Women Workers in Seven Professions / A Survey of Their Economic Conditions and Prospects

by Unknown

V

TEACHING IN SCHOOLS FOR THE MENTALLY AND PHYSICALLY DEFECTIVE

The particular branch of teaching which forms the subject of this paper—namely, that carried on in schools for mentally or physically defective children—affords scope for a lifetime of very happy work to women who are really fitted for it.

The qualifications required by teachers in these schools are the ordinary certificates accepted by the Board of Education, but, in practice, a preference is given to women who have taken up studies which bear on their particular work. For instance, it is obvious that a good grounding in psychology, physiology, and hygiene is especially valuable in schools of this description, and proofs of the successful study of these subjects undoubtedly carry weight in deciding appointments to these schools. Also, it is unusual to appoint young teachers, coming straight from Training Colleges, with very little practical experience in dealing with children, though under special circumstances such appointments are occasionally made. The large majority of women appointed to the London mentally defective or physically defective schools are, however, teachers of several years' standing, who are also under the age limit of thirty-five.

The salary of assistant teachers in the London special schools is £10 a year more than the salary such assistants would be getting in the ordinary Council schools. This extra pay only obtains until the normal maximum salary of assistant mistresses is reached, i.e., £150, so that the monetary advantage is confined to reaching the maximum a little earlier than would otherwise be the case. With regard to head teachers, the extra salary varies with the size of the school, £10 being allowed for a one-class centre, £20 for a two-, three-, or four-class centre, and £30 for a five- or six-class centre. Schools of six classes are unusual; the majority of schools contain three or four classes. Elder mentally defective boys from several neighbouring schools are frequently grouped together in a special centre under masters, and there are a few schools specially for elder mentally defective girls, naturally under mistresses. For elder physically defective girls there are centres in London where they may be specially trained in blousemaking and fine needlework. These centres have, in addition to an ordinary teacher, a trade mistress duly qualified in the particular branch of work undertaken. The age of compulsory retirement from teaching in special schools is sixty-five, as in the case of ordinary schools. For both branches of the service married women are eligible. The hours of work in mentally defective schools are from 9.30 to 12 and from 2 to 4. In physically defective schools the hours are nominally from 9.30 to 12, and 1.30 to 3, but in practice they are longer, as the children begin to arrive at school in their ambulances by 8.45, and in the afternoon the last children rarely leave till an hour after the time of stopping actual lessons. It is usual to arrange things so that the teacher who comes "early" one week, is free to come "late" the next, and it is also usually taken in turns to stay late in the afternoons. The short dinner recess is due to the fact that most of the children necessarily have their dinner at school, so there is no reason to allow the usual two hours for going home and coming back. During the dinner-hour the children are in charge of the school nurse and the ambulance attendants.

Work in both sorts of special school has its own particular difficulties. One great drawback is the impossibility of adequate classification. In a small three-class centre, there will be children from five years old up to sixteen years. That, of course, in physically defective schools means that the work usually divided among all the classes of an ordinary infant school must be done in the lowest class, the second class must take the work of standards I. to III., while the highest class must take that of standards IV. to VII. It is true that the special schools have a great advantage over ordinary schools in that the classes never contain more than twenty-five children, but even granted the small numbers, the need for taking several groups in a class makes the work very exhausting. The more successful the teacher, that is to say, the more truly she draws out the individual powers of each child, the harder does her work become, for she tends more and more to have a class of children working at varying stages. In the mentally defective schools it is not possible to reach the work of the higher standards, so that there is not the same difficulty, but there is the even greater one of dealing with different standards of defect, instead of different standards of attainment.

Another difficulty encountered in the physically defective schools is the interrupted school-life. Children will frequently drop out for three months, six months, or a year at a time in order to have some operation performed in hospital, or to go to a convalescent home, or because of an attack of illness. Both branches of the special schools are faced with the peculiar difficulty of the "spoilt" child—the lame girl who, by reason of her helplessness, has been indulged and waited on by the healthy members of her family; the ill-balanced boy whose brain-storms have been so disturbing that any opposition to his will has been shirked. It must not be thought that these children are in the majority at special schools, but they do form a certain proportion of the children there; they give much trouble, and they call for a great deal of tact and patience. Patience is so continually needed in special-school work that women who are not particularly patient would find themselves definitely unfit for it. Indeed, although patience and the hopeful spirit do not figure on the list of qualifications demanded of candidates, they might well head it, for most certainly an irritable or despondent woman could not find any work for which she was more unsuited, or in which she was more likely to be miserable and unsuccessful.

