Portia Holman M.A
(This work was done with the aid of a Grant from the Industrial Health Research Board)
Nowadays the special school for M.D. (feeble-minded) children comes in for a good deal of critical scrutiny. The education it provides is both more expensive and for a longer period than in the elementary school. Whether the expense is justified can be called into question on a number of grounds: some people assume that it gives special advantage to M.D. children, but ask is it fair or socially desirable to do so? Others ask, does their special education confer any real benefit on the M.D. child? To them a crucial question (though not, indeed, one that finally disposes of the matter) is, ” What in fact happens to the children afterwards? ” Do they go automatically into the ranks of the unemployed and unemployable or do they get jobs and make a reasonable success of their industrial career? A general answer is difficult to obtain. Records exist for individuals, social workers who come into contact with them ‘k have an impression,” but little systematic study has been made either in this country or anywhere else. It was to obtaining information on this head in as precise a form as possible that the work to be reported here was directed. Some of the questions frequently asked about special school leavers are the following: ?
Do they succeed in finding employment at all ? Are they often out of work? Do they change their work a great deal ? Do any of them get skilled work? (and if so how many?) Do they ever earn a reasonable wage ? and considering them, it becomes clear that a satisfactory answer cannot be given from the records of the special school groups alone, because in almost every case a comparison with the normal standard is implied.
Hence an attempt has been made to obtain reliable records of the after- careers of both a group of special school leavers and of ordinary elementary school leavers and make a comparison. In the ordinary way no follow-up material is available in respect of ordinary elementary school leavers, but the National Institute of Industrial Psychology in the course of its vocational guid- ance experiments followed up a large group of boys and girls leaving Elemen- tary Schools and going into industry in the ordinary way in the St. Pancras, Islington, Finsbury districts in the years 1925 and 1926. From this material records of 214 boys and 199 girls were found suitable for the present purpose and these the Institute kindly made available.
The London Association for Mental Welfare also gave access to die after- care records of some 350 special school leavers, obtained at three-monthly intervals in, as nearly as possible, the same areas in the same years. Unfortun- ately, at that time records were kept by the Association only for the first two years, and not all the records contained information definite enough to be of service. Those of 157 boys and 157 girls have been used.
The comparative data are thus limited to a rather special district and for a regrettably short period of time. Moreover, the first two years after leaving school are in many ways exceptional. Some further data have been obtained by a visit paid to as many of the 1925-1926 special school leavers as could be traced in January, 1933 (or rather to their mothers), and their posts, earnings and other information about their occupations elicited wherever possible. Hence the special school leavers have been considered from two points of view:?
1. A comparison with elementary school leavers in the first two years after school. 2. Their actual adult occupations at the ages of 23 or 24. The comparison with normals is full of pitfalls, particularly with records extending only over two years. Special school life goes on till 16, the elementary school child leaves at 14; in the special school a very large part of die time is given up to vocational training in a skilled trade (tailoring, boot making, cabinet making for elder boys, dressmaking, embroidery, laundry work for elder girls). The elementary school child, except at the actual moment of leaving school, is left to fend for himself. After the first three months, all official concern with his employment and welfare ceases. The special school child may be placed by the Mental Welfare Employment-Seeker and, in any circumstances, can count on her visits, sympathy and advice every three months. Even before he leaves school his abilities in an actual trade can be assessed! The Employment-Seeker, it is true, may have a hard job to get employers to take children from the ” Silly School ” but, if she is skilful, she has built up a panel of benevolent and semi-philanthropic employers to whom she can appeal to take and put up with feeble-minded workers. Thus, at the outset, the special school leaver has a more favourable chance than the normal boy of getting skilled work and an employer who will be unusually tolerant of slow- ness or incompetence.
In spite of these differences a number of comparisons will be hazarded but the caution to be observed in interpreting them must be strongly emphasised.
