The Education of the Backward Child
- Author:
Mary Stewart, with a preface by Margaret
Cole. Fabian Research Series, No. 57. Gollancz. 6d.
This 24-page pamphlet is part of a general programme for post-war educational reform (eventually to appear as a book) which the Fabian Society is now publishing in sections. It is the shortest and most lucid exposition of an involved problem which we have met for a long time, making use of both the classic and the more recent surveys and researches without lessening its appeal to the general reader. It is 0ne of the few expositions I have met which approaches the problem from a humanistic and educational viewpoint and yet is wholly con- usant with the legal, administrative and Psychological difficulties which stand in the way ?f implementing its recommendations.
The initial concern of the pamphlet is with our feeble-minded children, only one-eighth of whom are at present in Special Schools. The Psychological problem of making teachers, Parents and administrators aware of the advan- tages of such special education for this type of child, is a matter of instruction and propaganda and of adequate training in these matters of teachers and certifying officers, not to speak of supplementary staffing arrangements both on the medical and educational sides.
For the major administrative problem of Providing special education throughout the country in the many small areas large enough t? supply adequate educational facilities for the eeble-minded child, the solution may be in Recognizing that ” there is no hard and fast distinction between the defective and the normal … and that the lines of division between the classes are arbitrary and the present ones may not be the best possible places from the educational point of view This opens up to educators the choice of extending the facilities of special education so as to include the larger group realized by either lowering or raising the I.Q. for educational certification.
” If there was a rigorous weeding out of all elementary school children whose I.Q.s fall below 70, elementary schools would be relieved of a considerable number of children who … were unable to benefit by the education provided for them.’’’’
Of the second group of children?the educa- tionally dull?Margaret Cole has much to say in respect of the organization of both their elementary and secondary education, and though she leaves the problem skilfully exposed but unsolved, her solution is implicit in her plea for a wider experimental attitude on the part of the Board of Education and of Local Authorities. ” The ideal system will not be found without experiment.” R.T.
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