204 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE. 



of defectives in this respect generally show the influence of associa- 

 tions of sound, and in some cases the reading methods may have 

 been in part to blame. Spontaneous writing is tested by asking the 

 child to write down the names of simple objects held up for him or 

 otherwise indicated. The final test may be to get a child to read, 

 after a brief interval, a word or sentence he has written. If, for 

 example, he had written to dictation ' Pick up your cap, ' and he is 

 later shown the sentence and told to do what it says, and does it, the 

 chain of writing connections would seem to be complete, though 

 there is the possibility of the reinforcement of his reading by the aural 

 and motor memories of the preceding stages. 



Arithmetic. 

 The variation in this is so great that no one line of procedure can 

 be suggested. Perhaps the most usual start is to ask some such 

 question as ' What is three and two more? ' If this fails, try 'If 

 you had three apples and I gave you two more, how many would you 

 have? ' The latter is far more often answered than the former. 

 Similarly with subtraction. These points are often brought out at an 

 earlier stage by the query, ' How old will you be in two years' time? ' 

 The knowledge of multiplication may be tested if the child has learnt 

 it at all, but they rarely have attempted anything beyond the six-times 

 table. Even then it is a common experience for a child to know say, 

 all the three-times table if allowed to start at the beginning, but not 

 to have any idea of three times six without saying the table through 

 to that point. However, inquiries into the acquaintance with the 

 table belong far more often to the examinations in the schools with a 

 view to return to the elementary school than to admission examina- 

 tions. A child who has failed at 3 + 2 under all mental forms is 

 asked to count them out, using any convenient objects— counters, 

 spelicans, or the fingers. Addition in defective children, if performed 

 at all, almost always involves counting from the beginning, even if 

 only one object has been added to the heap already counted. A 

 certain number cannot count at all ; these are reviewed with the 

 special question as to educability in the foreground. A child who has 

 had opportunities of education for some time and who still cannot 

 count, would at the best be admitted to a special school on probation. 



Speech. 

 In the course of the foregoing tests evidence as to speech will have 

 been collected. There are many forms of mis-pronunciation, and only 

 those who cannot be understood at all are necessarily thereby rendered 

 unfit for a special school. Defective speech without other defects 

 (to a marked degree) might qualify for special instruction, or for a 

 stammering class where such exists, rather than a defective school. 



General Intellectual Capacity. 



In estimating the results of the examination allowance must be 

 made for educational opportunities. This is largely done in the course 

 of inquiries into general knowledge, memory, and power of attending. 

 A child who has not been to school at all, or who has attended but 