Unemployment
Some special school leavers never obtain work at all. A certain number are found to require institutional care, and among the girls the dull one of the family is, not unnaturally, the one considered particularly suited to remain- ing1 at home and helping in the house. So we find 4.5% of the boys and 15% of the girls have never attempted to find work.
Of the others, a good many have been out of work for shorter or longer periods between jobs, but actually 20% of boys and 25% of girls had been out of work for six months or more in the two years after leaving school. Even here we need a comparative standard, we are getting used to long periods of unemployment, so it may be asked, what was normal at that time? The figures are :?of the elementary school boys, none had been totally unemployed, and 3 (or 1.4%) had been out of work for six months or longer. Of the girls only 2 had never been employed and 8 had been out of work for more than six months. The difference is tremendous. A third of the special school group was affected by unemployment of this serious character as against less than 3% of the elementary school leavers. And it is also true that, even excluding these cases, the rest of the special school group experiences longer and more frequent periods of unemployment.
In January, 1933, excluding those in institutions, just over 15% of those visited were found to be out of work?rather more than one and a half times the normal for the district. This may suggest an improvement, but the fact of being out of work is less significant than the length of time of being out of work, and no information on this is available.
Employment
We are left then with two-thirds of the group in any sort of ” regular ” employment. What does it consist of? This can be divided into two questions: 1. What occupations or categories of occupation (skilled, semi-skilled, unskilled) are comprised;
2. How ” steady ” are the special school leavers as a group?do they hold their jobs or are they shiftless and constantly changing, i.e., is there a high labour-turnover in the group?
In this district, there is no specialised industry and few large mass-produc- tion factories. The most typical unit is a small business or work shop where a master employs and himself supervises one or two or, at most, a roomful of work people, and such larger scale works as there are, specialise on compara- tively delicate and fine work, such as assembling wireless parts, lcathcrwork (some of a very high quality), sports goods manufacturing, etc. There is com- paratively little unskilled work in factories, except for packing and sorting, but a high demand for personal services of an unskilled type (errands, helping in shops, on barrows, etc.).
Hence in both groups a large proportion go from school into relatively high grade work where they have a chance, at least, of being trained to a skilled post in a definite trade. Irrespective of length of time of holding a post, it appears that about one-third of all posts taken by both groups in the first two years are in occupations that can be called ” skilled ” and to do work which would, in time, lead to the person becoming a qualified worker. This pro- portion is, perhaps, higher than might be found elsewhere, and is no doubt to be put down to the special character of the district rather than to the abilities of the individuals. But, put in this way, it may suggest the rather surprising conclusion that feeble-minded young people get skilled posts just as frequently as normals. This inference should not, however, be drawn, for, in the first place, the amount of unemployment of the feeble-minded group must be borne in mind, as a result of which the total number of posts is far fewer (posts per ioo persons per 2 years work out at 175 for special school boys and girls, as compared with 290 per 100 elementary school boys, and 240 per 100 elementary school girls). The differences arc due not so much to greater changeability in the elementary school group as to the absence of posts for long periods of time in the special school group. The normal boy may take three or four jobs which he knows to be casual and temporary rather than remain, as the feeble- minded tend to, completely out of work in a gap between two serious posts. Thus, though the proportion that skilled jobs bear to all jobs is almost the same in both groups, it docs not follow that the amount of time spent in them was the same.
To measure the relative success of the two groups, we have to take into consideration how long posts were held, and, what is even more important, to ask whether, in the feeble-minded group it may not be the case that the ” labour turnover ” is mainly concentrated on the skilled posts. It is not easy to give a straightforward answer here; there are a number of difficulties in the way of making a trustworthy calculation, not the least of which comes from the fact that if an individual changes his work at all, he may change from a skilled post to an unskilled or semi-skilled one and back again once or even several times.
