CHAPTER X. BAD SCHOOL ADJUSTMENT AS A CAUSE OF DELINQUENCY

The comparison of the Binet and school tests for our group of serious delinquents suggests another important comparison. Many delinquents are found to be apparently wrongly placed in school relative to their intellectual development. They form a group for which not isolation but training is needed, a group notably larger than that which should be sent to institutions for the feeble-minded. This bad adjustment of juvenile delinquents to their school work is not the same problem as backwardness in school. It means attendance in school classes unsuited to the child's mental ability. In a paper before the Minnesota Annual Conference of Charities and Corrections in 1910, I briefly forecasted this problem ([152]). It is now clearly indicated by the records of the group of delinquents at the Glen Lake Farm Training School. This comparison is made in Table XVI.

TABLE XVI.

School Positions of Delinquents at Glen Lake Relative to Their Intellectual Development

School position worseAlike[[32]]BetterTotal
3 yr.2 yr.1 yr. 1 yr.2 yr.3 yr.4 yr.
1821212916422104

In order to be thoroughly conservative in estimating this problem of maladjustment to school work, let us not only allow for two mental ages to be satisfactory for each grade, as indicated in the table, but in addition omit all cases which might be credited with an intellectual development above XII. This eliminates the objection to considering higher age tests, for nobody questions that tests XII or above indicate at least a 12-year-old intellect. After these extremely liberal allowances we still find 54 of the 104 boys in the detention home testing less than XIII who were in school grades the work of which was presumably not suited to their intellectual level. Seventeen of the boys (16%) were at least two years out of adjustment to their school work. If we disregard those who were trying to carry work too difficult for their capacity because placed a year or more ahead of their ability, we find 30 out of adjustment because at least one grade behind the class suited to their intellects. Over a quarter of our detention-home group was thus placed in school a year or more below grades attended by the pupils of corresponding intellectual development. It may be said that some of those behind their proper intellectual position in school may have been kept back because of instability, laziness, or other volitional characteristics which might fail to show in tests of intellectual performance. This is probably rare, and, when found, it often means merely that the pupil requires more attention to secure results.

That our delinquents are not unique in their maladjustment to school as judged by their tested abilities, is indicated by the report of Ordahl on the school position of the special group of 341 delinquents in the state school at St. Charles, California. The median of their school positions, counting seven years as satisfactory for the first grade, fell a grade and a half below that which their tested mental development seemed to justify. He notes that “mentality is not alone responsible” for their low grades in school. Moreover, he believes that it shows the necessity for a more objective pedagogical method in dealing with them (41, p. 81).

Only a prolonged trial of special instruction for those presumably behind their proper grade would finally determine how large is this evil of maladjustment. Such an experiment could be satisfactorily carried out only with the co-operation of the board of education. It would mean the employment for some years of expert teachers to train those delinquents found behind their intellectual level in school. Until that time we shall have to take the estimate from psychological tests which indicated that, in our group of serious juvenile delinquents, presumably 29% of those compared had been held back by the school machinery. Since the retardation of these pupils may be attributed to a late start in school life or prolonged absence, the inadequacy of the schools so far as these pupils are concerned may be supposed to lie in their failure to promote pupils quickly up to the school position of their equals. On account of the expense of special teachers such pupils presumably could not be given a chance to make up the school subjects which they had missed and could not be advanced to the grades requiring this knowledge. Whenever this is the case or under any circumstances which keep the pupil behind the school class of his intellectual equals, we have a fundamental cause of distaste for school work. No wonder that such pupils dislike school, become disgruntled and stubborn, run away and rebel at the treatment they receive under the traditional school system. One can hardly blame a self-respecting boy, forced to remain behind his peers, for breaking away from the lock step, playing truant and seeking his education in the streets.

The trouble is not with the school authorities alone. They are doing about as well as can be expected with the funds which the people have been willing to provide. The public must be educated up to the recognition of the fact that every child in the school should be allowed to progress as rapidly as his abilities permit. The public schools of Mannheim, Germany, are the great illustration of what can be done to bring the school instruction close to the varying degrees of capacity among the pupils. In the Mannheim schools children may carry from four to eight years of the regular curriculum in eight years, and the brighter pupils may also take additional subjects. The Industrial School in Cleveland has demonstrated that some 14-year-old boys two years backward in school may, with special help, be successfully prepared for high school with about as much likelihood that they will continue the high school course as the ordinary boys ([107]).

