Spoken Language an Essential Tool
- Author:
Ide, Ph.D.,
University of Pennsylvania. Angie: Case No. 3498.
Angie lived in the coal fields of West Virginia. The company who operated the fields gave the employees good houses in which to live and good hours of employment, but whether they discouraged school attendance or whether the parents were too indolent to care, Angie attended school not more than six months in her life. She is now sixteen years of age. She moved away from the coal fields on the death of !aer father and came to live in Philadelphia. She is the eldest of eight children. The mother is living, but with this large family is not able to do much toward their support, and Angie is expected to work. When she tried working, however, she did not stick to her job. Because the work was too hard, or the pills made her face swell, or she had a fight with another girl, she always quit before the end of two weeks. Yet she realized that she had to work to keep the family from “going under the ground.”
Angie was tried out with all sorts of intelligence tests. She responded well in every case where the tests did not depend upon language. She learned rapidly and put her newly acquired information to use. Her memory span was narrow, but adequate; her attention excellent; her images definite. She could count, but she did not know any of her combinations and was unable to make change. She did not know one letter from another in reading, but she was easily taught to read a page in a primer. In conversation about the condition of the family and how they were to be supported Angie’s judgment was good. She failed to hold her jobs because she had never learned to control herself br how to deal with other people, part of the reason for this being because she did not understand what others were talking about but was always willing to take it for granted that the conversation was not a compliment to her. Angie believes in striking first and making inquiries afterwards, when necessary. The root of Angie’s trouble lies in her inability to talk or to understand others when they talk. She does not use complete sentences. She knows about only the most simple of facts and is unable to do more than make herself understood about them. She has no speech defect and is not inherently mentally defective. Her language defect is due to deprivation. She has had no opportunity to learn in the home, and there has been no school for her. Sophie: Case No. 3518.
Sophie was brought to the Psychological Clinic because she wanted to go to business college, and a social worker interested in her wanted vocational guidance. Sophie had just graduated from the eighth grade of a city school. She is Polish, but does not speak the language. English has been the language of the home. Sophie is just past fifteen years. She has done well enough in school, about average for her grade. She is a pleasant-looking blonde child with the characteristic round head of her race. She is bright enough for her years, if measurement is made in terms of performance tests, but she reads in a stumbling fashion in the third reader, and when attempting speech, she either recites her sentences or else drops into a vernacular ending always with the street gamin’s expression, “See?” She does not speak a single sentence which is structurally grammatical. She does not complete her sentences, using only the high lights as it were and ending them all with the word “See.” As a means of communication, Sophie’s language may pass on the streets, but in a business office it is wholly inadequate. Eight years of school training have left her with no more language training than many a three-year-old can boast. This girl is not fitted for any service which requires the use of words. If she has to work now, she will make good in a job which does not depend upon her ability to express or receive ideas.
Mary: Case No. 3510.
Mary is a machine operator. Because she and her parents deny the school records of her age, the school claiming fifteen and the home sixteen as the correct age, the school insists that she attend its sessions, at least until the parents produce evidence that she has passed her sixteenth birthday. Mary absolutely refused to go to school and prosecution of her parents has been postponed in an effort to find out what can be done with Mary. The Psychological Clinic was therefore called in as a consultant to examine and advise in Mary’s case.
Heavy, dull and stolid looking, fully matured in size and figure, Mary looks even more than the sixteen years she claims for herself. One of the reasons she objects to the fifth grade is that the children all call her “Mamma.” She reads fairly well and knows the simpler operations in arithmetic. She cannot work out problems. None of the problems of the home have been given her for solution. While she earns twelve dollars per week she does not use the money herself. Her mother buys her clothes. The garments she wears for the street are frail and not likely to wear, so it is doubtful whether the mother could teach the child much about money matters. Mary’s wages are needed at home, but not to such an extent as to make it possible to evade the attendance law by getting her a certificate to that end.
On mental examination Mary is found to be dull. She does performance tests slowly but surely and pays good attention throughout to the processes involved. She is not at all nervous even when hurried. This agrees with the social worker’s report that she is successful as a worker on a power machine. She makes precise movements which are unhurried. Mary has an adequate memoiy span and does not respond as does the deficient girl. All her responses are normal, except in the Binet-Simon tests where she is six or more years retarded. She does not pass the twelve-year tests. She cannot define abstract words, she does not classify, she has no language for description. Her attempts to rearrange words to form a sentence are absurd. Her understanding of moral questions is good and her replies correct. She knows street life and is able to care for herself. There has never been a breach of convention in sex matters. But this girl cannot talk. Her sentences are incomplete. She uses signs to convey much of her meaning?shy smiles, nods and gestures convey more than do her words. She has a very limited vocabulary. She does not read so that she understands enough to give back the gist of what she has read. Her parents are good workers, but they have no language either. The school has not been of much benefit to this child in giving her real training in her English. The parents are not foreign-born. Their people have been generations in the United States. It is not because of a foreign language handicap that the vocabularies of the members of the family are small. Mary cannot make good in school now. She is too old to sit with the rest of the fifth graders, she is too large for their company, and she is too mature to enjoy tasks for which she is totally unfitted and for which she finds no use. She might have been able to do better, but the time for that is past now. There is no advantage to her or to the state in placing her in school. The problem which these girls present is the same as those of thousands of other children in our public schools today. It is the problem of the child who comes from a home where language is not an element in the training?where few books and newspapers appear, and where only the casual happenings of the day are discussed by the family, that is, where a vocabulary of some thousand words or so is sufficient to carry the family through any sort of crisis: or of the child who comes from a home where a foreign language is spoken and where his opportunity for the learning of English comes only through his contact with the school and the children on the streets. In either case the effect is the same. The child progresses through the grades with just enough English to get him past the examinations. He is often good in arithmetic and is passed on because his judgment and his ability to solve problems are good enough for a child of his grade, the language deficiency being passed over. The child learns the descriptions required by his language class, he reads the books required of the sixth grade, at least well enough to make his report upon them, but he lacks the ability to express himself on the simplest proposition in language suitable to gain his end. A child who can talk only in the patois of the street, including the gestures and exclamations, is not really adequately trained in language. The problem which the school has to face is very difficult to solve. The teacher of English knows that the greatest value which can be given to a lesson comes through the requirement which insists upon spoken English as its medium. Discussions, descriptions and oral reproduction produce much better results than does any amount of written work. If children are taught to speak properly, they must be given an opportunity to speak. The harassed teacher, however, points to the requirements for her grade and shows the amount of time which she could by hook and crook manage to extract from the requirements for spoken English. With fifty children in her room, the amount of time allotted per week is so small that the opportunity for each one to talk is very limited, so limited that the results are somewhat like those achieved in reading where the stumblers get as much time as do the others (or more) but nevertheless the aggregate time they read per week is so small that practice in reading is almost nil. Little can be gained in oral speech when the amount of practice available is so limited. Many a child can do as Sophie did?speak correctly and stagily for a moment, but carry nothing of this over to her daily speech.
