TRAINING OF MENTALLY DEFICIENT CHILDREN. 533 



all mj experience of idiocy do I recall but two: of these one, after 

 mucli effort, was able only to speak his brother's name, and the 

 other acquired three words in three years. 



A teacher endowed with originality in devising means, versa- 

 tility in presenting so as to avoid monotony, gentleness and un- 

 wearied patience in constant repetitions, possessed of that fine per- 

 ceptiveness and devotedness to her vocation that shall enable her to 

 note improvement imperceptible to a layman — all these valuable 

 qualities combined with good physical condition (which alone can 

 insure that tenderness and firmness giving power of control over 

 herself and the child) — may, in years, raise an idiot to the plane of 

 an idio-imbecile, enabling him to do perhaps the work of an idio- 

 imbecile — an aid in the care of his associates. But is it worth it — 

 more especially when, while we are raising the idiot to this, we are 

 shutting our doors upon hundreds of idio-imbeciles who are lapsing 

 into idiocy for lack of these very occupations which alone can keep 

 them from retrograding? Will not history stamp such an act as in 

 itself most idiotic, second only to that other of carefully guarding 

 the comparatively harmless idiot and turning loose the moral im- 

 becile, a firebrand upon society to desolate homes or to transmit his 

 moral leprosy to generations? 



The absurdity, therefore, of placing unimprovable idiots in a 

 training school is self-evident. Yet willful misrepresentation on the 

 part of a sensational press, coupled with every influence that mere 

 sentimentality can bring to bear, is daily burdening our work with 

 an element fit only for asylums, and crowding out the improvable 

 imbecile who can in time be so trained as to enable him, under con- 

 stant care and supervision, and with proper facilities for control, to 

 become almost self-supporting — this, too, in a life freed from anxious 

 care, and, what is of the first importance to society at large, a life 

 freed from temptations, from opportunities for crime, and from 

 the power of transmitting ill. Always under guidance, always under 

 control, this " child " — who never attains the full measure of ma- 

 turity — must ever be, lest his unconquerable indolence or his lack 

 of will power make him the slave of vice, the victim of poverty and 

 wretchedness, or the tool of the designing and the wicked. 



So much for aims and means. A word further as to methods. 



These, based upon the theories of physiological education dictated 

 by Pestalozzi, Froebel, and Rousseau, first successfully practiced with 

 mental defectives by Itard and by Seguin, include all the means 

 that modern thought and experience have gathered. 



Kindergarten, ISTature studies, object lessons, sloyd, and the many 

 occupations included under the name of manual training, all lend a 

 successive and continuous stimulus — the one underlying principle 



