The particulars regarding the ultimate destiny of these sixty-six children are as follows:
1. No Return in the Case of Fourteen Children.—Some left the district without giving an address. Some even left school with insults from the parents directed against the teachers.
2. Children still at School.—These number twenty-two. We have already spoken about this little group, and have remarked that some of them have improved.
3. Children sent Home or placed in Asylums.—There are three who have been sent to asylums. We know one of them, an imbecile, but he had bad instincts, and who knows but that he might have been made useful? With regard to the others, who have been sent home, we have only very vague particulars, and the interpretation of their condition is quite arbitrary. Some of them seem to be useful. Some girls help at home. Some boys assist their fathers at their work, but are said to be wanting in balance or to require constant supervision. We have thought it well to include them in this third category, which stands for the social waste. They number ten. We repeat that the limits of this group are extremely ill-defined. With a little optimism one might have passed three-quarters into the following group; with a little more strictness, on the other hand, the present group would have been larger. We emphasise the difficulty of limiting the frontier impartially. It would be a good thing to make use of a criterion, good or bad, but exact. One will, no doubt, be found, but in the meantime we have none.
4. Children who have become Useful.—These are they who have become capable of following some calling. It is evident that one should take account of the nature of the calling followed; many are misery in disguise. A little time should also be allowed, for a child may not find definite occupation immediately on leaving school. In fact, the only particular we have regarding this last group of children is, that they have entered on an apprenticeship. Girls are apprenticed to dressmakers or laundresses. Boys are apprenticed as hairdressers, tinsmiths, gilders, printers, carpenters, etc. These children number seventeen. These results have impressed us rather favourably. We did not expect that the majority of defectives from the ordinary school would enter an apprenticeship; but, in fact, the majority did so. If we abstract the two first groups, those about whom the particulars are wanting, and those who have not yet left school, there remain twenty-seven children, of whom seventeen have been apprenticed, or 76 per cent.
From these statements the following conclusion is reached—namely, that, contrary to an opinion which attempts are being made to spread abroad, the ordinary school does render real service to the defective child. We have already seen, à propos of the educational return, that the ordinary school carries a proportion of the defectives as far as the intermediate course. All these facts are mutually confirmatory.
Is it possible to go farther? We have just seen that the ordinary school permits the occupational classing of 76 per cent. of the defectives. Now, this proportion is, by an unexpected agreement, identical with that obtained in the classes of Berlin and Brussels, whence an opponent of special instruction would hasten to argue that such instruction is useless, or that, at least, it could not prove its usefulness except on the condition of insuring occupational classing superior to 76 per cent. We do not think, after mature reflection, that this proposition would be justified. All our figures show is that the majority of defectives who pass through the ordinary school had not entirely lost their time, since they reached the stage of entering upon an apprenticeship. But it will not do to take account only of the proportion of children classed as workers; it would be necessary also to take account of the duration of such classing, and especially of its quality. A defective enters upon an apprenticeship. That is good, but how long does he retain it? Will he be discharged as incapable at the end of a few months? If he is kept, will he remain in the lowest employments—for example, unskilled labour? In connection with all trades, there are minor occupations in which defectives stagnate. Our figures do not take account of these differences, which are of considerable interest, nor do they give any fuller ideas with regard to the utilisation of the defectives. And it would be necessary for the statistical method to be carried out with greater perfection to enable us to measure the services rendered by special instruction. It is probable that the special school would render greater services than the ordinary school, because it has greater advantages: teachers experienced in the training of defectives, a curriculum better fitted to the aptitudes of the latter, and, most important of all, the possibility of individual instruction.
Let us stop here. In the meantime this is all that we can say with regard to the organisation and control of special education. If we were to attempt to go farther we could do so only on a priori grounds. The time has come for experiment. The new classes which are being formed in Bordeaux, Paris, and elsewhere, must be carefully watched. We shall grope, we shall make attempts, certainly we shall commit mistakes, which will not matter very much if only we have the mind to recognise them and the courage to put them right. The essential thing is for all the world to understand that empiricism has had its day, and that methods of scientific precision must be introduced into all educational work, to carry everywhere good sense and light.