3R. Dawson’s Inductive Study of School Children. ========================================
The Psychological Clinic Copyright, 1912, by Lightner Witmer, Editor. Vol.. VI, No. May 15, 1912. :Author: Arthur Deerin Call,
District Superintendent Henry Barnard District, Hartford, Conn. Dr George E. Dawson, professor of psychology at the Ilarttord School of Religious Pedagogy, is doing a pioneer work of importance for all who are interested in the problems of public education. At least for us who have watched his quiet, scientific work with children of the Henry Barnard School for the last three years two things are manifest?first, that the inductive study of the mental facts of childhood is possible; secondly, that such an inductive study is essential to accuracy and definiteness of educational theory or practice. The study to which I refer began with a few children who, early in November, 1908, were found in our school to be backward in their studies. The object of the undertaking was to determine, as far as possible, the cause or causes of a pupil’s failure to profit by the work of the public school. The study has been individual in character, the concern being not primarily for statistics derived from a large number of cases, but rather for an explanation, through careful intensive analysis, of why a given pupil fails, with the practical purpose of helping him if possible. Its significance, therefore, will be found not so much in the statistics that have been accumulated, as in the light that has been shed upon the specific difficulties of individual boys and girls, and in the suggestions that, it is hoped, have been offered towards their relief.
The work has centered mainly in two groups of facts: (1) the mental constitution of the children, as revealing the immediate cause of their failures; and (2) the condition of their special senses, their nervous and muscular qualities, their general vitality, and their specific organic defects, if any, as revealing contributory or ultimate causes of such failures.
Name Age Nationality. School Grade Room Scholarship Height Weight Width of chest (calipers) Depth of chest Width of hips C Volume (spirometer) Width of shoulders Vitality J Lung capacity J Heart action (phonendoscope) ( Expansibility (tape-line) Strength (dynamometer) Endurance (ergograph) Nutritive condition Use of drugs Organic f Crippled limbs Spinal curvature Defects -J Natural deformities Adenoids (rhinoscope) ( Enlarged tonsils Condition of teeth Nervous ( Chorea Fidgetiness Defects -j Neuro-muscular incoordination Stammering [ Over-action of facial muscles Motor ( Walking Tapping Throwing Control Drawing a straight line Threading a needle Special f Sight (standard type, astigmatic chart, colored worsteds). Hearing (watch, whispering and acoumeter). Senses Muscle sense (loaded-shells and kinesthetic board) Touch (aesthesiometer) Emotional f Pain-reaction (algometer) Cheerful or depressed Affectionate or indifferent Constitution Impulsive Stubborn Timid Intellectual f Attention (Sanford’s vernier chronoscope) Recall-memory (Jastrow’s memory apparatus) Constitution ] Association-memory (word tests) Mental responsiveness (picture puzzle) f Age of father Age of mother Health of father Health of mother Parentage j Number of children in family living Number dead Health of children [ Occupation of father Wages of father Father’s habits f Location of home (street) Number of rooms in house Sanitary condition Occupation of child at home Opportunities for play and amusement Ethnological f Circumference of head Length of head Breadth of head Traits -j Color and texture of hair Color of eyes Shape of nose I Character of mouth
Standard anthropoinetrical and psychological apparatus lias l)pcn used, and exact quantitative measurements have been relied upon throughout in the conclusions drawn from the study. The following pieces of apparatus have been supplied by the school and are now being used in the various tests: (1) a Sanford’s vernier clironoscope, for testing the attention and mental responsiveness of the pupils; (2) a Jastrow’s memory apparatus, for testing their perception, mental imagery and memory; (3) a puzzle-test, for determining the power of reasoning and application; (4) an sesthesiometer, for testing the sense of touch; (5) a kinesthetic board, for testing the muscular sense, and judgment of form; (G) a set of visual charts, for testing sight; (7) a speed and precision apparatus, for testing the speed and accuracy of hand-movements; (8) a galvanometer, for testing the conductivity of the nervous system; (9) an algometer, for testing reactions to pain; (10) a spirometer, for testing lung capacity; (11) a dynamometer, for SANFORD’R VERNIER OHRONOSCOPE.
