Constance Simmins
A /T/Cin?^T1 ycr II nn 1111 /TMio 1R <rn ^T>HrT*TT<rn-no/rll “0) :Author: Constance Simmins, M.A.,
Chief Psychologist to the Institute of Medical Psychology.
There are in the elementary schools of England and Wales over three hundred thousand children, who are destined to enter the ranks of unskilled labour. As adults, if things go well with them, they will carry loads, push trucks, scrub floors, sweep the streets. They will be content to do work that is physically arduous and mentally monotonous, because their meagre in- tellectual endowment sets even semi-skilled work beyond the range of their capacity. Their very limitations are of value to society, making possible a division of labour that sets free for other work, those whom Nature has treated more generously in the matter of ability. These unskilled workers of the future form the ” less retarded ” group of the Report of the Mental Deficiency Com- mittee, the ” dull or backward ” group of the Education Act of 1921. .The group lies mid-way between the ” mentally defective ” on the one hand and the ” average ” on the other. Though in respect of mental endowment one group shades off imperceptibly into the next, in respect of their differing relations to the rest of the community the three groups stand in sharp contrast one with another. The ” mentally defective ” as a class can hardly be regarded as of value to society. They are a burden and a responsibility; they take, but (’) Education Act, 1921.
they do not give. The ” dull or backward,” as a group, toil with their hands, doing more readily than would those of higher intelligence, work that is absolutely indispensable to the life of the nation. But the constitutional weakness of mental capacity, the very ” dullness ” which fits them for just such work as this, carries with it risks and dangers from which those of average or superior intelligence are relatively free. It will be seen that, precisely because of the dangers inherent in their constitutional mental weakness, the ” dull or backward,” unlike those of higher ability, have a special claim upon the protective care of the community. To the nation they are at once an asset and a responsibility. They are a class of workers exposed from childhood on to peculiar psychological risks and having a legitimate claim to all the safe- guarding that society can give them.
A child may be regarded as dull, if he is mentally retarded by at least 15% of his chronological age. (2) A child of ten with the all-round mental capacity of a child of eight is technically ” dull.” Let us imagine such a child set in what might be for him relatively ideal conditions. He will be a healthy child and of well-balanced disposition, there will be no physical or tempera- mental drawbacks super-added to the initial impediment of mental retardation. He will be the legitimate child of an unskilled labourer, in a household where no member of it is brighter, after due allowance for age and experience, than he is himself; there will be no one in the home who will look down on him or ” nag at ” him for his stupidity. There will be other children of his age in the neighbourhood with a mental equipment much like his own, so that there may be no risk of mental isolation, of being left out of games and other enterprises. At school his teachers will have an enlightened and sympathetic attitude towards his particular needs and difficulties. If most of the children attending his school are not below the average in ability, there will be laid down for him and his intellectual equals a special ” track,” (:i) a series of classes, in which he can progress at his own rate, by methods specially adapted to his needs, where he will have the satisfaction of doing at least some things as well as his class-mates, and where he will be spared the daily comparison of his own poor performances with the better achievements of boys more gifted than himself. On leaving school he will take a job within his limited capacity, as van-boy perhaps, and later he will find the permanent unskilled work that will make him a self-supporting member of society.
It would be pessimistic to suppose that relatively ” ideal ” conditions are not fulfilled in the main for some at any rate of the children who are retarded. But it is evident that if even one factor in the ” ideal ” situation changes, if one adverse circumstance is introduced, then the dangers latent in weak mental capacity become active and threaten the well-being of the child, involving him in mental strains and stresses and resultant disorders of conduct, which may (2) Report of the Mental Deficiency Committee, 1929. Part II. Page 144. (3) Kennedy Fraser : Education of the Backward Child. 1932. Page 65.
have disastrous consequences both for himself and for others. The dull child is on the whole much less able to stand up to difficulties or to adapt himself to hard circumstances, than is the more intelligent child, who is better able to gain insight into the present situation and who has a greater capacity for look- ing ahead to a more tolerable future. The ways that a dull child finds of making a hard situation more bearable are likely to be ways not approved of by society and not tending to satisfactory character development in himself. There is one kind of hard situation that the dull child meets again and again, a situation in itself unpleasant and hard to bear, in small doses salutary for all, but in larger doses acting upon moral development like the deadliest poison. It is the situation where one finds oneself inferior to the rest, where one is the slowest, the clumsiest, the least capable, the most stupid, the first to ask a silly question, the last to see a joke. Small wonder that the dull child becomes imbued with that sense of inferiority that brings in its train consequences, with which the Child Guidance Clinics are only too familiar?excessive lack of self-confidence, secretiveness, sullenness, resentment, to name only a few. Never to do things better than others, rarely to do them as well, means that the child is deprived of one of the legitimate sources of satisfaction and enjoyment. It is not surprising then that he takes to less desirable ways of gaining pleasur- able experiences, that, for example, he takes to stealing pennies to buy sweets, or to tale-bearing and the telling of boastful lies in the hope of winning appro- bation. Often the parents become disappointed and irritated, because the child is not making headway at school as satisfactorily as his brothers and sisters. Not infrequently the blame is put upon the child. The parents are reluctant to believe that the child is dull. They prefer ” He won’t ” to ” He can’t.” The child overhears such remarks as: ” He could learn if he liked, but he doesn’t try. He won’t concentrate.” He may be constantly ” nagged at” both at home and at school. The child, of course, finds himself in an impasse. If his ” backwardness ” at school is solely due to his ” dullness,” then it is impossible for him to re-establish himself at home and win favour again by doing better at school. Yet the situation is intolerable and some escape from it must be found. The way out that the child finds?without conscious deliberation on his part as a rule?will depend in part on his native disposition and in part on the complex factors in the total situation. One will adopt a ” don’t care ” attitude and become rude, naughty and generally unmanageable, another will begin to boast about his own doings, while he decries those of others, another will become silent, resentful, sullen, nursing his grievances, and inclined, perhaps, to be spiteful to younger children, others, seeking pleasure whatever the cost, will steal mone^ to have more sweets, to go to the pictures or to buy popularity with their school fellows by giving them presents. Another will revert to baby ways of thumb-sucking or bed-wetting, while yet another child finding no way out at all will become depressed and unhappy, in the end falling ill under the stress of circumstances from which there is for him no escape.
