4 ;o SCIENCE PROGRESS 



factor in efficiency, especially in the formation of character ; the 

 individual efforts of good parents, especially of good mothers, 

 cannot be replaced by the collective efforts of society in schools 

 and institutions. Yet much may be done by health visitors and 

 domiciliary visits of school nurses in improving the home 

 conditions of the child, and thus helping the teachers in their 

 work of education. When the home conditions are impossible 

 for the child, the relief of the parents of responsibility for its 

 care has been attended with marked success ; so also the poor 

 material furnished by waifs, strays, and orphans formerly 

 dragged up in the workhouse has been made into more or less 

 efficient material in the industrial schools and Barnardo's homes. 

 Social reform has thus made great progress in the interest of the 

 child by the extension of the meaning of education. I have been 

 much impressed by the growing interest teachers take in their 

 pupils ; especially have I had the opportunity of observing this 

 in the teachers at special schools. They know of the home life 

 of their pupils, and show interest in understanding the cause of 

 the physical and mental defect from which the child suffers. It 

 seemed to me almost pathetic that teachers with such intelligence, 

 human sympathy, and untiring energy in their work should be 

 entrusted with the almost hopeless task of trying to draw out 

 from mental defectives initiation or efficiency. It is otherwise in 

 the special schools for tuberculosis, deaf and dumb, and blind 

 children ; here there is educable material which will in future 

 make for efficient service. The open-air schools for the treat- 

 ment of tuberculosis which I visited at Birmingham made me 

 exclaim : " Why, these children look healthier than the normal ! 

 Why not have all the children taught in open-air schools? " 



The special schools for the deaf and the blind yield gratifying 

 results to the teachers, because in the majority of cases the 

 children are not mind-blind or mind-deaf; they are educable 

 because the material basis of mind in the brain is there, and the 

 teacher finds her way to the mind of the blind through the finger- 

 tips and to the mind of the deaf through sense of sight. The 

 deaf child, by watching the movements of the lips, is able to 

 speak by imitating the movements. Do not these facts show 

 the great importance of training the tactile-motor sense and the 

 sense of movement (kinesthetic sense) in our normal schools ? 



The kinesthetic sense is one of the most important which 

 can be cultivated ; it is the essence of the joie de vivre in play, 



