and house painting as those of higher grade who, although 

 capable of grasping more intelligently the details of work, yet do not 

 bring to it that energy and perseverance of one who finds in it " this 

 one thing I do." With the imbecile of high grade, able to accomplish 

 studies equal to about the first intermediate of the public schools, there 

 is a diffusion of interest; the intelligence broadens rather than deepens 

 during the school period in natural response to environment. With 

 greater grasp of numerical values and of letters he attains proficiency 

 impossible to the lower grades in drawing, in music, in printing, and 

 in cabinet work. Other industries will probably be provided for him 

 as the demand increases, for it must be remembered that this is a 

 class whose needs have been the last to be recognized in a work begun,, 

 as I have before said, for the idiot. Regarded as queer, unlike 

 other children — unable to keep up — he has, after an unsuccessful trial 

 at school, been kept at home, in some cases an aid, in others a tyrant, 

 to those relatives charged with his care. 



Changed conditions of both family and school, fortunately for 

 him, combine to render this no longer possible, as absence of proper 

 training is always certain to result in deterioration. The pressure 

 upon the primary schools in the struggle for higher education leaves 

 no time to contend with dull, backward children. In the family the 

 care-takers grow fewer in proportion as the home-makers become 

 home-winners, and so these feeble ones are a burden instead of an 

 aid in the ordinary household offices. 



The next hope is a training school where, with false hopes fos- 

 tered by ignorance and sensationalism, they are entered, and after a 

 few years, a time all too short for any lasting benefit, a sentimentality 

 equally stupid withdraws them from that guardianship absolutely 

 essential, with just that little knowledge which will render them 

 more dangerous to society, because less recognizable — an evil ele- 

 ment perpetuating an evil growth. Under both conditions these un- 

 fortunates have suffered from that lack -t>f constant care and super- 

 vision which should be theirs from the cradle to the grave. 



The separation of backward children in the schools and the plac- 

 ing of them in special classes tor special training is the first step in 

 the right direction. Here, after sufficient time for observation and 

 diagnosing by teacher and physician, the defectives so adjudged will 

 naturally drift to the training schools for the feeble-minded; these,. 