To get some sort of indication, an analysis was made of the number of changes of post in relation to the first post held. For instance, the first post taken by 40 of the special school boys was skilled, and of these, 20 made no change at all in their first two years, while another 10 changed either once or twice. The remaining 10 changed a great deal (five or more times), or suffered long periods of unemployment. Of the normal boys, half of those who first went to skilled posts also remained without change for two years, and more than a third experienced only one or two changes. Thus the normal boys who started on skilled posts kept to them on the whole rather better than the special school leavers (feeble-minded girls are, however, far inferior to normals in this respect). But it is quite clear that a very fair number of feeble- minded boys who begin at skilled work keep to it successfully for two years at least. The question then arises, do they eventually turn into skilled adult workers as successfully as normal juveniles? It may be the fact that these records ending at 18, just when full rates and full insurance have to be paid, again lead to a misleading conclusion. Here we can turn to the occupations of the group visited last January. A quarter of those in employment had work which could reasonably be called skilled?for instance, ” Baking, learn- ing pastry and fancy work,” ” Motor driver and doing well,” ” Electrician’s mate earning ^4 a week,” ” French polishing, has finished his apprenticeship,” ” Drives for Carter Paterson,” ” Has his own sweet shop, does his own buy- ing and is making a good profit,” ” Has his own bootmaker’s shop,” ” Has for three years been apprenticed to a printer; has had three rises, doing very well,” ” Has been at tailoring ever since school,” ” Has worked for six years at a laundry, has had steady rises and getting on fine,”?are some of the mothers’ reports.
Learning motor-engineering, electro-plating, cabinet-making, glazing and bricklaying, blacksmiths’ work, ebony work, tortoiseshell work, bookbinding, driving a steam engine (” all over England “) have all been reported once or more?being a waiter in the L.M.S. restaurant car is perhaps a borderline case. It is also clear that in this particular group the majority have held their posts for a long time : ” Since leaving school ” is the answer of 4^%> f?r three years or more of 20%. This, social workers and the Labour Exchange officers agree represents a much greater freedom from change than in the case of normal voung workers. The N.I.I.P. found that at the end of four years some 25?/ of children in their control group (i.e., those not given vocational guid- ance) were in the same post as when they left the school.
Wages
The information on this head is more meagre than on any other. In the first two years it has little significance, as there is practically no relation between the amount of wages and the desirability of the job. With the older group it was very often found that the mother either did not know or would not say what the wages were. But of those who would give an answer, in only three or four cases was the wage below 25s. 30s. was the figure most often mentioned, and this average appears to be ” normal ” for the district, and goes to show, at least, that there is no wage discrimination against the feeble-minded in semi- skilled or unskilled work.
In the skilled group ^3, ?^ 10s., from ^3 to ?3 10s., and in one case ^4 were all met with, but the most frequent rate was between ?2 and ?2 5s.: only one was below ?2.
Conclusion
In this article I have attempted to deal only with a few of the problems to which a follow-up was directed, viz., unemployment and the nature and tenure of the occupations of those who escaped unemployment. To avoid too much detail, I have omitted any consideration of the careers of the semi-skilled and unskilled groups and concentrated discussion on to those who obtained skilled posts.
The inquiry shows that a quarter of all leavers go into skilled posts and of these the majority survive to become skilled adult workers. An equally striking result is the extra concentration of unemployment on special school leavers?another quarter of the group verging on to or right over the border- line of permanent unemployment. The remainder are distributed over semi- skilled and unskilled jobs, and their steadiness in these occupations does not differ greatly from that of the normal population.
The conclusions to be drawn from the educational point of view must be tentative in the extreme, in view of the paucity of the data. The following might be hazarded :?
The limit of educable capacity for skilled work comes somewhere in the special school. With a good many advantages in their favour?intensive vocational training, assistance and relative ease of finding a place?perhaps as many as 25% can become skilled adult workers.
Another 25% are unfit for the ordinary industrial world, the remainder can, however, succeed in being partially if not completely self-supporting. It may fairly be assumed that the 25% of real successes owe a great deal to their specific vocational training at school, but if the exceptional provisions of the special school are to be justified for the remaining 75%, it must be on other grounds than their contribution to vocational life.
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