ON MENTAL AND PHYSICAL FACTORS INVOLVED IN EDUCATION. 205 



rarely, cannot be expected to have many educational attainments unless 

 the parents have been able and willing to give some instruction at 

 home. The home atmosphere is very important; where this is bad 

 and the children are never talked to intelligently, little can be expected ; 

 but a very backward child in a bright home may, in the absence of 

 special explanations, be regarded as defective. A child of ten or 

 more unfit for Standard I., even if showing some signs of general 

 intelligence, would make moi"e rapid progress after spending a term or 

 two in a special school. Such a child is too old for the infants' school, 

 and does not profit by the large classes and necessary mass methods 

 of the upper departments, but responds well to the more individual 

 methods that are possible when dealing with smaller classes. Many 

 children of the higher grades in special schools might do well in schools 

 of the intermediate or Mannheim type. 



Children may be, as a result of this examination, either (1) sent 

 back to elementary school; (2) sent back to the infants' school for a 

 period if their age allows (nine is the limit); (3) certified as mentally 

 deficient; (4) excluded as imbecile or ineducable; (5) invalided for a 

 specified period. 



Once admitted to special schools children are re-examined about 

 three months from the date of admission, and thereafter at intervals of 

 from six months to a year. The examiner sees the teachers' reports 

 and the children's exercise books and manual work. The examination 

 in the main is on similar lines to that at admission, but there is more 

 opportunity to go into details or to follow out any particular line of 

 inquiry. In the upper classes of special schools, where all the children 

 (or nearly all) can do some writing, mass methods save time. Paper 

 and pencils are distributed and the children told to write their name at 

 the head of the paper. They are then shown an object or picture and 

 told to write the name. Then to write the answer to some simple 

 question, as ' What does a cat eat? ' Then three or four words of dicta- 

 tion. Then to answer a question written on the blackboard, as ' What 

 is in the grate? ' Then the answer to the written question, ' What is 

 twice two? ' or such like query. Then the answer is to a similar but 

 spoken question. An addition or other sum is then dictated and 

 another written down on the board. When these are finished the 

 children are seen individually. As they come they are handed a slip 

 with such a request as ' Pick up a pen,' and are told to do what it says. 

 A preliminary experiment to explain that this does not mean either 

 reading the sentence aloud or writing it down is often needed, in which 

 case the marking is a point lower than for an immediate response. 

 Then some general questions, including perhaps ' What is the day after 

 to-morrow ? ' 



In general the examination otherwise follows the lines before 

 mentioned, except when any special point is being tested, or when the 

 medical officer is experimenting with some test or other, which would 

 then be tried on all cases, in addition to the usual routine of general 

 knowledge, intelligence of response, attention, and the three R's. 



Up to the age of twelve and a half children who would be 

 reasonably able to enter Standard II. are returned to the ordinary 



