The Study of a Special Class Center
- Author:
Jessie M. Lightfoot
Supervisor of Mental Examinations, Department of Special
Education, Philadelphia
In all the three hundred seventy-five special classes in Philadelphia an effort is being made to care for the misfit and the nonconformed child?the one who is unable either for physical or mental reasons to fit into the organization of a regular class. In some sections of the city one class of this type to a school takes care of these misfits. In some more closely populated sections, it has been found more feasible to house eight or ten classes in one building. Whereas the isolated group meets the demands of certain communities, it is an expensive and impractical method of handling large numbers of children who require education along special lines. The concentration center made up of eight or ten classes makes it possible to grade the children according to their ability, and with the older children, to organize departmental work. Then too, the center offers much better facilities for shop work and domestic science. The center chosen for this survey is in one of the poorest sections of the city. The homes of most of the children are crowded closely between warehouses, factories, and railroad sidings. The narrow cobble streets always seem to be crowded with heavy trucks, shifting freight cars, and children. A railroad siding just behind the school building is quite a favorite haunt outside of school hours, serving also as a playground for truants during school time. So far as the financial status of this group is concerned, it is poor management rather than actual money that is lacking. The general appearance of the chilren is not prepossessing. They are neither well nourished nor well dressed. A large proportion of them are tall, lanky, overgrown and have awkward, shambling gaits. Their muscular coordination is poor. This is particularly noticeable in their gymnastic work. Though no actual statistics are available a very large percentage of the children are undernourished. They come from homes where no regular hours are kept either in regard to eating or sleeping. Frequently both parents are employed during the day. As a group, these children are more self reliant and independent than those found in a regular school. They are thrown on their own resources at an early age. They are accustomed to handling money. Though all the children stay at school at noon, practically none bring lunch from home. Pretzels, cakes, and milk are purchased at the store across from the school. The social standards of the neighborhood are not high. Several of the children are illegitimate. One little fellow came to the teacher in desperation one day, “What is my name, anyway? Some call me Joe Connor, me mother says it’s Joe Yokowski, but me sister says it’s the same as the man what’s living at our house this year.’’ Three of the children have fathers who are in prison?two on the charge of murder.
Many of the children have court records. Most of the offenses have been for stealing money, fruit, iron, copper or lead pipe. Several of the boys have been to the reform school at Glen Mills or to the Protectory, having been sent there chiefly for stealing or for confirmed truancy. Though these children are slow in learning school work they are keen and quick to grasp an opportunity to steal. One child in the lowest group was suspected of knowing the whereabouts of a watch belonging to one of the teachers which had disappeared from her desk as she turned to watch the class go to the dressing room. Close questioning and watching on the part of the teacher failed to disclose the lost article. An hour after school had been dismissed the janitor saw this boy rummaging through the garbage pail in the yard. Hidden at the very bottom was the watch. This boy was later under arrest for having attacked a little girl. Two children have been in the venereal ward of a hospital for nearly a year. The boy of eleven had infected his little sister of nine. Three girls were excused from school attendance because of pregnancy. One girl is a post encephalitic case. Following hospitalization for a year she gained sixteen pounds and her behavior became much more conformed. After her return home to the stress and strain and irregularity of the neighborhood life, she began to lose and also manifested at least in a mild degree, the typical picture of a post encephalitic. Three or four families are under the care of the S.P.C.C. One little girl of nine was attacked by a man in an empty warehouse. A little fellow of ten who is unable to talk, after an hour’s attempt finally made passersby realize that there was something wrong in the building. Though the wrath and indignation of the neighborhood ran high for the day, it soon died out and the case was never brought to court.
The seventy-five white children attending the school are for the most part from a very low social level. They are chiefly of German, Polish, Lithuanian, and Roumanian extraction. For the last three years there has been an influx of negroes from the south. Following the failure of the cotton crop as a result of the boll weevil, thousands of negroes came north with the expectation of receiving high wages. Although accustomed only to country and small town life they have tried to adjust themselves to the complexities of the large city. Because of high rents they have had to crowd together and live in one or two rooms. In the school neighborhood five and six families are living in one house. Moral conditions which at no time were above reproach have grown steadily worse because of these crowded conditions. Of the two hundred children examined one hundred twenty-five were colored. The children’s chronological ages range from seven years to sixteen years, six months. One hundred thirteen are boys and eighty-seven are girls. A large proportion of these children are adolescent. Many at thirteen and fourteen have the physical development of men and women. This is particularly true of the negro group.