DR. DAWSON MEASURING MENTAL KESIONSIVENESS BY MEANS OF THE CHKONOSCOPE. THE MEASUREMENTS ARE MADE IN HUNDREDTHS OF A SECOND AND SHOW HOW QUICKLY A CHILD CAN REACT TO A STIMULUS OF HEARING, SIGHT, OR TOUCH. TIIE RECORD IS AN AVERAGE OF FIVE TESTS. 04 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC.
testing strength and endurance; (12) calipers, for making head and chest measurements; (13) anthropoinetrical scales, for measuring height and weight; (11) an aeon meter, for testing acuity of hearing; (15) Holmgren’s colored worsteds, for testing color blindness; (10) hand steadiness apparatus for testing nervous condition; (1.7J a set of verbal association tests for testing range of mental associations.
Forty-eight children have been carefully tested with this apparatus, as well as in other ways, as occasion has made advisable, an average of from four to five hours being given to each pupil. The card used by Dr Dawson is shown on page 02.
While, as has already been stated, the value of this investigation primarily consists in the diagnosis of individual difficulties and in suggestions for their relief, certain facts are beginning to emerge which are not without significance for the further direction of our study, as well as for the solution of the larger problems to which it is related. These are summarized in tables I and II. In addition to the above group of pupils thus studied in detail, the DeSanctis and Binet-Simon tests for defective children were applied to some forty pupils, too young or too undeveloped to meet the conditions of the more elaborate experiments. These tests were made, for the most part, under Dr Dawson’s direction by Miss Annie Fisher. The children averaged approximately six years of age. Their failures ranged from none to 50 per cent, with an average of 19 per cent. These tests were intended to push the problem of differentiating the defective child back into the very beginning’s of school life. Accepting as the criterion of mental deficiency the failure to pass in one-tliird of these tests, 25 per cent of these pupils were found to be defective and of at least doubtful fitness for entering upon a public school course of study. With a view to establishing norms of tactile and muscular sensibility, and of neuromuscular control among school children within the age limits of our study, Miss Fanny Kollock has tested normal children during one year. She has thus far completed the records of fifty boys and girls, with the following results: Twenty-four boys, with an average age of about twelve years, required, on an average, 0.3 minutes to fit the blocks into the holes of the kinesthetic board; while twenty-six girls, with an average of thirteen years, required 7.0 minutes. The girls thus required 1.3 minutes longer than the boys, indicating a somewhat duller muscular sensibility. In sensitiveness to touch, the same groups of children averaged 1.0 millimeters and 2 millimeters respectively, tb boys, again, having a slight advantage. In neuromuscular control, Table I. Defects Boys (Av. age 12 yrs.) Number defective Girls (Av. age Totals 13 yrs.) ? Number Number Number Per cent defective tested defective ! defective I. In intellectual capacities: Attention and responsiveness 10 7 Perception and memory for words and numbers 10 12 Perception and memory for objects 10 5 Reasoning powers 18 9 One defect 11 0 Two defects 10 5 Three ” 5 3 ?18 23 48 2S 00 15 32 27 00 17 35 15 31 8 17 All four ” 4 4 I . . 8 17 One or more ” 30 II. In special, senses: Sight 13 7 Hearing 7 3 Touch 14 !) Muscle sense 8 One defect 13 Two defects 0 Three ” 4 All four ” 2 One or more ” 25 III. In motor ability 21 IV. Physical defects: Spinal curvature 15 Enlarged tonsils j 7 Adenoids 0 Neglected teeth 15 One defect Two defects Three ” All four ” One or more In vitality: Lack of lung capacity.. Poor nutrition Lack of strength Lack of endurance Defective heart action. One defect Two defects Three ” Four ” All five ” One or more 24 4 14 0 12 10 5 7 6 2 0 20 48 48 48 20 44 10 21 23 48 13 27 4 17 35 4 ! 10 21 1 j 5 11 1 i 3 0 10 35 73 48 | 31 48 48 23 48 13 27 8 ! 17 19 : 39 17 | 35 10 21 7 j 15 1 1 73 8 17 19 39 11 23 20 42 13 27 7 15 10 21 10 21 3 6 0 0 48 30 03
the average number of errors made in three tests was tliirty-five for the boys and thirty-six for the girls. Here again the boys have a slight advantage. It is hoped to continue another year this experimental study of norms in the directions here indicated, and likewise in other directions where investigations among school children have not yet established standards.
