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The Feeble-Minded and Delinquent Girl. 



E. E. Jones. 



It is a signal victory for the cause of education and social service iu 

 Indiana that the Indiana Academy of Science has seen fit to place on its 

 program a symposium on "Some of the Scientific and Practical Aspects of 

 the Problem of Feeble-Mindedness." My part in this symposium is to dis- 

 cuss the "Feeble-Minded and Delinquent Girl." She presents a separate 

 and distinct problem in the social and educational development of a State, 

 simply because she is a girl. To her sex belongs the important function 

 of bearing the offspring of the race, and through maternal functionings, 

 mental and physical qualities of the race are propagated. Thus, the feeble 

 minded girl occupies a most strategic position in the problem of race im- 

 provement and development, a matter in which scientists have been pro- 

 foundly interested since 1869, the date when Fances Galton published his 

 wonderful work — Hereditary Genius. 



It is fitting that the science of this age devote itself assiduously to the 

 problems of racial improvement, for by no other means than that of 

 science can such a program of civilization be accomplished. 



My first problem this evening is to define the feeble-minded girl. What 

 is she? What qualifications, limitations, and possibilties does she possess? 

 What is her type of mind? What is her physical endowment? How much 

 does she know? How far can she be educated? In what sense can she 

 ever become self-sustaining? We must have a comprehension of these facts 

 before we can fully define the feeble-minded girl. At the present time we 

 have numerous scales such as the Binet-Simon Scale for measuring quan- 

 titatively and qualitatively general intelligence; and in defining the feeble- 

 minded girl, we must bring into play the use of all such instruments of 

 measurements as will determine her mental and physical endowments. 

 Such scales have been employed in the feeble-minded institutions and with 

 feeble-minded children in the public schools with marked success, and 

 we are looking to a time in the near future when these and other scales 

 will be perfected and refined until it will be possible for us, early in the 