The tests given included the Witmer Formboard, Healy A, Terman’s Revision of the starred Binet-Simon Tests, auditory and visual memory spans, school proficiency in reading and arithmetic. The time scores on the performances tests were higher than those found among the children in the regular grades. The children were uniformly much slower in general responses. They also learned much more slowly and did not profit well by previous experiences. They were unable to plan their work efficiently, in fact, most of the children worked almost entirely by trial and error methods. The few who attempted to plan their work used inferior methods and gained little in time. The negroes displayed a very deficient output of energy throughout the examination. A very glaring defect observed was that in making fine discriminations. Children of ten, eleven and twelve confused the hexagon and diamond, the isosceles and equilateral triangles on the Witmer Formboard. Not only was this lack of discrimination shown on the first trial but also, in many cases, on the second and third trials. Very few children succeeded in correctly placing five blocks of varying weights. Defective imagery was an almost universal defect. Despite the fact that negroes have previously been reported to have long memory spans, the results did not show this to be so. Visual and auditory memory spans were tested by series of digits. Previous investigations have shown that a memory span of four is necessary in order to learn first grade work as it is presented in the regular grades. Since many special class children have less than four it has been necessary to adapt the material taught. Few elements are given at a time and all material is presented in as simple and concrete a manner as is possible. Following is a table of the memory spans of this group. Two children were unable to repeat digits because of their inability to talk. Both, however, reproduced two on the tapping test.
Table 1. Auditory Memory Span Digits 12345678 Aud. No! Cases 2 3 7 45 68 57 15 1 Twelve children failed to read the digits on the visual memory span test. Table 2. Visual Memory Span Digits 12345678 Vis. No! Cases 0 0 10 31 62 46 37 2 Table 3. Witmer Form Board?First Trial . Seconds No. of Cases 15-19 4 20-24 23 25-29 37 30-34 35 35-39 19 40-44 25 45-49 15 50-54 10 55-59 8 60-64 3 65-69 5 70-74 3 75-99 2 100-124 2 125-149 2 194 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC 150-174 1 175-199 1 200-224 1 D.N.C 4 Table 4. Witmek Form Board?Best op Three Trials Seconds No. of Cases 10-14 8 15-19 50 20-24 41 25-29 35 30-34 32 35-39 8 40-44 10 45-49 5 50-54 3 55-59 2 60-69 1 70-79 0 80-89 2 90-99 1 100-109 0 110-119 1 Failure 1 Table 5. Healy A?First Trial Seconds No. of Cases 10-19 21 20-29 15 30-39 8 40-49 12 50-59 6 60-69 3 70-79 6 80-89 7 90-99 5 100-109 5 110-119 3 120-129 1 130-139 3 140-149 1 150-159 2 160-169 2 170-179 5 Failure 95 A SPECIAL CLASS CENTER 195 Table 6. Healy A?Best op Three Trials Seconds No. of Cases 0-9 28 10-19 110 20-29 34 30-39 3 40-49 9 50-59 2 60-69 0 70-79 2 80-89 0 90-99 0 100-109 2 110-119 1 Failure 9 Table 7. Chronological Age?Years and Months No. of Cases 7:0?7:5 3 7:6?7:11 4 8:0?8:5 4 8:6?8:11 7 9:0?9:5 8 9:6?9:11 13 10:0?10:5 8 10:6?10:11 15 11:0?11.5 4 11:6?11:11 12 12:0?12:5 14 12:6?12:11 19 13:0?13:5 14 13:6?13:11 16 14:0?14:5 17 14:6?14:11 17 15:0?15:5 15 15:6?15:11 6 16:0?16:5 3 16:6?16:11 1 Table 8. Mental Age?Years and Months No. of Cases less than 3 years 3 3:0?3:5 1 3:6?3:11 2 4:0?4:5 1 4:6?411 2 196 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC 5:0?5:5 4 5:6?511 6 6:0?6:5 8 6:6?6:11 18 7:0?7:5 32 7:6?7:11 36 8:0?8:5 20 8:6?8:11 24 9:0?9:5 21 9:6?9:11 10 10:0?10:5 7 10:6?10:11 3 11:0?11:5 2
When special class work was first organized in Philadelphia, hand work was stressed. A very large proportion of the dailyprogram was devoted entirely to manual work. It was felt that the children in these special groups were unable to profit by academic training. Today, however, stress is placed on the fundamentals of Reading, Spelling and Arithmetic, though handwork is also included in the daily program. Effort is being made to teach every child at least the rudiments of school work. Attempts are being made to make the Reading work as practical as possible. Frequently it has been found that by the time a child has been transferred to a special class group, he is bored to death with the very thought of a Reading lesson. This is usually due to the fact that he has been in the same grade for fifteen, twenty or twenty-five months, hearing the same work over and over again. Often he can “read” page after page from the book though he is unable to identify a single word. It is the job of the teacher of the special class to begin at the very beginning and build up a reading vocabulary for a child, a vocabulary which contains words he understands and uses in every day life. Traffic signs, directions found in public buildings and danger signals of various types usually make a good starting point and arouse the child’s lagging interest. Because of the restricted memory span of many of these children, a sentence method is not practical. In general, a word and phonic method is used though, by no means, exclusively. Poor imagery in either the auditory or visual fields, or both, is very nearly a universal defect among the special class group having difficulty learning to read. Progress is very slow and it is only after innumerable repetitions followed by intensive drill that these children eventually learn to read. The teacher aims to teach the child to read and spell ordinary words such as are found in the daily news. Among this particular group at the present time, thirty-four have no proficiency, fifty-one read at the first grade level, fifty-two at the second grade and twenty-nine at the third grade. Thirty-four can read and comprehend ordinary newspaper material. In arithmetic seventy-four have first grade proficiency, thirty-three have second grade, thirty-eight can do third grade work and thirty-three have fourth grade proficiency, while twentytwo have no proficiency in this subject. The child having the lowest I.Q. (33.7) is a fourteen year old colored girl from the South. Though extremely dull in general responses and displaying a very deficient output of energy, still she works after school, washing dishes in a neighborhood restaurant. The maximum I.Q. of 101.2 belongs to a little seven year old colored girl, well conformed socially, but very slow in learning new work. With intensive teaching and much drill she will learn the fundamentals of school work but she learns much too slowly ever to make normal progress in a regular grade for age. The median I.Q. for the group is 64.1 and the mode 75. The mental ages range from three years to eleven years five months, with seven years six months as a median and seven years three months as a mode. It was impossible to determine I.Q’s. for three children, due to lack of language ability. One of these failures is a fifteen year old cretin girl, another is a seven year old white child who understands what is said to her but cannot talk. The third failure is an eight year old boy, who understands all that is said and who is commencing to respond to intensive speech training.