Of 200 children between the ages of five and sixteen recently referred to the Children’s Department of the Institute of Medical Psychology (Tavistock Clinic), only 18 were found to be ” mentally defective,” while over 50 were either technically ” dull ” or dull in relation to their home or school environ- ments. A few of these were referred to the Clinic solely because of backward- ness to be accounted for by dull intelligence, but the majority came with marked symptoms of maladjustment. In addition to the varieties of symptoms already indicated in the preceding paragraph, there were also instances of truancy, stammering, inability to mix with other children, nervousness and sleeplessness. One factor, and frequently the main factor in the situation, was the psychological strain due to the inability to meet the demands made upon the child at home or at school and to the constant inferiority in relation to those around him.
A typical case is that of a boy of <)l/2 years, with a mental age of 8. He was lethargic and very self-conscious; he cried whenever he was denied any- thing, he deliberately destroyed his toys and, when he played with other child- ren, he was inclined to be spiteful and to try to hurt them. The home was comfortable and well-kept. His mother, who was somewhat above the average in intelligence, used to ” nag at ” him a good deal and was constantly com- paring him to his disadvantage with a younger sister of 5 ^, apparently rather a bright little girl. Compared with her, ” he asked such silly questions,” he was ” vague ” and ” inattentive.” The brighter little sister would get im- patient with him and tell him not to be ” such a fool.” The social worker reported that he was very much the odd man out in the family circle. During the investigations at die Clinic his attitude was a blend of slight hostility and suspicion with some friendliness. He was self-depreciatory and very disinclined to put forth any effort in die face of difficulties. At school he gave no trouble, but the school can hardly have been meeting his particular needs satisfactorily, for, when asked what he liked best at school, he answered unhesitatingly: ” Something they don’t do at school. Woodwork. I see them do it at the Convalescent Home.” The main cause of the trouble seemed to be that he had no satisfactory outlet at home because of his mother’s poor opinion of him, and behind this lay his relative inferiority intellectually both to his mother and to his younger sister.
In the case of Norah H., a girl of 14^ with a mental age of 11 */?, referred to the Clinic by a Probation Officer, we have a different group of reactions to a situation fundamentally not unlike the previous one. The complaint was pilfering from the sixth year onwards, lying, incontinence, and sullen resent- ment when corrected. The home was quite a good one, the father definitely above the average in intelligence, the other children, three boys, were all bright and doing well. Norah had come in for a good deal of ” nagging ” and coercion. She had done badly at school, which was, of course, only to be expected. She had been in one situation, but had been dismissed for stealing. During her interview at the Clinic she boasted that she made her own dresses, which was quite untrue. During the mental testing, she was friendly and co- operative, but unusually timid over expressing herself or committing herself in any way.
Fortunately in both these cases the parents were able to contribute 10/- a week, so that it was possible to remove both the boy and the girl from environ- ments that had strained them to breaking point. The boy was sent to a small residential school for difficult children and the girl to a Training Home, where the atmosphere is particularly happy. The Clinic has not yet received a report on the boy’s progress. The girl has done well. She became very happy at the Home, and took a great interest in domestic work and the care of young children. After fifteen months’ residence at the Home she spent a fortnight’s holiday with her family, getting on well with her brothers and greatly enjoying herself. Her own comment on the changed relations was: ” I suppose it is because we have all altered since I left home.”
