Backwardness in Rural Areas
- Author:
STEPHEN, M.A.
Psychologist, Somerset County Council At a recent Teachers’ Refresher Course there were four series of lectures, one being on ” Backwardness in the Basic Subjects More than half of the teachers attended these lectures. This gives an indication of the seriousness of the problem of backwardness.
My experience related in this article is based on work in a county where there are schools of all sizes. It is agreed that educational backwardness should be tackled in the Junior school; the question is how this can be done in a county area. In the town where there are Junior and Infant schools of 200 or 300 children it is possible to run backward classes of 20-25 children in each Junior department if necessary. Where there are two or three Junior departments, one backward class may adequately serve the entire Junior school population, depend1^ on the number of backward children. A slight difficulty may arise over the transfer of childr? from one type of school to another, but this can overcome, in my experience, by visiting the pareo and getting their co-operation…
My main concern in this article is with the villa. t school. The experiment described was carried 0 in schools of roughly 90 children, juniors and m^n( In a school of this size there is usually a staff three teachers. One is the head teacher, who, addition to teaching a class, is overwhelmed by & multifarious duties of a head teacher in wartifl1^ A group of perhaps eight backward children school of this size creates a Pr?Sn?”nvolved. Proportion to the number of chikl ^ reception This article is based on work don inc^enCe of area under wartime c1on^lt’onSThere are evacuated backwardness is unduly high. Th t schools, children who have been to several <bflerem who have missed long periods of . ^ m the of air raids, and some who are suffenns; trom emotional disturbance due to seveJ”? -p)e local ences as well as separation from ? fathers are children are also affected; many o ?cu00]s there serving, and in many of the coun t y changes 0f have been frequent and unav<oida f evaCustaff, due in part to the corning andg was not ated teachers. The plan described & a hased on a survey of conditions 1 matter of whole, but was evolved ^rgely nressed head expediency to meet the needs of har p but teachers. It is still in an experime the may prove to be a possible solution o p Problem. ? iar> from a In 1942 a distressed letter was rece?e there head teacher. In her school of 90 cnno Uy were 15 who were seriously retar<de a^ classes, and incapable of learning in the They These children ranged in age from -jj* jntelliwere all examined on the Terman- -thmetic gence Scale and were given rea^m? high-grade tests. The group consisted of t , educadefectives who were not seriously one n^nally’ seven dul1 and bau!!n nf low average Physical defective and four childre jucationally. intelligence but extremely retarded children 11 was decided to form a class of fifteen^c Qf under a specially qualified teacher the ^ months. The aim of the class.was to^ ^ children at least a sufficient ground^ g return to subjects to make it possible for th progress, their ordinary classes and make ^ group It was, in fact, found that with sue= individual ^as Possible to give each child inte: adapted attention as well as to make use of carefu y d teaching methods, and that at the en essfuiiy. they did return to their classes qu . children, } was necessary, especially with the same ^nes, for the class teachers to continue on acquired tit this was possible as the childr general a foundation. Unfortunately, owing to ^ bad shortage of staff throughout the ar affected influenza epidemic?which ^^f^dass?the rnost of the children in the back _ . ? -n this teacher only spent four teaching m ^ was , school. The children were aU /Maintained or 1 found that the three defectives had ^ , accelerated their progress, in the ;^ reading and average progress was one year in groUp the T ‘J year in Jrithmetic. In the norma group ^ , average progress was one year in enormously t year in arithmetic. The children gai towards 1 ^confidence and their general a resuit was t school work improved. A secoIjf s relieved of ^ t^the children in the ordinary cla ‘ made I the burden of carrying the retarded children, 1 great strides. In a small village where everyone is interested in everything that happens in the school, 1 it is necessary to avoid the stigma of the ” silly f class In this instance, at the request of the head 1 teacher who had known the village for a very long time, the object of the class was kept secret, thanks : to the discretion of the staff. This was possibly the best course in this particular village.