The foreign child whose parents speak a foreign language in the home is another aspect of the same problem. He sits in kindergarten for a year or more and yet does not learn more than the meanings of half a dozen commands during the whole time he is there. He often enters first grade with no knowledge of English. He may pick up enough of the language to get on to second grade the first year, but the chances are that he remains in the first grade at least two years before he has acquired enough language to read at all. What is more important than that he should learn the language of his country? These children are not the children of immigrants. They are the children often of foreign-born parents, but in many cases their parents were born in the United States and still have failed to learn English enough to use it in their homes. Many children who apparently understand a great deal of English really understand their teachers?their gestures, the inflections of their voices?and it is these they obey and not the words which the teacher uses in her commands. Girls and boys of the sixth grade still are talking the sort of English one expects of the foreigner of three-months, residence.
The child who is dull can yet be taught to speak in something other than street-hoodlum fashion. If his language is what he gets on the street and his school training functions but occasionally, something has certainly been given him which is not his. The school has not been active enough to overcome the training of the street. Any advantage which the school gives him has been neutralized if the earmarks of good English are not present. This does not mean that the child shall speak with good accent and carefully chosen words?a desirable result, but one certainly rarely achieved. It does mean that the commonest errors of grammar shall be omitted, the sentences shall be complete, and that he shall have words enough to express himself fairly well on the simpler matters of life. There is no need to suppose that he needs a vocabulary above his station in life, but he should be able to speak of the affairs which concern him without requiring the services of the expletive and the outspread hands to finish the sentence he cannot complete.
The eighth grade graduate is being admitted to business colleges and trade schools. It is supposed that he is able to write a simple letter and to spell the more commonly used words with some degree of facility and correctness. The truth is that not more than half of these graduates are able to produce, without help, a creditable piece of work. With no one to oversee them and correct them, they are not able to do the simplest task correctly. The business college protects itself by graduating the child when it considers him ready and refusing to keep him within its halls if it judges him incompetent. The trade school also practices elimination after trial, and makes graduation depend upon success with the work in hand. The business man protects himself by requiring speed on one process. The plea from the business world is for more training. Perhaps the need of more training might be lessened if the training which the children receive in the elementary schools were better training.
Many children will never have an opportunity to learn language in the home. They are in the position of the small boy who was pointed out as the star of a second-grade class. He read well, he spelled and wrote better than any of the rest of the class, and he knew more number work than his class was supposed to have had. When tried out with the Binet test which depends so much upon language, his mental age was eight months less than his chronological age. A social worker visiting his home found that his mother and father were ignorant Irish people, good-hearted and ambitious for their boy, but offering him nothing in the home in the way of opportunity to increase his vocabulary. What this boy gets in language training must be secured in school. Thousands of children are limited in the same fashion. They will never learn to speak well in their homes. The school must give them all they are to have. What is more useful to a child than the ability to express himself in clear English?
Cannot a little more time be allotted to English in the lower grades? Children are supposed to get their English training from their reading, but must there not be more intensive training than this offers? More emphasis on oral expression in the upper grades and greater opportunity for oral work is necessary. Any child who is not too dull to keep in the regular grades will profit by direct language training.
There is no doubt that the primary teacher feels that her efforts at teaching English are wasted because the teacher in the upper grades does not continue the drill, and the teacher in the upper grades criticises the teacher in the primary because she does not send on a better product, and the teachers throughout the elementary school criticise the critic who says that the school must teach English, saying that the school can never overcome the effect of home training or the lack of it.
No doubt under present conditions they are right, but the solution of the problem is still left to the school. Americans are to be trained in the school. The school does not try to shirk its duty in that respect. Part of the training for citizenship is the training in language which places English above all other languages in this country and which makes the student so adept in his speech that he is not marked off from his fellows because of its lack. This is not too high a standard. The feeble-minded child can be taught to speak properly and correctly. It is only by means of language?our language?that our customs and institutions can be given to the coming generation of American citizens. It is imperative that these future citizens shall be given the tools with which to weld their citizenship.
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