Games and Exercises for Mental Defectives
- Author:
Hilda A. Wrightson. Cambridge,
Mass.: Caustic-Claflin Co., 1916. Pp. iii+100.
Miss Wrightson has collected and arranged 115 simple games, “for use among mothers and teachers of feebleminded children, the object being to help develop muscular control and to quicken the sense perceptions.” She has grouped the games in three grades of difficulty, from the simplest to the most complex. “The most difficult among the exercises,” she says, “could be mastered with ease by a normal child six years of age.”
In giving general instructions for applying the exercises in work with mentally deficient children, Miss Wrightson emphasizes the essential principles to be observed, which are mainly these: (1) A spirit of play; (2) Simplicity in training; (3) One idea at a time; (4) The personality of the teacher, patient, cheerful, and optimistic; (5) Simple, fixed methods of procedure to develop concentration; (6) Always use the same form of signal in starting a game; (7) Competitive games to be played single file at first; (8) The play must be supervised at all times; (9) “Make all exercises as attractive as possible. Tension is disastrous;” (10) Not longer than one hour at a session. “Should a child be kept twenty minutes (88) at one exercise, more will be gained during the first five minutes than the latter fifteen minutes. A game played too many times in an effort to perfect it, loses its object.”
Dr Henry H. Goddard, of the Vineland Training School, contributes the preface, in which he says of Miss Wrightson and the games she has planned, “Her long experience with feebleminded children is a guarantee of their usefulness and efficacy for the purpose.”
“It should be fully appreciated by teachers, parents, and superintendents,” he adds, “that the playing of these games is not ‘mere play’ but definite training of the best kind. In many cases there is little else to be done… . These games not only develop coordination and attention; manners and morals, selfcontrol, altruism, patience, and many more desirable qualities are involved. What more can education do than develop to the limit of the individual’s capacity these qualities which, possessed even in a small degree, will help to make him a social rather than an anti-social being!” A. T.
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