News and Comments
An Educational Clinic at Plainfield, N. J. Dr Maximilian P. E. Groszmann announces an educational clinic at Plainfield, New Jersey. He says, “This Clinic, the pioneer of its kind, fills a long-felt want.”
Dr Groszmann’s announcement admirably expresses the purpose of a psychological or educational clinic, but unless Dr Groszmann is more familiar with clinical methods in psychology and education, than he is with the history of clinics in this country, I fear his newly established Educational Clinic will scarcely measure up to the promise of his prospectus.
If Dr Groszmann will consult the initial number of The Psychological Clinic published March 15, 1907, in which I announced that I would begin the publication of results from the Psychological Clinic of the Univeisity, which had then been in existence for ten years, he will find on page nine the following statement of the scope of a psychological clinic:
“I would not have it thought that the method of clinical psychology is limited necessarily to mentally and morally retarded children. These children are not, properly speaking, abnormal, nor is the condition of many of them to be designated as in any way pathological. They deviate from the average of children only in being at a lower stage of individual development. Clinical psychology, therefore, does not exclude from consideration other types of children that deviate from the average?for example, the precocious child and the genius. Indeed, the clinical method is applicable even to the so-called normal child. For the methods of clinical psychology are necessarily invoked wherever the status of an individual mind is determined by observation and experiment, and pedagogical treatment applied to effect a change, i. e. the development of such individual mind.” Since 1907 psychological and educational clinics have been established in large number by universities, school systems, and individuals. If Dr Groszmann will consult Wallin’s ” Mental Health of the School Child,” he will find this history given in some detail, and he will discover that some forty-odd clinics were brought into existence before the birth of Dr Groszmann’s “pioneer clinic” at Plainfield, New Jersey, was announced to the public.
Annual Meeting of the N. Y. State Medical Society in April. The local committee of arrangements of the Medical Society of the State of New York, extends a cordial invitation to all physicians, no matter where they reside, to attend the hundred and ninth annual meeting of the society in Buffalo, April 27-29. Through the cooperation of the military authorities, the sessions will be held in the 65th regiment armory, which is large enough to accommodate all the exhibits and section meetings. Lectures to the laity will be given by prominent visiting physicians in the Masten Park High School, across the street. The choice of the armory is fortunate as indicating the organization of the state society as an arm of the state government. On the last night of the meeting a regimental parade and review by General Gorgas will be held. Information may be obtained from Dr Edward A. Sharp, Chairman of the Committee on Registration, 481 Franklin Street, Buffalo, N. Y. Courses in Scoutcraft at Columbia University.
Columbia University has instituted two courses in Scoutcraft which will give an understanding of the biologic, hygienic, psychologic, and sociologic significance and value of adolescent organizations, particularly the Boy Scouts of America, and will provide the practical training required by Scoutmasters and Scout Executives in that organization.
The courses have been outlined after conferences attended by Dr James E. Russell, Dean of Teachers’ College, Columbia; Prof. Jeremiah W. Jenks, of New York University, chairman of the committee on organization of the Boy Scouts of America, and James E. West, Chief Scout Executive. They will be offered first during the summer session of the university, and will be under the direction of Dr J. C. Elsom, of the University of Wisconsin.
Dr Elsom has been a teacher of physical education and an advocate of open air for nearly twenty-five years. Since 1894 he has been connected with the department of physical education of the University of Wisconsin, and has lectured in all parts of the country. When the Boy Scout movement was begun, Dr. Elmson became identified with it, recognizing it as an easy, pleasant, and effective way of getting boys to do those things which are of greatest benefit to them physically, mentally and morally. He has served the organization in different phases.
In the practical training in Scoutcraft which will be given in the courses at Columbia emphasis will be placed on practical work with boys in the demonstration school, playground, gymnasium and model camps. All of the activities of Scouts will be employed in the practice course, the National Organization of the Boy Scouts of America co-operating.
Boy Scouts of New York will maintain a model Scout camp on the edge of Van Cortlandt Park in the northern part of the city. Specialists in boys’ work will take part in the courses with lectures and demonstrations. By placing Scoutcraft in its curriculum, Columbia University gives further evidence that the program of the Boy Scouts of America is no longer regarded as an experiment, but is an educational agency of proved value. Dr Charles W. Eliot of Harvard, after making an exhaustive study of the movement, delivered an address at Tremont Temple in Boston recently in which he gave high praise to this method of improving boys and said that it revealed much that the public schools would do well to benefit by.
Among the other educational institutions which regularly provide instruction for workers, in the Boy Scouts of America are the Universities of Chicago, Virginia, Texas, Wisconsin, California, Minnesota, Pittsburgh, and Iowa; Cornell University, Boston University, Carnegie Institute, McCormick Theological Seminary, and Massachusetts Agricultural College.
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