Psychology and Medicine Basis of National Children’s Bureau
NEWS AND COMMENT.
An amendment has been offered to the “Legislative Bill’ (H. R. 15,279), as reported to the Senate May 15, 1914; on page 147, under Children’s Bureau, in line 3, after the figures, “$25,640,” to insert the following words: “Provided that the chief and assistant chief shall be experts in child study, and provided further, that the supervisory officers and all other persons now or hereafter employed in the bureau, in investigations of infant mortality, diseases of children and similar subjects of a medical nature, shall have had a medical train ng.”
Such an amendment will tend to aid the work of the Bureau in many ways, of which the following might be mentioned: 1. It will help toward general efficiency in the work. 2. It will make it easier to keep incompetent persons from entering the service of the Bureau.
3. Most important of all, it will cause the Bureau to take up some of its fundamental work first: that is the study of children, as well as of their environment. 4. It will avoid duplicating the work of other Bureaus by doing this fundamental work, and thus overcome a most serious objection which has been made against the Bureau. 5. The idea of such an amendment may suggest similar amendments for other Bureaus when needed, and thus help departmental service in general.
As this is a new and most itaportant Bureau and as the study of children is comparatively recent, it is all the more necessary to guard against incompetent personnel. The staff of the Children’s Bureau consists of a chief, one assistant chief, one statistical expert, and eleven subordinate employees. The chief is a woman fifty-six years of age and unmarried. She is a college graduate and has been interested in various reform movements, has made special study of the care of the insane, and has spent much time in Hull House at Chicago. She is an estimable woman, much interested in humanitarian work. The assistant chief is a college graduate, and under the supervision of a statistical expert was joint author with him of statistics of paupers in almshouse’s and of the insane and feebleminded in institutions (published by the Census Office).
The statistical expert is a woman, thirty-eight years of age and unmarried, a college graduate, and a Doctor of Philosophy. She was special investigator for equal suffrage in Colorado; and also made a report for the Labor Bureau on women and children in industry.
There is little to indicate that the chief of the Bureau has had any definite training for the study of children. Her work seems to have been almost wholly sociological and mainly with young people and adults. Whatever the qualifications of the chief, it is generally assumed that the assistant chief should know all about the subject. But it does not appear that he has had the least preliminary training and experience in child study. With the statistical expert as with the chief, her training and work have been not only sociological, but also related almost wholly to adults and not to children.
When the Bureau was formed (mostly by transfer from other Bureaus), the question as to whether the candidates knew anything about children appears not to have been asked, and the staff can hardly be blamed for taking their positions. Perhaps no one is to be criticised for the condition of this Bureau. The idea seemed to be, that anyone could take statistics about children and interpret them. The study of children themselves, their psychology and their physical nature, that is child study, which is the foundation work of any children’s bureau, seems to have been ignored.
Child study is the essential scientific work of the Bureau, while getting statistics about children is more of a sociological nature. But scientific knowledge of the child is fundamental and is necessary for competent sociological work on children. To know what facts are important about children in any relation; and after these facts are collected, to arrange, classify, and interpret them, cannot be done properly and adequately by anyone who has not had training and experience in the scientific study of children.
It will be noted in the second proviso of the amendment, that medical training is required, not necessarily the degree of M.D. so that those trained in any of the different schools will be eligible. In the absence of the M.D. requirement it will be somewhat difficult to say just what shall be understood as “medical training”. This term, as well as the equally vague “expert in child study” might have been defined by the amendment under consideration. A Teachers College for the South.
George Peabody College, Nashville, Tenn., successor of the Peabody Normal School, will open its doors to students on June 25, 1914, at the beginning of the summer session. Peabody Normal School closed in June, 1911; and since that time the trustees have increased the assets, erected new buildings, and provided new equipment. This is the first teachers college to be established in the South, where there has long been a demand for such an institution. The training offered will be of a more practical nature than that given in similar colleges in the North, and special attention will be paid to vocational and industrial education.
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