MENTAL HANDICAPS 



3737 



MENTAL HANDICAPS 



woman of great ability does struggle along with 

 a feeble body. Yet even in such instances the 

 individual is not living up to anything like his 

 highest possible efficiency. As a matter of fact, 

 hardly anybody lives up to his highest possible 

 efficiency by probably twenty-five to fifty per 

 cent. And if this is true of the average "well 

 person," what must we say of the one who is 

 definitely and plainly handicapped? 



Let us first consider what the common men- 

 tal disabilities of children are; next, what they 

 mean; and finally, what can be done about 

 them. For our present purposes these may be 

 grouped in the following way: 



1. Special mental deficiencies, or shortages oc- 

 curring in otherwise normal children. 



2. Backwardness or dullness, producing slow 

 progress in school but not necessarily interfering 

 with a reasonably successful life. 



3. Backwardness of a serious nature, involving 

 more or less mental deficiency of a permanent 

 nature, and interfering with a successful life. 



4. Juvenile insanity of a temp'orary or perma- 

 nent nature. 



5. Unstable mental states (psychic inferiority), 

 producing many kinds of troubles, often of a 

 moral nature. 



Special Deficiencies, or Shortages. Probably 

 all of us come under this class to some extent, 

 for no one is perfectly developed in mental 

 equipment. But when a child is definitely and 

 obviously "short" in some particular, he easily 

 becomes a "misfit" in school and is in great 

 danger of becoming a "misfit" in life. If a 

 child does well in most things but very poorly 

 in one or two others, there is some good reason 

 for his shortcoming, and this reason may usu- 

 ally be discovered if we make a careful attempt, 

 along lines now available. Such children are 

 usually "born short" in some Definite line, and 

 in so far as we can see at present there is not 

 much that can be done about the matter. 



Some children have very little capacity for 

 mathematics, beyond the fundamental opera- 

 tions of adding, subtracting, multiplying and di- 

 viding, and the solution of concrete problems. 

 Some have as little capacity for spelling, or for 

 music or rhythmic movements, while others 

 show no aptitude for manual training, drawing, 

 or mechanical work of any kind. Some possess 

 singularly small ability for languages, some have 

 no artistic sense, and so the list might be con- 

 tinued almost indefinitely. 



Such children can, of course, make a certain 

 amount of progress along the lines of their defi- 

 ciencies, but beyond a point of very moderate 

 success they do not pass. Industry and patience 

 and diligence up to a certain degree make a dif- 



ference, and lead to some improvement, but be- 

 yond this very moderate degree of achievement 

 these qualities do not help much, and, indeed, 

 often hinder, for they lead nowhere and expend 

 energy which might be more successfully di- 

 rected into different channels. 



Teachers and parents ought to help a school 

 child to decide when he has reached his prob- 

 able limit of mental development in certain 

 directions. This is to-day one of the greatest 

 educational problems we have to solve, but 

 the means for its solution are already within 

 our hands, and it is not nearly so hard a mat- 

 ter as at first might seem. Modern vocational 

 guidance must be based upon this principle of 

 the early discovery of capacity for learning. 



To progress we must all meet with a fair de- 

 gree of success in our efforts, for effort without 

 reasonable success dwarfs the soul, mind and 

 body. In the main we succeed best in those 

 things which we like best and which we can do 

 with a fair amount of ease. It appears that one 

 may be just as truly "short" in mathemat- 

 ical as in color sense, yet no one is ever par- 

 ticularly blamed for being quite color blind. 

 The inability to succeed in mathematics may 

 be due to a deficiency in the power of imagery, 

 especially if it involves complex pictures. And 

 some other mental incapacities may be ex- 

 plained, at least in part, by innate differences 

 in the power to form mental pictures. 



It is convenient to be born right-handed, but 

 nobody claims that it is really necessary for a 

 successful and happy life. And it is not really 

 any more necessary to have mathematical sense 

 or language sense in a high degree, than it is 

 to have musical sense or artistic sense. Some- 

 time, perhaps, psychologists and educators will 

 learn how to develop these various shortages 

 which trouble many children to-day, but until 

 they do it would seem wiser to apply the same 

 common sense to them that we do to the other 

 things of life which we have learned are not 

 absolutely 'essential to success. 



Of course it is perfectly plain that if a child 

 or an adult is short in several things, he is a 

 mentally deficient person, but if he is only short 

 in one or two particulars, and still averages up 

 well, he is really not mentally deficient at all, 

 and may indeed be a very superior sort of per- 

 son. 



Fortunately, to succeed in life it is not neces- 

 sary to know all school subjects equally well, 

 but the practical point is that we must select 

 our life work along those lines where our short- 

 ages are of little or no importance to us. The 



