26 MAL-NUTRITION AND THE TEACHER'S 



dull or below the average in school lessons ".' {Jotir. R. 

 Stat. Soc.j 1893, p. 72.) 



' The report of the teacher concerning each child was 

 included. Mental dullness was observed or reported to us 

 in 231 cases. It is probable that many more children were 

 mentally dull ; of those noted some attracted attention in 

 other ways and some were presented to us by the teachers.'^ 

 (Brit. Med. Jour., July 27, 1889, p. 187.) 



Mr. Yule's version of Dr. Warner's procedure is rather 

 different, and I quite fail to find any justification for his 

 paraphrase of Dr. Warner's own words. He says : 



' The return as to " dullness " is stated to have been 

 based on the teacher's report, but this does not quite convey 

 the actual procedure. Dr. Warner himself, I understand, 

 picked out certain children to begin with, and these, subject 

 to the teacher's confirmation, were entered as " dull " together 

 with such other children as were then reported dull by the 

 teacher (cf. Report, Ezc, p. 11). Dr. Warner's selections, 

 his personal presence, and his explanations, would thus 

 tend to secure a moderate degree, at least, of uniformity. 

 Further, the investigation was voluntary ^ and unofficial . . .' 

 (Jour. R. Stat. Soc, 1910, p. 545.) 



We see then that, except in the case of the 5,344 children 



1 This refers to the children dealt with in Dr. Warner's first interim report. 

 It is to be noted that the term ' under the average ' is not used here at all, 

 although these children are included in the general report. 



- The survey was a ' voluntary ' one in the sense that permission had first of 

 all to be obtained from the governing bodies of the schools concerned, but only 

 in this sense. If Mr. Yule suggests that certain teachers ' volunteered ' to carry 

 out the classification of the intelligence of the children, as was the case in 

 Prof. Pearson's school children investigations already quoted, he is going beyond 

 the facts. When Dr. Warner had obtained permission to examine a school 

 every standard in that school was examined (' all the children are seen in the 

 three departments of the school, infants, boys, and girls '. B..4. Reports, 1893, 

 p. 614), and so far as the individual teachers were concerned, they had appar- 

 ently no choice in the matter. 



