140 
Indiana University Studies 
When the results of the testing in Township 12 were 
studied according to schools, it was found that the high per 
cent of the township was due to the large number of defectives 
found in 2 of the schools and that those schools were located 
in 2 of the most unprogressive and backward districts in the 
entire county. These school districts were those of Chestnut 
Ridge and Davis Creek. These settlements have been pre- 
viously described in the section on Township 12, and it is 
unnecessary to repeat here except to say that these 2 districts 
are economically and socially behind the other districts in a 
township which on the whole is the most backward one in 
the whole county. It has been what is known as a pauper 
township, and the same thing which makes for this public 
pauperism, the lack of opportunity for making a living, keeps 
cut all industrious, ambitious folk, leaving the section open 
for those who cannot compete with their neighbors in the 
more desirable communities. The lack of sufficient taxes in 
this township means that the teachers employed are the poor- 
est in the county since they are the ones who cannot procure 
the better paid positions in the townships which do not pay 
the minimum wage. 
The Chestnut Ridge School is a dilapidated old building, 
a corner of which has been propped up to keep it from top- 
pling. It was taught by an old man who was then completing 
his thirty-seventh school. He had no license but was ffiling out 
the unexpired term of a young girl who had given up the 
school as a bad job. He was teaching the younger children 
to count to 100 and to repeat the alphabet. After 6 months 
of practice, some of the pupils were quite proficient in this 
task. There were some in this class, however, who had been 
in school several years without being promoted, and it looked 
as if they might spend the remainder of their school career 
repeating the alphabet after the teacher. Exactly the same 
methods were used on all the children regardless of their spe- 
cial abilities or lack of ability. The teacher did not seem to 
see that the average intelligence level of the school was low, 
but he was sure that ‘They were the sulkiest brats’" that he 
had ever seen. He said that they were too mean to learn, 
and that their parents did not encourage them to be otherwise. 
He spent no little part of the 2 days informing the field worker 
