MENTAL HANDICAPS 



3738 



MENTAL HANDICAPS 



color-blind person cannot expect to be an art- 

 ist, nor the tone-deaf person a musician ; neither 

 can the man or woman who lacks language 

 sense expect to succeed as a linguist. There are 

 plenty of fields of endeavor, however, that are 

 open to all of us who possess average intelli- 

 gence, and a definite shortage in one or two di- 

 rections, while it may sometimes be an incon- 

 venience (just as left-handedness is), is, after all, 

 nothing more than that. 



The practical lesson from all this is learn to 

 know yourself as early as t possible : learn your 

 special aptitudes and your special inaptitudes, 

 and adjust yourself to life so that you can 

 progress with the least possible amount of fric- 

 tion. 



Dr. Luther Gulick makes this very clear when 

 he says in his book, The Efficient Life: 



There are conditions for each individual under 

 which he can do the most and the best work. 

 It is his business to ascertain those conditions 

 and to comply with them. 



And Dr. David Starr Jordan expresses the 

 same idea in a little different way when he 

 says : 



The best subjects for anyone to study are those 

 best fitted for his own individual development, 

 those which will help make the actual most of him 

 and his life. 



The Slow but Not Defective Child. Many 

 children of this class are found in the schools. 

 Sometimes their slowness is caused by physical 

 conditions, such as adenoids; poor nutrition, 

 either from improper food or from certain dis- 

 eases, such as malaria and hookworm. Other 

 physical causes are insufficient sleep, or sleep in 

 badly-ventilated rooms, excessive coffee drink- 

 ing, and drinking of wine and beer, sometimes 

 a habit of certain children of foreign parentage. 

 But while some cases of slowness are no doubt 

 produced by physical defects or diseases, or bad 

 habits of living, most cases are innate, that is, 

 the child is born this way. This does not mean 

 that such children may not succeed in the 

 world. It only means that they are not edu- 

 cable to a very high degree, in the ordinary 

 meaning of education to-day, and must be con- 

 tent with some of the humbler stations of life. 



Schools often make the mistake of attempt- 

 ing to develop children or young people of this 

 class beyond the limit of their natural mental 

 capacities. Trade schools are nearly always 

 well adapted to the type of child whose educa- 

 tional capacity is rather limited, although this 

 does not mean that such schools may not be 

 adapted to other -types as well. There should 



be no sense of disgrace attached to the slow 

 child, for while he may be slow along certain 

 educational lines, he is often very competent 

 in the practical affairs of life. 



A dull lawyer, for example, might make a 

 very superior carpenter, or a slow teacher a 

 very excellent mechanic. What we need to do 

 in the schools is to help pupils to find them- 

 selves just as early as possible. Tests of men- 

 tal capacity along different lines have been de- 

 veloped by psychologists which might now be 

 easily applied to children and young people in 

 the way of definite vocationaf guidance. 



Mentally Deficient Children. A good many 

 backward children are now known to be per- 

 manently deficient in intelligence to such an 

 extent that they cannot develop beyond a cer- 

 tain definite mental age. For example, a child 

 of fourteen years may be retarded in the fourth 

 grade. ' Here he seems to remain indefinitely. 

 Now a psychological examination sometimes 

 shows that such a child actually possesses only 

 the intelligence of children of the fourth grade, 

 that is, about nine or ten years. Under these 

 conditions there is very little reason to hope 

 for any greater development of intellect. 



The child is permanently arrested in mental 

 growth. All we can do about it is to give such 

 a child the best education his intellect will ac- 

 cept rather than to hope and strive for that 

 which is sure to be a disappointment later in 

 life. 



Since 1905, when Binet, a French psycholo- 

 gist, and Simon, a French physician, developed 

 their "intelligence seals" for measuring the in- 

 telligence of children in terms of mental age, 

 great progress has been made in the study of 

 children of this type and also of adults who 

 have never passed a child stage of mental de- 

 velopment. Investigators in this field now hold 

 that from one to two per cent of the children 

 in our public schools are mentally arrested, or, 

 as we say, feeble-minded. It often happens 

 that outwardly such children give no indica- 

 tion whatever of their mental state. Sometimes 

 they have quite a fine personal appearance. 



Without the Binet-Simon and other well- 

 known psychological tests many of these cases 

 could never be understood by either parents or 

 teachers. Because of this mental arrest such 

 individuals pass into adult life with very little 

 judgment or will power. It now appears that 

 many criminals (probably about fifty per cent), 

 large numbers of paupers, many juvenile-court 

 cases, and other people who form our most 

 serious social problems belong to the medium 