To those whose clinical experince has brought them into contact with children impeded from the beginning by dullness of intellect and set in the midst of strains and stresses that might well break those better equipped to stand them, it is not surprising that 82% of the delinquents tested by Professor Cyril Burt proved to be ” below the middle line of average ability,” and that 28% were technically ” dull.” (’) It is not dullness in itself that causes the moral breakdown, but over and over again it proves to be dullness relative to the immediate environment. Amongst the cases treated at the Institute of Medical Psychology there are, as has already been indicated, an appreciable number?about 12%?who, though not technically ” dull,” since their ability is average or even somewhat above the average, are nevertheless dull in relation to other members of the family or to their school-fellows. There is the child, for example, who is sent as a matter of course to a Secondary School and who falls behind, because he is less intelligent than the majority of his school-fellows and not sufficiently above the average to profit by die usual type of Secondary education. There is the Elementary School child of no more than average ability, who by some fluke or by an error of judgment on the part of the ex- aminers, has been given a free place in a Secondary School and who after a few months breaks down under the double strain of intellectual inferiority in relation to his new school-fellows and inability to meet the demands made on him in the classroom. There is the boy destined for one of the Public Schools, who cannot make sufficient headway at his preparatory school for there to be the remotest chance of his ever passing his entrance examination. The parents are baffled and disappointed. There will be ” nagging ” on their part and loss of confidence on the part of the child, in short, there will follow all the mental strains and stresses with much the same results as in the case of the child who is technically ” dull.”
Burt : The Young Delinquent. 1925. Page 296.
The case of E. M., a 10 year old girl, brought to the Clinic on the advice of the headmistress of a Secondary School, is a typical instance of a child head- ing for delinquency under the strain of dullness and backwardness in relation to her school environment. She was referred to the Clinic for lying, pilfering and backwardness in school subjects, especially reading and spelling. Intelli- gence tests showed that she had only average ability, so that she would always be one of the duller girls in her school. Educationally, she was backward even for her mental age. This excessive backwardness was traced to an unfortunate conjunction of marked astigmatism only recently corrected by glasses, left- handedness and a series of absences from school at a period critical for laying the foundations of reading and spelling. She is a friendly, sociable child, with some practical and artistic ability, but even so the dice are too heavily loaded against her. An important part of the ” treatment ” in her case will be remedial teaching to bring her up to the level of the other less intelligent girls of her age. She will then be one of a group instead of being the dunce of the class. With some delinquents remedial teaching alone is sufficient to ” cure ” their delin- quency and to bring about a satisfactory adjustment to life.
The case just described illustrates the need to diagnose educational back- wardness as distinct from native dullness. The two do not necessarily go hand in hand. With dullness there must of course go a certain amount of educational retardation. A boy of 10 with the mental capacity of the average 8 year old will at the best have reached the 8 year old stage educationally. If he is not more than two years behind in school subjects, then his backwardness can be entirely accounted for by his inherent dullness. But the backwardness frequently exceeds what can be accounted for in this way. The fact that men- tally retarded children are so often educationally behind their mental age is indeed an indictment of our present educational provision for them. Whether in any individual case backwardness is a cause or a symptom of maladjustment, it is always a danger signal demanding investigation and treatment. Of the delinquents tested by Professor Burt, as many as 6o% were educationally back- ward, and a considerable proportion of them excessively so.
There is a dangerous tendency on the part of teachers and social workers to stop short at the recognition of dullness in a child and to assume that this is an all-sufficient explanation not only for every degree of backwardness, but also for all sorts of abnormality of behaviour. Not infrequently a comment on extreme backwardness in a child or on some abnormality such as excessive timidity or reluctance to mix with other children may call forth some such response as: ” Yes, but then he’s very dull,” as if that closed the matter. Actually dullness, whether absolute or relative, in conjunction with retardation in other directions and abnormal behaviour of any kind, should be recognised as a group of symptoms pointing to incipient mental or moral breakdown of a grave kind.
Although for ten years or more the special claims of the ” dull or back- ward ” have been urged again and again by Professor Cyril Burt and others, yet in the words of the Report of the Mental Deficiency Committee (1929) ” the special educational problems presented by … . the dull or backward have hitherto been accorded but little consideration save in a few areas and in a relatively small number of more or less isolated schools.” (5) Although many schools now have a ” dull or backward ” class, it is ” too often little more than a refuse heap for the rest of the school.” (6) Indeed, the present writer recently came across a group of ” dull or backward ” girls, whose class teacher ad- dressed them to their faces as: ” Dustbin ” (!)?Now then, Dustbin, what have you got to say for yourselves?” It is consoling to know that in conse- quence of the recent re-organisation, these particular girls were transferred to a Senior School, where they joined a Special Open Air Class for the dull and backward. Here, under an excellent teacher, they are rapidly being trans- formed from a lethargic, ill-tempered, unkempt crowd into a group of happy and self-respecting individuals, who have at last discovered that school can be interesting and delightful, a place where they, as well as their brighter school- fellows, may ” feel the joy of success.” (7) But even when really adequate educational provision has been made for the ” dull or backward,” there will always be a considerable number, more than amongst children of higher ability, who on account of inherited instability or the stress of home conditions, will need the combined efforts of teachers, doctors, psychologists and social workers to save them from ” a life of hopeless poverty and crime.” (s)
Report of the Mental Deficiency Committee, 1929. Part II. Page 146.
ibid.
(7) Report of the Mental Deficiency Committee, 1929. Part II. Page 151. (s) ibid, page 145.
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