Handicaps of Childhood

by H. Addington Bruce

Altogether, the services of half a dozen specialists in psychology, medicine, and education, and the expenditure of much time, effort, and money had been required to get this boy straightened out. Nor is his by any means an uncommon case. Moreover, like the case of the gibbering girl of eight, it illustrates another point in connection with the problem of retardation which should indeed be emphasised—the part played by parental ignorance and thoughtlessness in swelling the army of the retarded.

Had the parents of this boy appreciated the close relationship between bodily health and the health of the mind, had they taken alarm at the first signs of malnutrition and sought the advice of a competent physician, instituting developmental measures in accordance with his counsel, their son might not have become an educational "lame duck," and all the tedious and costly restorative work of later years would then have been avoided. To be sure, it must immediately be added that maintenance of his physical health would not of itself have unfailingly operated as a guarantee against retardation.

For, quite conceivably, he might have been surrounded by an intellectually deadening home environment, receiving from his parents neither proper disciplining nor encouragement and stimulus to mental activity, with the result that when the time came for him to go to school he would display little capability for, or interest in, the tasks of the classroom. So frequently is this actually the case that students of retardation are inclining more and more to rate faulty home training as perhaps the chief cause of mental backwardness. Thus we find one keen observer, Professor P. E. Davidson, declaring in an address at an educational convention in California:

"Parental neglect as a cause, resulting in emotional and volitional disorder, is emphasised in our cases. Learning in school is conditioned largely by what Witmer calls 'pedagogical rapport,' wherein a deference to the prestige of the teacher and the school and a sensitiveness to its rewards and punishments are such as rapidly to produce a habit of voluntary effort or active attention. Confirmed wilfulness at home and undisciplined impulsiveness must undoubtedly figure in the matter of learning. If the child's organic habit, after five or six years of poor home training, makes avoidance of the painfulness of effort the usual thing, we may be sure the teacher in the first grade will have unusual difficulty in inducing a disciplined attention, and a bad beginning on this account may establish a backwardness which later may not be overcome without the individual attention that is impossible in the teaching of large classes."

Professor G. W. A. Luckey, of the University of Nebraska, listing the causes of retardation, puts at the foot of his list "bad inheritance, unredeemable defects, physical and mental," and at the very top, "ignorance and indifference on the part of parents." Most investigators would evaluate these contrasting causes in precisely the same way. The inference, needless to say, is that we need never hope to bring about an appreciable diminution in the number of retarded children until parents are more fully enlightened as to their duties and responsibilities. It is therefore good to find that a nation-wide campaign of enlightenment is well under way, together with an ever-increasing extension of agencies for the work of rescuing the retarded and fitting them to achieve success in the school and in the world.

Eight years ago there were in all the United States only three "clearing-houses for retarded children." These were the psychological clinic of the University of Pennsylvania, established by Professor Witmer in 1896; a civic psychological clinic, opened in 1909, in connection with the schools of Los Angeles; and the psychological clinic of Clark University, at Worcester, Massachusetts, established in the same year as a department of that university's splendid Children's Institute.

To-day, as part of the regular activities of universities and normal schools, there are psychological clinics in more than a dozen States, including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Washington. At least four States—Indiana, Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania—have psychological clinics in operation as adjuncts of hospitals. California, Illinois, Missouri, New York, and Pennsylvania have similar clinics in direct connection with the public school system. Ohio has one connected with a vocational-guidance bureau. And in some States—such as Connecticut, Illinois, and Massachusetts—psychological clinics are also in operation for the special purpose of aiding in the proper disposition of cases brought before the juvenile courts.

Even more rapid has been the development of ear, eye, throat, and dental clinics for the needs of school children. As an outgrowth, too, of the discoveries of the past few years, there has been a widespread movement in the direction of establishing special schools and classes in which the retarded may receive the care necessary to enable them to make up for lost time, or, when this is out of the question, to equip them for as happy and useful a life as is possible under their exceptional mental limitations. Unquestionably a splendid beginning has been made in the warfare against retardation—a beginning not surpassed by similar effort in any foreign land, and certain to prove of great value to the American nation.

But, if it is to prove of the utmost possible value, there must be active co-operation by the public generally and by parents in particular. Society must insist on every child being given hygienically decent surroundings, and parents in the mass must become increasingly alive to their responsibilities and opportunities in developing the mentality of their young. To reiterate:

It may be considered as definitely established to-day that the vast majority of cases of mental backwardness are the result, not of organic brain defects, not of true feeble-mindedness, but of remediable physical conditions or faulty training in the home.