It is self-evident that a boy with ability to carry a higher grade of work cannot ordinarily be allowed to skip one or two classes without special instruction and be expected to succeed with studies which require preliminaries that he has had no opportunity to learn. The necessary knowledge and sufficient skill in particular habits of thought needed could probably be acquired in a brief time under the right sort of special instruction. It is not sufficient that special classes for pupils mentally backward should be provided in the schools. They will not take care of this problem, which has to do mainly with pupils intellectually capable of carrying the work of a higher grade than that in which they are placed. These children can now be found by means of mental tests and they should be assisted in making up the intermediate work by collecting them into redemption groups, so to speak, where they can have individual instruction. In the public schools of Faribault, Minnesota, the plan of thus picking out older minds in a class and promoting them one or two grades with very little extra instruction has been successfully tried in an experimental way.

If all of the children in a school system who are thus seriously out of intellectual adjustment cannot be cared for, it is plain that the children in danger of delinquency might well receive the first attention, since the lack of adjustment with these may cause the most serious social consequences. That the problem is more acute among the serious offenders in juvenile court than among school children generally is indicated by a comparison with Goddard's figures for school children generally in a typical community tested with the same scale. If we select from his tables only that group of mental ages which could actually be in a class ahead or behind their mental development, we find that only 20% of this group would be outside the standard of 6 and 7 years in the first grade, etc., as compared with 52% of our detention home group on the same basis. On the other hand Terman's records with the Stanford scale ([193]) indicate 44% of ordinary children similarly maladjusted to school. This condition should probably be regarded, therefore, as a supplementary stimulus for delinquency rather than a fundamental cause comparable with mental retardation.

While this lack of adjustment is undoubtedly the most pressing training problem connected with juvenile delinquency, we must not expect that when it is solved we shall have eliminated the problem of mental backwardness of delinquents as a class. The most that we could expect from perfect adjustment of the school work to mental ability would be that the average amount of school retardation for the group would be materially reduced. How much retardation in school relative to the life-ages would still remain, cannot be determined on account of the uncertainty of the tests for older ages and the factor of volition. For the mentally deficient pupils still remaining behind the regular pupils it is necessary to provide other special classes. In these classes or schools the feeble-minded children would remain for their entire school course.

That the correction of the lack of adjustment is a much more agreeable and hopeful task than the care for deficients is shown by the facts regarding the detention home group in Table IX. There is at least the possibility that 10 of the school laggards in this group of serious delinquents might be brought up to a satisfactory grade. Discount this prospect as you may, it is still to be compared with the fact that no actually feeble-minded boy can ever, by special instruction, be brought up to a satisfactory school grade. Moreover, we might expect that 30 of the 84 laggards might, by special help, catch up one or more grades.

That the correction of lack of school adjustment is a bigger problem in connection with juvenile delinquency than the detection and isolation of the mentally unfit can only be said in relation to the numbers affected. Taking the lowest estimate of those in the detention home group out of adjustment with their school environment it was at least 30, while only 9 of that group fell below the borderline of passable intellects and only 2 were surely feeble-minded. If one guessed as we have on the basis of school position that a maximum 6% of the ordinary juvenile delinquents in Minneapolis might be feeble-minded, who would venture to guess that ill-adjustment of school to mental ability affects so small a proportion? On the other hand one feeble-minded person, through the transmission of his deficiency, may, perhaps, do more damage to society than many intelligent delinquents. Who shall say? Certainly both the isolation of the feeble-minded and the adjustment of school training are vitally important problems in the care of juvenile delinquents today. Nobody can say that one is more important than the other except from a special point of view. From the eugenics standpoint feeble-mindedness is more important; from the point of view of the numbers affected and the skill required for training the child, there can be little question but that the correction of bad adjustment to school environment is the bigger problem. When one considers how much of the child's time is spent out of school, at home, with playfellows, or at work we cannot be sure that other external influences might not ultimately be found to be more important in connection with juvenile delinquency than either the school life or mental incapacity. The further consideration of the causes of delinquency we shall now make the subject of a broader inquiry.

[32]. Mental ages VI and VII regarded as satisfactory for the first grade, etc.