hurt on—A Study of Retarded Children. 293 
of the question. They are the offhand statements of the heads 
of these schools, hut even then they are very valuable, for these 
men are professional educators living in daily contact with this 
problem in its concrete manifestations, and it is their duty to 
study it all the time in the administration of their schools. For 
that reason high value should be attached to their opinions. 
Several causes are usually given by each superintendent, so 
the causes are given below in the order of the highest number 
of times that they are mentioned by those reporting. The com¬ 
bined results, then, are as follows :— 
Irregular attendance... 
Mental incapacity. 
Home conditions. 
Foreigners. 
Dislike for school work, 
Illness.. 
From country schools... 
Poor teaching. 
Social pleasures. 
Lack of ambition.. 
Laziness. 
Physical defects. 
Parochial schools........ 
26 
24 
23 
10 
9 
9 
6 
5 
5 
5 
4 
4 
4 
Lack of application . 
Outside work.. 
Malnutrition. 
No home occupations, 
Beer and tobacco. 
Poor school facilities, 
Shifting population... 
Rapid development... 
Immaturity. 
No home study. 
Skipping grades... 
Ill treatment. 
Bad habits.. 
4 
4 
3 
3 
3 
2 
2 
2 
2 
1 
1 
1 
1 
This will repay careful study. It has in it some things that 
are contrary to much of the arm-chair philosophy on the sub¬ 
ject. The fact of foreign birth or the speaking of a foreign 
language in the home seems not to be a serious factor. The 
dicta of Dr. L. H. Gulick who says “retardation is not due to 
physical defects” and “over-age children have the fewest de¬ 
fects,” are corroborated here. How much of this calls for 
medical treatment and how much for pedagogic treatment it is 
impossible to say. The economic condition of the home seems, 
likewise, to figure very little. It apparently resolves itself to a 
large extent into a moral question and one of home integrity 
at that. 
It would seem that the principal causes of retardation are 
largely beyond the control of the school. Possibly school-men 
hesitate to place the blame upon the schools over which they 
hold control. Put the fault with schoolmen is that they are 
usually too free to blame the schools and charge them with 
faults. The writer expressed himself in an article published 
in The Journal of the Minnesota State Medical Association 
