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The report of the school committee of Brookline, Mass., for the year ending January 31, 1907, contains some interesting data obtained from the Pierce School, as the result of a carefully conducted examination of eyesight, hearing, and condition of the nose and throat. The eyes of 420 boys and girls, ranging in age from eight to sixteen years, and taken from all grades above the primary, wei*e tested with the ordinary vision card and afterwards examined by the electric rctinoscope in a darkened room. Each child was also questioned as to the presence of headache or pain in the eyes.
The object was to determine the number of children with defective vision, and furthermore the number of these who could be helped by treatment. Incidentally data were collected with reference to the relation between eyesight and scholarship. Of the 420 children examined, 167, or 40 per cent, were found to have perfect vision; 155, or 37 per cent, slightly imperfect vision, while 98, or 23 per cent, had grave defects of refraction which required further examination and treatment.
The investigation demonstrated that the visual test cards are not a sufficiently accurate test to use with school children. Many children, who are suffering from so severe a defect as to be subjected to continuous eye strain, reveal no abnormality with this test. Although this is an important finding and a result that was to have been expected, it should not lead a school system that must depend upon the test card alone to detect serious defects, owing to limitations of time and means, to abandon the distance test as valueless. It will discover a sufficiently large number of children suffering from defective eyesight to justify its employment.
The results also show that the proportion of children suffering from defective vision increases in the higher grades. In the lowest grade onehalf of the children had perfect vision. In the highest grade the majority of the children had slightly defective eyesight, and the number suffering from very defective vision equaled the number who showed no defects.
An attempt was made to correlate the refractive errors thus discovered with the school standing of the children. The teachers graded the children in scholarship as excellent, good, fair, unsatisfactory, and poor. Eighty-six of the 420 children were graded excellent, and of these 43, or 50 per cent, were numbered among the 40 per cent enjoying perfect vision; 30 per cent had slightly defective vision; while only 12, or 14 per cent, were drawn from the class with very defective sight. One hundred and thirty-seven children were ranked as good. Of these nearly 07 per cent had perfect or slightly imperfect vision, while the eyesight of the remaining number was very defective. Eighty children were marked fair. Of these 52, or G5 per cent, had normal vision, and in 28, or 35 per cent, it was very deficient. In the two lower grades, on the contrary, the children with defective eyesight were in the majority. Among 38 unsatisfactory children only 4, or IOV2 per cent, had normal vision, while 15, or 39 per cent, were drawn from the group with poorest vision. In the lowest grade of scholarship the number of pupils having defective eyesight was double the mimber having perfect vision.
The aural, nasal and pharyngeal examinations were made with the double object of gathering data and determining, if possible, the best methods for the aural and nasal examination of school children. Two hundred and eighty-nine children were examined, all of them selected from the upper grade 011 account of the desirability of obtaining intelligent answers. The method employed was as follows: a large room was used, the floor being marked in foot spaces up to 25 feet; the child was placed in a revolving chair at the first space. An examination was first made of the drum membranes, the nose and throat. The hearing was then tested by the whispered voice which could be heard by the normal ear at an average distance of 25 feet, and by the spoken voice which could be heard normally at a distance of 35 feet. The child was placed with the ear to be tested toward the examiner, the opposite ear being tightly closed with the forefinger. The distance at which the child could repeat words and short sentences was recorded and compared with the normal distances for hearing the same words. The presence of adenoids was determined by the hearing tests, the position of the drum membranes, and the general facial expression. The digital examination and the general use. of the mirror were impracticable. Of the 289 children examined, G8, or 23 per cent, had two-thirds or less than two-thirds of normal hearing; 10 children had hypertrophied turbinates; 35 had septal spurs; 8 deviation of the septem; 89, or 30 per cent, gave evidence of adenoids; G3, or 21 per cent, had hypertrophied tonsils; 15 showed the result of chronic suppuration of the middle ear; 3 had discharge from the ear.
In correlating the condition of the hearing with the school standing, it was found that the percentages of children suffering from diminished hearing in the five scholarship grades were as follows: excellent, 17 per cent; good, 20 per cent; fair, 30 per cent; unsatisfactory, 52 per cent, and poor, 42 per cent. Thus the percentage of children showing defects of vision and of hearing increases as the grade of scholarship decreases.
The Starr Centre Association of Philadelphia sold during the year 1905 43,287 penny lunches. These lunches were sold during recess time to the pupils of the House of Industry, the Special School No. at Front and Lombard Streets, the James For ten Elementary Manual Training School, and the Starr Centre Kindergarten.