While the statistical material of this study of backward school children does not warrant any very definite conclusions, the individual character of the investigation has gradually shaped in our minds certain convictions which may here he set down, tentatively at least:
1. Among the children who fail in their public school work, there is an appreciable number who ought not to be in a public school at all. They are so defective mentally that they cannot profit by the ordinary course of study. The time of the teacher, usually all too full of urgent duties, should not be wasted upon KIXAESTIIKTIC BOAItl).
FOR MEASURING THE TIM 10 REQUIRED TO I’lIT EIGHTEEN BLOCKS OI’” DIFFERENT SIZE AM) SHAPE INTO CORRESPONDING HOLES. THE ItOAKD CONTAINS LARGE AND SMALL TRIANGLES, SQUARES AND CIRCLES. THE RECORD IS AN AVERAGE OF THREE TESTS.
such pupils. Moreover, normal children should not be hampered in their progress by the burden of dull, and often disorderly, children in their midst. Such children need special, individual instruction, and should be in a school adapted for their needs. Usually they are not sufficiently defective to be consigned to state institutions for the idiotic and imbecile. They should be educated in their home communities, with the co-operation of their parents, and every city should have at least one special school fitted to do this kind of work.
L2. Among children who fail in their public school work, there is a relatively large number who are misfits in the ordinary course of study. They are of a type of mind that can get knowledge through symbols only with great difficulty. They can learn through objects and through manual activities, and would, if properly trained, become educated in the best sense of that term. These children are not properly backward children at all. They
TEST INC KI’ISKl > ANI) PRECISION. WITH A TAPPING HOARD, PENCIL AND ELECTRIC CONNMOTIONS, M EASURING THE NUMItER or TIMKX THE C1IILD CAN TAP IN ONE MINUTE WITH THE METAL PENCIL UPON A METAL DISK % INCH IN DIAMETEIt, AND THE NUMBER OF MISSES IN THE SAME INTERVAL. THE RECORD IS AN AVERAGE OF THREE TESTS.
are merely children for whom our schools as vet make scant provision. If the public school must remain as it is, largely an institution for training in the symbols of knowledge, then these objectminded boys and girls ought to have schools of their own. An object school would solve the problem, and parents of children who are misfits in the ordinary school curriculum have a right and a duty to demand that the object school be provided for their children.
3. More important than any of these conclusions, as intimated at the outset, is the revelation that the inductive study of school children, 011 a much larger scale than perhaps heretofore dreamed of, is not only possible but mandatory if we are to accomplish with our instruments of public education what in the nature of the case should be accomplished.
4. So strong is our belief in the importance of this service that Dr Dawson is now regularly engaged by our Committee as “Director of Child Study,” giving to the work two days each week.
Table II. Boys I (Av. age Causes of backwardness j 12 yrs.) j Number 1 defective Primary mental defects 5 G 48 Mental defects induced by physical defects Mental defects induced by low vitality Mental defects induced by sense defects Mental defects induced by immoral habits 2 0 Primary moral defects 3 0 School work not suited to ap-! titudes 7 4 Girls (Av. age 13 yrs.) Number Number defective tested Totals Number | Per cent defective i defective 11 4 13 4 23 27 8 Backwardness from all causes.. I 30 18 48 2 <1 3 , 0 11 | 23 48 ! 1(H)
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