The house on Henry Street

by Lillian D. Wald

From the small beginnings of the experimental class in Henry Street a separate department in the public schools was created in 1908, and this year (1915) there are 3,000 children throughout the city under the care of specially trained teachers who have liberty to adapt the school work to the children’s peculiar needs. All these ungraded classes are under the direction of Miss Farrell.

Looking back upon the struggles to win formal recognition of the existence of these children, who now so much engage the attention of educators and scientists, we realize that our colleague’s devotion to them, her power to excite enthusiasm in us, and her understanding of the social implications of their existence, came from a deep-lying principle that every human being, even the least lovely, merits respectful consideration of his rights and his personality.

Much is required of the public school teachers, and many of them rise to every demand; but naturally, in so great a number, there are some who do not recognize that theirs is the responsibility for discovering the children who are not normal. Harry sits on our doorsteps almost every day, ready to run errands, and harmless as yet. Obviously defective, a “pronounced moron,” he was promoted from class to class, and when one of his settlement friends called upon the teacher to discuss Harry’s special needs, the teacher, somewhat contemptuous of our anxiety, observed that “all that Harry needed was a whipping.”

From one-half of one per cent. to two per cent. of children of school age are, it is estimated, in need of special instruction because of the quality or the imperfect functioning of their mental powers. The public school has the power, and should exercise it, to bring within its walls all the children physically and mentally competent to attend it. If children are under intelligent observation, departures from the normal can in many instances be recognized in time for training and education according to the particular need. Long-continued observation and record of the child are essential to intelligent treatment of abnormalities concerning which there is even now very little accurate information. Cumulative experience and data, such as can be obtained only through the compulsory attendance at school of the multitudes of children of this type, will finally give a basis for scientific and humanitarian action regarding them.

Up to a certain period the child’s helplessness demands that every opportunity for development be given him, but that is not the whole of society’s responsibility. The time comes when the child’s own interests and those of the community demand the wisest, least selfish, and most statesmanlike action. Society must state in definite terms its right to be protected from the hopelessly defective and the moral pervert, wherever found. This constitutes the real problem of the abnormal. At the adolescent period those unfit for parenthood should be guarded—girls and boys—and society should be vested with authority and power to accomplish segregation, the conditions of which should attract and not repel.

Because so much needs to be said upon it, if anything is said at all, I am loath to touch upon the one great obstacle to the effective use of all the intelligence and the resources available for the well-being of these children, the most baffling impediment to their and the community’s protection, namely, the supreme authority of parenthood, be it never so inefficient, avaricious, or even immoral.

The breaking up of the family because of poverty, through the death or disappearance of the wage-earner, was, until comparatively recent years, generally accepted as inevitable.

In the first winter of our residence on the East Side we took care of Mr. S⸺, who was in an advanced stage of phthisis; and we daily admired the wonderful ability of his wife, who kept the home dignified while she sewed on wrappers, nursed her husband, and allowed nothing to interfere with the children’s daily attendance at school. When her husband died it seemed the most natural thing in the world to help her to realize her own wishes and to approve her good judgment in desiring to keep the family together. The orphan asylum would doubtless have taken the children from her, leaving her childless as well as widowed, and with no counterbalancing advantage for the children to lighten her double woe. A large-minded lover of children, who gave his money to orphans as well as to orphanages, readily agreed to give the mother a monthly allowance until the eldest son could legally go to work. It was our first “widow’s pension.”

Our hopes in this particular case have been more than realized. The eldest boy, it is true, has not achieved any notable place in the community; but his sisters are teachers and most desirable elements in the public school system of the city,—living testimony to the worth of the mother’s character.