Reginald
- Author:
Ross D. Murphy,
University of Pennsylvania.
Unconscious of what it meant and seemingly manifesting no desire to understand, Reginald went through the formality of the various tests in the clinic in a somewhat mechanical fashion without the usual interest displayed by the active, wide-awake youngster. Little did he care whether the cylinders were property placed or whether it required two or three minutes for the task. So far as he was concerned, there was no such abstract idea as competition. Why should he care? There was no relationship between the doing of a test and the certainty of his dinner. The philosophy of causation held no interest, not even incidental, in his experience. Almost twelve years old, yet the phenomena of the world about him were not sufficiently crossing the threshold of his consciousness to stimulate a why or a wherefore! He lived in the present. He postulated neither a world of the past nor one of the future. Events were not related to each other. The formation of associations?he abhorred them as nature abhors a vacuum.
After Reginald had been exposed to the various tests for a reasonable amount of time, and for the sake of courtesy had acquiesced to the usual cross-examination, he rested his case with the examiner without the thought of mercy or leniency. Guilty or not guilty, it was not a clear case. The evidence was conflicting. Social conformity was high, the intellectual level low. Being urged for an opinion, the examiner reluctantly handed down the opinion, diagnosis deferred, probably feebleminded, clinic teaching recommended. Reginald was brought to the clinic after being shifted from the parochial schools to the public schools, and thence to an 0. B. class in a special school. Like some cases of vaccination, so may it be said of his education, it did not take. What the teacher presented did not get into the stream of his consciousness. There remained but one course open for him. To go back to the parochial school was out of the question; his previous record excluded him. His conduct was such, in addition to his low level of intellect, that the public schools could not tolerate him. As to the special school, Reginald had a definite conviction, perhaps the only one he possessed, that he would never go back to it. He said the class was made up of “crazy kids” and if he continued to associate with them, lie too would become crazy, a thought which, if judged by the expression on his face when he uttered it, was horrible for him to entertain, one akin to the thought of death. He chose the only evil left and became a subject for clinic teaching. He made his appearance several times, then dropped out.
About a year later, his mother brought him back to the clinic for further teaching, partly perhaps because Reginald was possessed with a new desire, one which was commendable. It was the desire to learn to read, not primarily for the sake of indulging in the luxuries of a thrilling story, nor yet to read the sports news in the daily paper, but rather to be able to read the “signs” on the packages that filled the shelves in the grocery store, for his sole ambition, at this time, was to be a clerk behind the counter, serving customers. He was filled with an apparent enthusiasm as he related to me the desire o( his life work when he and I entered the clinic teaching room for the first lesson in the art of reading. He said he always had women teachers, but now with a man teacher he knew he would learn to read. Like Bill Nye, who conceived the idea that if he could get his big toe into a knot hole in the floor, he would be able to spell eveiy word as his turn came in the class, for, as he said, he saw a boy spell the hardest word in the book while sticking his toe in the hole in the floor.
Reginald did not make a bad appearance. He was well dressed, his hair neatly trimmed, he was polite and thoughtful, and bore the marks of social conformity in every respect. More than an impressionistic diagnosis was necessary to detect any abnormality. It was a new day for him. The coveted prize was within his grasp. If he could learn to identify “cream”, he said, he would never make a mistake in giving his customer the smelling kind instead of cream cheese. The ability to read, he thought, would be more reliable than the testimony of his nose. Little did he realize the tremendous task he was up against. If he could not identify packages by their color, shape and size, and their position on the shelf, how would he ever be able to identify words which demanded a much finer analytical discrimination?
His reading proficiency proved to be very poor. Many common three-letter words floored him unless he first spelled them. I<ourletter words gave him more difficulty. His memory span being no more than 4, the first part of a long word was forgotten by the time he spelled through to the last letter. The identification of a certain word in one sentence did not guarantee its identification in the following sentence. There was absolutely no carry over. He was taught the word “duckling” and identified it four times in a short story. Upon meeting it the fifth time toward the end of the story, he declared he never saw such a “funny looking” word.
To teach him to spell was without fruitage. We tried the word “lion”. After reading a story about a lion in which he met the word repeatedly and spelled it out every time to get it, this was the response in an attempt to spell the word, “1-i-n”, “1-i-e”, “1-i-n-e”, “l-i-a”, “1-i-n-g”, and “1-i-i”. The word was then placed on the board, looked at, talked about, and spelled over. As soon as he turned his face away from the board a few moments the word was gone, and a series of responses like those above given.
When I asked him in what month of the year we were, he confessed ignorance. Christmas he though came in July and of the Fourth of July he was not certain. As to winter and summer, he thought they might come in separate months, but he was not positive. Reginald’s home is one of culture and refinement. His brothers and sisters are perfectly normal, not the least sign of retardation in school work. What then shall we say about him? His nervous system seems to be shocked to pieces?disorganized, synaptical connections shattered, association centers paralyzed. It is evidently the result of a terrific blow to the most delicate of all organs, the nervous system. He presents the picture of a post-meningitic case, but his history is negative in this respect. About five years ago, however, Reginald met with an automobile accident. He was struck on the forehead and as an immediate result was unconscious for a few minutes. It was not considered serious at the time. The mother’s statement is that up until the time of the accident there was no noticeable retardation and that his school level today is the same as at the time of the accident. Whatever the cause, he is nervously a wrecked machine which refuses to function, leaving him without the ability to form associations?like writing upon the changing sands of the sea, nothing remains.
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