A large percentage of children failed in copying the diamond. This was particularly true of the colored group whose psychomotor control is poor. Many of the children understood the problem and tried to analyze the drawing but, despite strenuous efforts on their part, their diamonds always had ears or handles at the sides. Training at the blackboard in copying and tracing seems to help this defect and acts as a good basis for penmanship. Fine discriminations are difficult for this type of child. Even children .of normal mentality who come from homes where only a foreign language is spoken, naturally are somewhat handicapped. They soon learn to use English as fluently as their parents’ native tongue. This fact, however, is not true of the dull child. Despite five hours a day in school where only English is spoken, he continues to have a very limited vocabulary as well as a poor use and comprehension of the English language. Nor is this limited vocabulary and poor language ability confined to the children coming from non-English speaking homes. Despite the fact that 72 per cent of the children in this school come from homes where only English is spoken?60 per cent of them failed the vocabulary test at the eight year level on the Binet Test. Not a single child passed the twelve year vocabulary test on this scale and only 71/2 per cent succeeded in passing it at the ten year level. The definitions given were uniformly poor from the qualitative standpoint. Words were defined chiefly in terms of use rather than genus. This language deficiency showed itself in the questions involving likenesses and differences between groups of common objects and in the interpretations of the fables and pictures. Most of the children succeeded in making the sentences using the three specified words. This was probably due to the fact that they are familiar with this type of material and have been given daily drill on the making of sentences. Detection of absurdities was an almost universal failure for the children less than twelve. The younger children failed to grasp the problem involved and many of the older ones comprehended it only after several repetitions.
Despite the fact that these children are much retarded intellectually still it is safe to say that fully 90 per cent of them will be able to earn their own living and be socially independent. They are perfectly capable of holding a simple job, working on a farm, or in a house, factory, store, or with a construction gang. True their work must be supervised but with this supervision they can be trained to a fairly high degree of efficiency?some to a high degree. Although not yet sixteen some have already demonstrated their earning capacity. One boy of fifteen who is well oriented from the social standpoint, though his I.Q. is only 60.6, goes to Palm Beach “for the season.” He makes enough as a caddy to pay his own expenses. Albert, aged fifteen, is a low grade microcephalic who has held a job in a pretzel factory for three years. Though his I.Q. is only 36.6 he has worked every day after school and all day during vacation. True his work is of a simple repetitive type and the factory is close to his home, still he is able to earn from $5 to $11 a week. Practically all the children coming from the country district of the South, especially from Georgia and South Carolina, have worked in the fields. School attendance there was a secondary consideration. These southern negro children apparently like the city life and in a few month’s time most of them become fairly well adjusted. A few hold regular jobs after school and on Saturdays as errand boys. Others earn money selling papers. Two have regular newspaper routes. One boy has a shoe shining stand and earns from $5.50 to $8.00 a week. Several of the girls earn money by cleaning, caring for children, helping with housework, and one is a dressmaker’s helper. As for the twenty children who probably will become social dependents, two are cretins. Two others are epileptics. One of these is responding well to medical treatment. There are three hydrocephalics. Arrangements are now being made to have one of these children placed in an institution. Thirteen of the children showed marked psychopathic tendencies. They are decidedly unstable emotionally and are disturbing elements not only in the classroom but also at home. It is possible of course that some of these may not develop into definite psychoses but that, following the unstable period of adolescence, the condition will tend to improve.
Conclusions
1. Colored children who have recently come from the South show a deficient output of energy and generally poor muscular coordination.
2. Learning ability even for concrete material is poorer than that found among regular grade children. They showed a marked lack of speed. Their methods of working are generally poor and the planfulness they show is of an inferior quality.
3. Memory spans are short. The supposition that colored children have long memory spans is apparently a fallacy.
4. These children have restricted vocabularies and a generally poor use and comprehension of the English language. This language deficiency is not confined to children coming from non-English speaking homes.
5. A diagnosis of “feebleminded” does not necessarily follow an I.Q. below 70.
6. Failure in school work does not mean failure in the ability to meet the social demands of the community. A child feebleminded on the intellectual scale may have ability to earn a good living.
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