Hie undertaking began in 1894 under tlie direction of Miss Johnson, of the Drexel Institute, and since that time has been continued uninterruptedly by the Starr Centre Association. These lunches are served on a table covered with white linen, and a variety of carefully selected food is served by an official of the association. Among the things which a penny will buy are a cinnamon bun, a glass of milk, a banana, a cup of cocoa, a cup of rice pudding, four graham wafers, a cup of soup, and variety of cakes and crackers. The proceeds derived from the sale of penny lunches are expended in material. The expense of service is met by voluntary contributions to the Starr Centre Association. Many children come to school without breakfasts, or with nothing more than tea or coffee and bread. This is the diet of a large number of children that are found to be backward in school progress wherever the conditions of backwardness are made the subject of even superficial examination. Many municipalities are already making a serious effort to provide the backward and truant children with at least one good meal a day. A large group of mentally and morally retarded children could be brought to the normal standing without resorting to other treatment than proper feeding. The work of the Starr Centre Association of Philadelphia is pointing the way that the city authorities must take if these children are to develop into normal men and women.
As an outgrowth of the pioneer work of Dr Maximilian Groszmann in his school on Watchung Mountain, near Painfield, N. J., an association has been incorporated under the laws of the State of New Jersey, to advance the study and treatment of mentally defective children. Dr Groszmann’s effort has been to discover in young children just on the border line between the normal and defective, the tendencies toward deviation from the normal, and by medical and educational treatment, especially adapted to the needs of the individual child, to overcome these tendencies as far as possible, and to develop fully all the latent capabilities of the child.
The aim of the new organization is to make possible a great extension of this work. Its purposes are stated in its charter as follows: To establish and conduct schools and institutions for the treatment, care, and education of nervous and atypical children; to provide for the delivery and holding of lectures, exhibitions, public meetings, classes and conferences calculated directly or indirectly to advance the cause of education; to establish and maintain laboratories for the scientific study of this problem; to publish books, pamphlets, or periodicals embodying the results of investigation; to establish and maintain a library; to establish courses of instruction for teachers, etc.; and to so administer whatever funds may be collected as to promote to the best advantage whichever of the above movements may be inaugurated.
The fourth national conference on the education of backward, truant, and delinquent children will be held at Minneapolis, June 10th to 12th. The sessions of the first two days of the conference will be held at the assembly hall in the city and county building, Minneapolis, and the session on June 12th will be held at the State Training School, Red Wing.
Miss Clara Harrison Town, resident psychologist at the Friends’ Asylum for the Insane, Frankford, but at present on leave of absence and acting as an assistant in the psychological clinic connected with the laboratory of psychology in the University of Pennsylvania, was recently appointed by the Philadelphia Court of Quarter Sessions to serve on a commission in lunacy.
The annual conference of the British Child Study Association was held in Birmingham on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, May 2, 3 and 4, 1907. An international conference of teachers of the deaf is to be held at Edinburgh on July 30th and following days, under the auspices of the National Association of Teachers of the Deaf of Great Britain and Ireland.
It is reported that the director of the Harvard Psychological Laboratory is about to make the laboratory useful in the direction of an examination and classification of the backward children of Cambridge. The advertisement of the “Harvard Psychological Studies,” found on one of the cover pages of this number of Tiie Psychological Clinic, is also in evidence to show that Professor Miinsterberg has recently seen a great light. Tiie Psychological Clinic does not flatter itself that it has been the sole cause of what must appear to many a marked change in Professor Miinsterberg’s attitude on the question of the relation of psychology to education. Since his attack upon G. Stanley Hall at the Schoolmasters’ Club of Boston more than ten years ago, and the publication of his views on “The Danger from Experimental Psychology,” which inspired the comment on page 2G of the first number of The Psychological Clinic, Professor Miinsterberg has doubtless found the science of psychology moving steadily away from the position which he then took. He has not yet, however, seized an opportunity to retract the views expressed upon those occasions, and therefore it is not surprising to find these opinions often quoted by teachers and school authorities in support of a policy of inactivity and ignorance. It id helpful to the cause which The Psychological Clinic is supporting, to learn from an authoritative source?the advertisement of Houghton, Mifflin & Co.?that the Harvard laboratory “is devoted to physiological psychology, educational psychology and comparative psychology.”
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