CHAPTER III[ToC]
PEDAGOGICAL EXAMINATION OF DEFECTIVE SCHOOL CHILDREN
When legislation provides special schools and classes for the benefit of defectives, it will be imprudent to make use of legal force to bear down the will of the parents. It will be better, in the first instance, to have recourse to persuasion. It will be pointed out to the parents that their children are behindhand in their lessons. The parents, as a matter of fact, know this quite well. It will be explained to them that classes of forty pupils are too large for children like theirs, and that the teacher cannot devote sufficient attention to them. It will be explained also that classes are being organised for ten to twenty pupils at most, in which it will be possible to give individual attention. Before instructing their child, it will be necessary to begin by awaking his intelligence, which involves the teacher devoting himself to him with method, order, and patience. One will appeal to the heart of these parents, and will surely manage to persuade them, especially the mothers. For such interviews we must rely upon the school teachers and the inspectors. It will only be necessary to warn them to avoid the use of certain expressions. It would never do to say to the parents that their child is an idiot, an imbecile, a fool, or even abnormal. The admission of their son or daughter into a special school should be represented to them as an advantage or even a favour. Their consent should not be demanded in too formal a manner. This would make them think that it is they who are giving something, and many would refuse. In a word, much can be done by prudence, sympathy, and a little tact; and the personal experience that we have acquired has shown us that it is not difficult to gain the parents to the cause of special education.
Composition of a Board of Examiners.—We have now to consider how the selection of the children is to be made. It has been determined by statute that the examiners shall be three in number—the head of a special school, an elementary school inspector, and a doctor. As to the manner in which this committee is to carry out its work, the law preserves an absolute silence.
When the three examiners meet in order to judge the degree of retardation of the children who are presented to them, is this absence of a definite programme embarrassing? We do not think so. A committee which is duly authorised always manages to do something. The work is done more or less empirically, perhaps, but it is done. Tell the jury to find defective children, and they are sure to find them. The only question is, What will be the value of their selection? and, above all, How can so delicate a quest be saved from empiricism and rendered exact? It is to be hoped that at first there will not be too many mistakes. This would have a bad effect upon the new institution. It is unfair to a normal child to send him to a special school, just as it is unfair to a defective to keep him in the ordinary school. It is better to make such mistakes as seldom as possible. Moreover, it is of the greatest interest to try to forecast the exact way in which errors are most likely to arise. In every machine there is a point of least resistance which requires to be watched. In every human institution there is a detail of organisation where fraud and charlatanism are most liable to occur.
Since we have supervised the organisation of some classes for defectives, and have been able by some preliminary observations to take account of these dangers, we take it upon ourselves to give warning of them in advance. We fix buoys to the rocks that they may be avoided.
It seems to us that the selection of defectives calls for three varieties of experience—that of teachers, of doctors, and of psychologists. We shall proceed to indicate the services which these various persons may render. In this chapter we shall speak only of the pedagogical examination. The duty of making the first selection among the school-children and indicating those who are suspected of being defective belongs partly to the teachers and partly to the school inspectors, whose respective rôles, it seems to us, can easily be defined.