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mentality, having become annoying, in the past had been habitually ex- 
cluded from school. These excluded, subnormal children, untrained and 
undisciplined, have often become the men and women scourges of society. 
Many teachers, principals and physicians consider such pupils as merely 
slow, and earlier in their school life, fondly expect them to brighten up; 
but, the incapacity once recognized, the problem is an altogether different 
one; for, when we measure the intelligence, we have measured the dgree 
of the irresponsibility. Their right to a training is the same as is that of 
their better endowed brother, and their need is greater. To attempt to 
lead a feeble-minded child along the school way of the normal child can 
result only in failure. 
How would you feel if you were fourteen years old, with a mental 
capacity of a child of seven, obliged to sit in a 5A grade class, absolutely 
incapable of understanding the work? Can you blame a child for re- 
belling against such an overburdening “education” ? 
Misfit children are naturally affectionate, kind, and tractable. Ma- 
liciousness and carelessness are not their inherent traits but are acquired 
from lack of capacity to understand required conditions. Continued mis- 
understanding and rejections make them hope!ess and rebellious. 
A desire for greater school efficiency is demanding that classification 
must be made on a basis of native ability. For hundreds of our public 
school pupils, the hope of escape from a life of utter inefficiency lies in 
the ungraded schools of our public schools. For here only can they now 
be given training and treatment adapted to their subnormal, individual 
capacities. Destroyed brain tissue can never be renewed. We know our 
limitations. It is not possible to make good out of a poor thing; but won- 
derful things can be done. 
The widespread need of such schools can be estimated when you con- 
sider that reliable investigators compute the number of feeble-minded 
pupils to be from two to four per cent. of all children of public school age. 
All cities, in our country, of 100,000 population and over, and many small 
towns, now maintain separate schools for feeble-minded and defective 
children, in care of more or less specially trained teachers. Indianapolis 
now has two such schools, in which thirty-one pupils are enrolled. <Ac- 
cording to the lowest expert estimate, this is 44 per cent. of the feeble- 
minded and defective children now in the grade classes that need to be 
given special opportunities. 
