Victor assumes an attitude of revolt, turns pale, and refuses to obey when anyone checks him.
Lucy broke her pen in a fit of temper.
Helen in the same circumstances upsets everything in her neighbourhood.
Louise strikes her elbows on the desk, and one day she even kicked her teacher.
Leon is quarrelsome and his companions are afraid of him.
George does nothing but tease his companions. He destroys their copybooks, tears pages from their books, and puts the blame on them.
Charles, who is rendered obstinate by strictness and merely irritated by punishment, seems happy when one takes an interest in him.
Eugenie, who is greatly excited by punishment and who smiles at rewards, loves to be flattered and picked out to do some little service.
The three following traits are constantly met with in the descriptions of the ill-balanced: they are turbulent, boastful, and incapable of attention. To this may be reduced the psychology of the less strongly marked cases. They have an instability of body, of speech, of attention, which may result either from an excessively nervous disposition, or simply from a nature whose restlessness rebels against sedentary and silent study. But in many cases other features are present. In addition to the preceding symptoms, there are found impatience of discipline and a tendency to annoy their comrades. The ill-balanced are spoken of as brutal, deceitful, cruel; and as to their obstinacy, the abundant details in the questionnaires show that these children have left a disagreeable impression on the school staff. It is especially on their account that an outcry for special schools has arisen. The way in which these children react to discipline is very interesting. We are told that they are very little influenced by rewards, which they often receive with disdain, laughter, or irony, if they do not refuse them altogether. Punishments, on the other hand, produce a bad effect. The ill-balanced nearly always become angry, and rebel against punishment, so that the teachers strive to avoid coming into conflict with them. Here we have a trait which is very interesting for psychology, but very embarrassing for pedagogy. How, then, can the ill-balanced be subjected to any discipline whatever? This is an important question, which it will be all the more necessary to solve because it is the ill-balanced who profit most by special education; it is for them that one would have most hope. Our advice is that, in order to control these children, account should be taken, in the first place, of their dominant tendency. The study of the answers to the questionnaires shows us that the chief thing to which one can appeal in these cases is their amour-propre, their pride, their vanity—in a word, the whole range of the egoistic sentiments. On natures of this stamp punishment cannot have much effect, seeing that it is opposed by an often indomitable pride. The end may be reached more directly, not by breaking the resistance, but by giving it a different direction. It is better to praise the ill-balanced when he has done well than to punish him for his faults. It is desirable also to show him some appreciation, or even to trust him with some duty of a very modest kind, which he may perform under discreet supervision.
Mental Aptitudes of the Defective.—Having briefly sketched the moral aptitudes of the abnormal, let us now examine their mental aptitudes. We have here a very captivating subject of inquiry. The study of individual aptitudes ought to have been undertaken long ago in the interest of education. Everyone is crying out for it. No one, or almost no one, undertakes it. In the case of the abnormal there is even more urgent need that it should be undertaken, for the younger or less intelligent the pupils, the more depends upon educational methods. When a mind is of a superior kind, very little really depends upon the culture supplied to it. If a Berthelot or a Pasteur should even have had imbeciles as their first masters in chemistry, they would none the less have turned out men of genius. It is those of average intelligence who have need of good methods of instruction. It is the young children who really require intelligent methods. Consequently we should give the defectives the best teachers. Every fault of method committed in their education may have consequences which will prejudice them later on.