A further difficulty of the special-school teacher lies in the "all-round" demands made on her. The children she must teach, are defective in mind or body, or both. Some will respond to one subject, some to another; some will make poor progress with headwork, but will do excellent handwork. The teacher must be able to help each child along its own path, and must be familiar with the various forms of simple handwork as well as with the more usual school subjects. Basket-weaving, clay-modelling, raffia-work, fretwork, bent-ironwork, strip-woodwork, rug-making, painting, and brush-work, as well as different forms of needlework and embroidery, are all branches of handwork helpful in different degrees to these children. The importance of handwork to them is felt so keenly, that the special-schools time-tables usually show a morning devoted to headwork followed by an afternoon occupied by handwork.

But as well as the difficulties attendant on teaching in special-schools, there are some very real advantages. Foremost, perhaps, is the opportunity it affords of knowing and understanding each child in a way that is not possible when the class consists of sixty children. Very closely allied with this, is the great advantage of freedom in the preparation of syllabuses, in the choice of subject matter and the manner of teaching it. Time-tables must be approved by the proper authorities, and the superintendents and inspectors must be satisfied as to the character of a teacher's work, but, when those conditions are fulfilled, originality on the part of teachers is welcomed, and completely happy relations between teacher and children are possible. It can be readily understood that with a class numbering twenty-five, each child can take a much larger and much more active share in the work, can be free to express his own views, ask his own questions and work out his own ideas in a way impossible with a class of sixty. When, in addition, it is remembered that the teacher is free to frame her plans of work according to the actual needs of the children, as shown to her through discussions and questions, the reason why the work attracts women in spite of its obvious difficulties is apparent.

The real thought and care spent by the education authorities on these schools must have struck every one who has worked in them. If we compare what is now done for these deficient children with what was done some fifteen years ago, the stage of progress at which we have arrived is nothing short of wonderful. Yet every one must also be convinced that things are not well, so long as the supply of children for these special schools continues to grow; those who work in them can see two ways in which that supply might be checked. Teachers in mentally defective schools continually mourn the sad fact that the children under their care have been guarded from wrong, and guided to right along happy paths of busy interest until they are sixteen, only to be turned adrift into the world at an age when, more than ever before in their lives, they need a kindly and wise influence "to strengthen or control." For want of some further plan of continued supervision, the patient work of years is too often rendered nugatory, and the child slips back into the very slough from which the school had hoped to save it. It must be remembered that the defect in many children in these mentally defective schools shows itself as a lack of self-control, a want of mental balance, a missing sense of moral values, an incapacity for concentration—the very characteristics which render their unhappy possessors the easiest prey to the evil-minded. Teachers who know both the good to which the child can attain when properly safe-guarded, and also the evil into which it will too probably fall when left alone, are very anxious to see some step taken which will ensure that every child who needs continued control shall have it.[1]

Teachers in physically defective schools can also see the need for prevention of defect rather than its mere alleviation. The more usual forms of defect are missing limbs, tuberculous troubles (notably in joints), heart cases, paralysis, cases of chorea, and cases of general debility. The list must not be taken as complete, for there are, of course, various unusual forms of defect too. It sometimes happens that after a stay of some time in a physically defective school, a child becomes so much better that it is able to return to the greater strain of an ordinary school; on the other hand, it is often apparent, that if certain children had been admitted earlier to the physically defective school, their particular trouble might have been greatly minimised, if not altogether avoided. What then appears to be needed is an intermediary type of school to which children might be drafted who are not as yet absolutely defective, but who are liable to become so. Children of tubercular tendencies, who should be guarded against falls or blows more carefully than normal children; those highly-strung nervous children who, if exposed to the strain of ordinary school life run the risk of chorea; children suffering from the after-effects of diseases such as rheumatic or scarlet fever, who need particularly to avoid over-exertion or too violent exercise; children of such marked general debility that their power of resisting disease is abnormally low—all these, if neglected, tend to become qualified candidates for the physically defective schools. If they could attend a school designed to suit their needs, they would in many cases be quite able to return, after varying periods, to their places in the ordinary schools. The open-air schools are an attempt to meet this need on the very best lines, but there are far too many of these border-line children for the available accommodation. If the great expense entailed by new schools of this description be considered, it seems not unreasonable, while waiting for them, to allow the admission of these children to the invalid schools already working, by simply making the term "physically defective" elastic enough to include a latent as well as a developed defect. Whatever the apparent expense of such measures may be, any extension of the preventive side of this work cannot but be a real economy.[2]

There is just one other point for the consideration of women who think of taking up work in special schools. They should be thoroughly strong and healthy, or they will prove unequal to a strain which tells at times even on the strongest. But to women of good health who possess the right temperament, these schools offer a field of useful and congenial work.

[Footnote 1: Something in this direction will be achieved by the new Act, to which, however, there are counterbalancing grave objections which cannot be considered here. [EDITOR.]

[Footnote 2: Open-air schools, and school sleeping camps such as those established experimentally in various urban slum-districts, are other efforts to meet the needs of physically defective children. Teachers in open-air schools in provincial towns, work under approximately similar conditions to those described by Mrs Thomas. [Editor.]