A. THE RÔLE OF THE TEACHER: TO SELECT THE CHILDREN SUSPECTED OF BEING DEFECTIVE.
It is out of the question to make an entire school pass before a committee in order that 500 pupils may have their mental faculties analysed. Such a task, at once troublesome and useless, would require several months. One should rather, in the first place, adopt a rapid method of picking out the children suspected of mental defect. It is quite sufficient that they should be suspected. Such a selection once made, the committee will have before it only a moderate number of candidates upon whom it will be possible to concentrate attention.
Let us proceed to show how the teachers may make their selection:
A retardation of three years indicates a child who should be regarded as a suspect. A child enters the elementary school at the age of about six years. Each year he ought to advance one class. From six to nine years he is in the elementary course; from nine to eleven in the intermediate course; from eleven to thirteen in the senior course. All are not quite regular. Some are a little in advance, some are behind, but the majority conform to the preceding scheme. When a school is well managed, when the assignation of the children to their respective classes is made by means of suitable tests, and without too great regard to the demands of the parents, the classification which results is very good. There is then no better means of finding out whether a child is intelligent or not than to take into consideration his age and his class. Intelligence, so extraordinarily difficult to judge, is indicated in the above way with a really curious exactness. A child two years behind his age, when irregularities in attendance, absence on account of illness, etc., do not explain his backwardness, is very likely to be less intelligent than one who is in, or in advance of, the usual class for his age. This amounts to judging intelligence by the degree of instruction. Theoretically, such a method is open to plenty of meticulous objections, of which the most important is that we are confounding intelligence and memory. To this we shall reply that the stage of instruction reached is not the result of memory alone. It presupposes also some degree of application, some facility of comprehension, quite a collection of diverse aptitudes. The child's success in his studies is, in fact, the best indication we have of his capacity to adapt himself to the school environment. If the child is unable to keep up with the classes suited to his age, if he is unable to profit like other children from the education provided, this shows that he has not the same degree or the same kind of intelligence as his companions, and there is a presumption, if not an absolute demonstration, that his intelligence is inferior to the average, or that his character is different.
From these statements, which we have expounded at length elsewhere,[6] it follows that not only the head-master, but an entire stranger, can determine which are the less intelligent children, the less well adapted to that school, without taking the trouble to interrogate them all individually. It is only necessary to compare their position in school with their age.
We thus obtain no merely subjective appreciation, but a simple statement of the actual condition of things. The only thing one must be careful about is to make allowance for irregular attendance. Backwardness in school instruction is significant only when it coincides with regular attendance. At the present time the regulations as to school attendance are very little respected. In country districts there are children who do not go to school till they are eight or nine years of age. It is not surprising that they cannot read, when no one has taught them. Allowance must also be made for long illnesses. When the absences have been considerable, their total amount must be subtracted. A child of nine, who has come to school at the age of six—i.e., the usual age—and who has been absent for about 250 days, should, from the present point of view, be counted as eight. The school authorities will have no difficulty in making such estimates. That is their business, and they will quickly make up their minds even in a difficult case. One will, of course, bear in mind that the number of classes differs in different schools, and that certain classes are parallel. Lastly, one must remember that a defective may, on account of his age, be placed in a class too advanced for his knowledge. This, indeed, is often the case.
Exception may be taken to the rôle that we have assigned to the teachers. We may be reminded that about two years ago, when statistics concerning defectives were being collected by circular, many of the head-masters replied in a notoriously unsatisfactory manner. Even in Paris one school was stated to contain 25 per cent. of defectives, whilst not a single one was acknowledged in another in the same neighbourhood. This amounted, as M. Bédorez ironically remarked, to an average of 12 per cent.
We shall reply, in the first place, by asking whether a mistake has really been committed. This cannot be taken for granted, since the proportion of defectives varies enormously from one school to another. But let us admit a mistake, and ask who is responsible. The master of the school understood badly what the circular had explained more badly still. In these circulars we actually read the following definition of defectives: "Subjects who are in a condition of mental debility, possessing only a limited intelligence and a limited responsibility, which do not admit of their acquiring, at the ordinary school and by the usual methods of education, the average elementary instruction which the other pupils receive." If one interprets this badly constructed formula literally, it is evident that half the children of France must be defective, being of necessity below the average. If the teacher is to work intelligently, he must have more precise directions. After having explained to him that a defective child is one who does not adapt himself, or who adapts himself badly, to school life, one will tell him that the degrees of non-adaptation vary indefinitely; for it is quite exceptional for even a defective child not to adapt himself at all, and to learn absolutely nothing at the ordinary school. It remains, therefore, to decide what degree of retardation or of non-adaptation is to be recognised as determining a defective.
According to a convention accepted in Belgium, which we modify slightly, the retardation which determines a child as a defective is two years when the child is under nine, and three years when he is past his ninth birthday. Here we have a very precise rule, easy to apply to all children, with the corrections already indicated relating to school attendance. The rule is, perhaps, a little rigid, we admit, but it will always be possible to make allowances when examining closely the individual cases to which it will have to be applied.
Thus, the method which we have just indicated permits the making of a first selection.