In the meantime another group of unduly backward children had been discovered. The influenza epidemic having subsided, it was possible to extricate the special teacher, who was on supply work, and dispatch her to run another backward class. This was possible thanks to the generosity of the Education Authority still extremely hard pressed for staff.
This class was also in a Junior and Infant school of 90 children. This time it was decided to enlarge the class to 18 children, including four retarded children from a neighbouring school. Although on a small scale, this is an important development. The incidence of backwardness, so far considered, is unduly high owing to wartime conditions. In normal times there would not be fifteen backward children in one school of this size. The tendency might be, therefore, to form one class to serve the Junior schools in an area. Transport and accommodation are the two main difficulties. In this instance it was possible to arrange for the junior children attending the backward class to travel on the bus which transported the Senior school children. The children in this class were more intelligent than the children in the first class. The average Intelligence Quotient was 89. They were, however, very retarded educationally, particularly in reading. Eight children were non-readers. The retardation in arithmetic was not serious. The explanation of this is that probably the children have more practice in numbers than in reading in their everyday life. They shop for their mothers or foster mothers, and nowadays most children have considerable pocket money. Although the parents are anxious for their children to read, there is little active help given, there are often few books or even papers at home. In the backward classes a modified infant method is used. Each child works individually most of the time, the class is taken as a whole for stories, etc., and they do some work in pairs or small groups. The reading and number apparatus is based largely on Infant apparatus but modified to suit children of the Junior school age. Before this class was formed head teachers of both schools interviewed the parents of the children concerned and explained the purpose of the class. The parents were most appreciative when they heard that their children were to learn to read at last. The special teacher was somewhat disconcerted when, on the first day, she found herself confronted with eighteen eager children who evidently expected that the ability to read would descend upon them like manna from heaven without the least effort on their part ! They have, in fact, settled down very well, and their enthusiasm for reading is simply phenomenal. It is not possible to give the results of this experiment with this second class as the period is being extended to eight months ending at Christmas. It is evident that all, except three of the youngest and dullest children, have made a very good start; some non-readers are now tackling Infant Readers Books III and IV.
This experiment, which involved collecting children from two Junior schools, might be extended in more normal times. It might be possible to organize permanent backward classes of 20-25 children to serve an area, the class being attached to the Junior school nearest to the area Senior school. This would solve the question of transport, as the Junior children would use the same facilities as the Senior school children coming from the surrounding villages. Even if the plan were generally adopted, a peripatetic teacher, able to spend short periods of 6-8 months in schools where there was a temporarily high incidence of backwardness, might be useful. In my experience there is a tendency for the incidence of backwardness to decrease fairly rapidly once the backward class has been in operation for some time. A permanent class has at first to deal with the accumulated backwardness throughout the whole Junior school, but when this has been tackled, the numbers drop and there remain the mentally retarded children and the new intake from the Infant school.
In a rural area remedial work with backward children may have to be postponed until the Senior school. It is obviously simplest to run backward classes in the area Senior schools, because the children are naturally collected together in them from the subsidiary Junior schools and there is usually more space available to allow of extra classes. Unfortunately by the time the backward children reach the Senior school, they have developed a strong resistance to learning based on continuous failure. It is also extremely difficult to evolve teaching methods and material which will hold their interest and at the same time be simple enough in content to be within the scope of their educational attainments.
An alternative solution might be to have the backward classes of children of Junior school age in the area Senior schools, thus making use of existing facilities for accommodation and transport. If this were done, however, the younger children in the backward classes would miss being an integral part of a Junior school, and they could not take part in the general school activities on equal terms.
The intensive work with very small groups of backward children described in this article, does seem to indicate that it is possible to give educational first-aid in a fairly short space of time. In other words, to give children a groundwork in the fundamental tools of learning so that they are no longer completely at sea in the normal classes. In my experience this applies to the dull and retarded children as well as to the retarded children of average ability, though to a lesser extent; ideally they require special teaching throughout the Junior school.
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