CHAPTER VIIL MENTAL DEFECTIVES IN THE 
SCHOOLS OF COUNTY H. 
Special attention was paid to the mental defectives in the 
schools : first, because the feeble-minded child was more easily 
studied in the school than in the home ; and, secondly, because 
all children above the low imbecile grade are to be found in 
the public schools (particularly is this true of the younger 
children), and the presence of the defective child most often 
indicates the existence of adult defectives in the home or 
among the near relatives. 
There is a widespread belief that the country children as 
a body are as bright and capable as the children found in town 
and that all the difference is that the city children have the 
advantage of better teachers and a broader curriculum than 
do the children of the rural schools. There was found to be 
a great difference betweeen the two groups. 
There are even greater differences within the groups. 
These differences are not only in pupil material but in teach- 
ers, buildings, school spirit, and attitude. All of these differ- 
ences seem to depend for the most part on the section of the 
county in which the school district is located. In fact, after 
looking over the data collected, it seems safe to say that the 
number of defectives in the schools depends entirely on the 
geographical location. The number of defectives in the city 
schools also depends to some extent on the location of the 
school, since parts of the town are made up of better classes 
of citizens than are the others. It would be expected that 
the children in a school district where most of the professional 
and successful business men live would have a mental en- 
dowment superior to that of the children of school C where 
live not only the lowest class of laborers but also those who 
are not capable of laboring at all. Likewise it would be ex- 
pected that the children of school B would rank somewhere 
in between the 2 other groups since the adult population of 
that section is made up largely of a steady, respectable labor- 
ing class. At one time this was true, but it is not at the 
present time, since in each of these districts are now to be 
found sections where the population is different from the rest 
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