Retrospect and Prospect: an Editorial
The Psychological Clinic Vol. 2. No. 1. March 15, 1908.
With tliis number The Psychological Clinic enters upon the second year of its existence. The journal was founded with two objects in view, not always easily harmonized. It was proposed that the journal should maintain a high scientific standard in the quality and selection of its leading articles and reviews, and yet should appeal to a wide circle of readers.
At the end of this, its first year of existence, our readers include practising physicians and medical specialists, professors of pedagogy and psychology, superintendents of education, grade teachers and teachers of defective children, social workers, and others interested in modern philanthropic work for the relief of poor children. It would seem that there is a growing appreciation of the possible service to be rendered by this journal in a field of work which is only just beginning to be clearly defined.
To define a new field of research, to develop suitable methods of investigation, and at the same time to enlist the sympathy and active support of those who have not yet fully recognized the significance of the problem, is a precarious undertaking. I did not venture to begin the publication of a journal until I felt assured that the number of scientific articles in view was sufficient to carry the journal through its first year at least. For these I was compelled to depend upon my own work and the work of former students of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. I have been more than gratified, however, to find that it is not necessary to rely exclusively on this small group of contributors. The first volume, which is now completed, numbers among its contributors Dr Coriat of Boston, who writes on “The Mental Condition of Juvenile Delinquents,” Dr Crampton of New York, on “The Influence of Physiological Age upon Scholarship,” and Dr Cornell of Philadelphia, on “The Relation of Physical to Mental Defect in School Children.”
A number of the articles which appear in the first volume open up new fields of inquiry. This is true of several articles demonstrating the applicability of the clinical method to a study of the results obtained from the training of retarded children. The statistics of retardation in school work, as presented by Superintendents Bryan and Cornman, will sooner or later challenge comparative statistics along similar lines from the superintendents of every state and large city in this country. Dr. Crampton’s original report on “The Influence of Physiological Age upon Scholarship,” has opened up for investigation the question of the relation of physiological age to chronological age. Wherever age enters as an item into statistical comparisons, Dr. Crampton’s conclusions must be taken into consideration.
With the opening of the second year, The Psychological Clinic promises a wider range of contributions. In this number Dr Margaret K. Smith, of the New Paltz State Normal School, New York, begins an important study of the “Sixty-two Days’ Training of a Backward Boy.” This work not only invites the interest and attention of every teacher of a defective or normal child, but it also presents a very clever application of the clinical method, one wTell worthy to serve as a model. The editor has articles on hand and in view which would enable him to double the present size of the journal. This increase will be undertaken as soon as there is the financial support to warrant it. The Psychological Clinic is propagandist in spirit and welcomes every effective contribution to the cause which it supports. For this reason it hails with enthusiasm the work of Dr. Thorndike on “The Elimination of Pupils from School,” published by the National Bureau of Education, and the report on the “Physical Welfare of School Children” by the New York Committee of the American Statistical Association. Other work of at least equal importance is in progress in New York City and elsewhere. Dr Ealkner’s report, as Commissioner of Education for Porto Rico, presents a valuable analysis of the distribution of school children according to age and grade. In the last report of the Superintendent of the State of New York will be found the first attempt to investigate this problem throughout the schools of a state. There can be little doubt of the existence of a group of men and women, at present small, but soon to grow to large proportions, who are actively engaged in investigatory work, and to whose efforts we can confidently look for results which will some day transfer the center of interest in education to a new set of problems,?those that immediately concern the child and his progress, in contradistinction to those of organization, curriculum and method.
The Psychological Clinic proposes to urge upon the school the realization of its possibilities as a social force. The school must take its place as a social institution second to none, an institution whose purpose is the development of the individual citizen and the progress of the human race. If the social institution, called the home, is as essential as we believe it to be for the development of the mental and moral qualities of a child, then the school must go into many homes and make them worthy of the name, fitting them to become the training place of future citizens of the Republic. If insufficient food and unhealthful environment make the progress of a child impossible, the school must bring these facts to the attention of the public, and must see that some satisfactory solution is offered. If adenoid groAvths and remediable defects of sight and hearing are obstacles in the path of many a child’s progress, the school must be quick to detect their presence and to take the necessary measures for their removal. If there are feeble-minded children in the public schools (and there are in Philadelphia several hundred such children, some of them as low in the scale of intellectual development as the low grade imbecile), the school must make this fact known, must inform us of their number and location, and must actively assume the task of awakening public opinion to the point of furnishing adequate provision for their institutional care and training. If there are backward children in the public schools, not properly called feeble-minded, but yet incapable of making normal progress with other children in the grades, the schools must study the causes of backwardness and provide special schools and classes for their educational treatment.
The number of backward children ranges from one to fifty per cent, depending upon our definition of backwardness. In other words, under present conditions, up to fifty per cent of the school population is unable to take full advantage of the opportunity for mental training afforded by the public schools. Mental retardation does not necessarily imply mental defect. The Psychological Clinic does not restrict its interest to the mentally defective child. Any child who is still in the sixth grade, when he is old enough to be in the eighth, is retarded, and if the education afforded by tlie schools is really a significant factor in developing a child’s mental and moral character, this retardation in school progress is tantamount to a permanent arrest of development. The child who does not enjoy to the full the developing influences of the school during the formative period of childhood, reaches adult age at a lower level of efficiency than he might otherwise have attained. If, as some assert, the mentally gifted child gets less from the public school than any other child, because no provision is made for his more rapid progress, then many a child who passes through the elementary and secondary schools with flying colors at the head of his class, may also be mentally retarded as he enters upon the period of adolescence. Our problem, therefore, is the investigation of the causes that favor and hinder the development of adult efficiency. It is my belief that we shall more profitably investigate these causes by the study of the individual than by the study of masses. A statistical inquiry doubtless must be undertaken before conclusions of general applicability can l)e formed, but the most convincing statistics will be obtained from individuals who have been subjected first to a clinical examination. This point of view is also taken by Dr Thorndike in a recent contribution, to which I have referred, and a review of which appears in this number of the journal.
It is a mistake to suppose that this journal is devoted to a study of pathological conditions. There is no sharp line to be drawn between the pathological or abnormal on the one hand, and the normal on the other, and it is precisely the borderland cases which will furnish us with the best material for study. The Psychological, Clinic is not a journal for the study of the abnormal child, but a journal for the study of the individual child. Wherever we are concerned with the training of an individual, i. e., with liis mental and moral development, we are confronted with a psychological problem. It is the object of this journal to make known the nature of this problem.
Disclaimer
The historical material in this project falls into one of three categories for clearances and permissions:
Material currently under copyright, made available with a Creative Commons license chosen by the publisher.
Material that is in the public domain
Material identified by the Welcome Trust as an Orphan Work, made available with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
While we are in the process of adding metadata to the articles, please check the article at its original source for specific copyrights.