The Education of Mentally Defective Children. Psychological Observations and Practical Suggestions
- Author:
Alice Descceudres.
Translated from the 2nd French Edition by Ernest F. Row, B.Sc. (Econ.), L.C.P. Harraps, 1928. Price 7/6.
The earlier Chapters of this book arc devoted to (1) a historical survey of the study of Mental Defect and the education of mental defectives, (2) a description of the organisations in Europe and America for dealing with the .Social and Educational problems arising from the presence of mental deficiency in our midst. The author cites the growing realisation of the,, need for the early detection and special treatment of mental defect and shows clearly that the responsibility for this early detection rests not only upon the doctor and the psychologist but also upon the teacher.
All teachers, she concludes, not only those in special work, require some specialised training on scientific lines in order to be able to detect the mentally defective child at an early stage and give him the opportunity of special education as soon as possible. In order to safeguard the interests of those who are really normal as well as to enable the defectives to be classified correctly, each child selected for special classes should be sub- jected to a threefold examination, (1) Pedagogical, (2) Psychological, and (3) Medical.
The main interest of the book, however, lies in the exhaustive dev- elopment of a scheme of education for the mentally defective children in the special classes.
The general scheme is the outcome of the necessity for developing by definite training the naturally feeble perceptual and associative pro- cesses of the defective child. The aim of the scheme is “to Combine a programme of didactic instruction, intended to provide the pupil with a knowledge indispensable for life, with a programme of psychological gymnastics, which aids and exercises the various mental functions and their reciprocal reactions.” The unfolding of the detailed programme reveals throughout an especially skilful fusion of those two distinct modes of educational approach. The training of the senses and attention, following closely the ” Decroly ” games, is almost entirely of the nature of mental exercises, but the development of the schemes of Handwork and Drawing, and the Reading and Arithmetic programmes, do show also a sense of the necessity for creative activity on the part of the child.
Apart from the criticisms of details of method as, for instance, the rejection of the ” syncretic ” method in the teaching of reading in favour of the analytic, w7hich means that the whole of the early training is on lines formal and artificial, one wonders whether the mental experiences which pupils so instructed are obtaining, will not result in the develop- ment of associative processes which will obscure for ever any capability they may have of realising the power of language, the meaning of beauty, the dignity of moral worth, which are, after all, the stuff of life. The stimulus to mental activity supplied by an ingenious scheme of exercises is as nothing, after all, compared with the inspiration of such a method as that of Dr Decroly, described in ” The Decroly Class,” by Amelie Hamaide.
All English speaking teachers, whether engaged in ” Special ” work or no, and all students of Educational Method will be grateful to Mr. Ernest F. Row for his accuracy and care in the translation of this work from the French of Mile. Descoeudres. By means of his efforts he has succeeded in placing before them a highly instructive and interesting book, full of practical suggestions and yet not lacking in the elucidation of the principles underlying the methods its author desires to expound. H. C. Dalby.
Proving Proration. The 1928 Proceedings of the National Probation Association. National Probation Association, 370 Seventh Avenue, New York City.
” Proving Probation ” includes papers and discussion of the Twenty- Second Annual Conference of the National Probation Association. It represents the latest experiments in the successful reformation of delin- quents conducted by probation officers, judges, and social workers in the courts. The book includes case histories which would be valuable to a student and a series of articles on such topics as ” Crime and its Pre- vention,” “The Rational Treatment of Juvenile Delinquency,” “Juvenile Court Problems,” etc.
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