The Vocational Adjustment of Mental Defectives
- Author:
Emily T. Burr, Ph.D.
Vocational Adjustment Bureau for Girls, New York City The study of the minds, emotions, physical equipment, heredity and personal history of unfit, ill-adapted and anti-social human beings is engaging the attention of a growing army of psychologists, alienists and criminologists, and numerous statistics have been Published based upon the results of mental tests administered by Psychologists, psychiatrists and professors of pediatrics. The correlation of the results of these tests with a plan for the industrial life of the individual, however, has received markedly kittle attention. There seems still to be a tendency to announce the mental age, or the I. Q. of a mental defective, as if the determination of his mental status were an end in itself?instead of an index to a capacity which perhaps may be developed through training.
Difficulties in the Guidance of the Feebleminded Vocational Guidance is not an exact science even when used to direct the activities of perfectly normal human beings. It is complicated in large centers of population by the over-supply of socalled 1’white collar” workers for the available “white collar” jobs. Among workers of average intelligence there is a disposition to secure employment without the help of a vocational counselor. There is also the fact that the worker has the resource of being able to fill acceptably a score of jobs differing more or less in technique and character. If, therefore, the normal boy or girl cannot find employment at the occupation for which each is particularly fitted there is always the alternative of engaging in another occupation, sometimes even in an uncongenial and distasteful occupation, for be must needs go whom the devil drives.”
When it comes to guiding mental defectives in the choice of an occupation the task is much more difficult than when the placement of normal workers is to be effected. More guidance is required and less vocations are open. For a hundred jobs open to workers of average intelligence, there are only a quarter of that number suitable and within the ability of workers of inferior intelligence.
Another difficulty is that, although the counselor may have accurately gauged the mechanical ability of the applicant whom he sends to a power-press job, let us say, and may have studied as well the anomalies of her character and temperament, there are always unexpected factors which operate to render the mental defective utilizable in one job and unutilizable in another, though both jobs may be identical in character and requirements. There is much in the saying “you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink.” There is also food for reflection in the fact that, despite the wisdom of the maxim that beggars cannot be choosers, beggars do choose, or at least refuse that which has been chosen for them.
One of the most important things to obtain from a mental defective seeking a job is the abandonment of her own mistaken preferences and the concurrence in the judgment of the counselor that this preference is unjustified and impossible of realization. It is comparatively easy to place a worker with no fixed idea as to her capability, but next to impossible to place, and keep employed after placement, a mental defective who is under the delusion that some other more agreeable and more remunerative job is within her powers.
Experiments in Vocational Adjustment
In Rochester and in Des Moines, and several other cities, boys from ungraded classes are trained to become shoe repairers. They mend the shoes of the poor free of charge, thus gaining experience which later fits them to assist in commercial shoe-repairing concerns. As garage attendants, they may continue their school drill for the position of mechanics’ assistants.
In Newark, under Dr Meta Anderson, training courses in vocational values are successful in establishing work habits and in making what might be termed “personality adjustments.” Efficient as are all these institutions, they do not begin to provide for the many who are in need of occupational training. Dr Edgar A. Doll, director of research of the Training School at Vineland, New Jersey, estimates that only one-tenth of the feebleminded of the country are being taken care of by state institutions, and that the vast majority of the feebleminded are at large in the community.
The salvaging of the mentally defective is no longer a theory. It has been demonstrated again and again that there are plenty of moron jobs; plenty of repetitive and monotonous occupations created by the automatization of industry that are within the limited capacity of moron brains. All that remains to be done is the fitting of moron brains to moron jobs. Dr Frankwood Williams, formerly medical director of the National Committee for Mental Hygiene, has been quoted to the effect that the world could not go on without the feebleminded. “A great deal of the world’s work,” says Dr Williams, “is cut out for them.”
In New York City, the Vocational Adjustment Bureau for Girls, which has now been in operation for ten years, is attempting to fit the worker to her work. Many of its applicants are mental defectives. The Bureau is almost entirely supported by private funds. Under the leadership of its founder and president, Mrs. Ilenry Ittles?n, it has grown from a small committee functioning under a branch of the Big Sister Organization to an incorporated, non-sectarian social agency serving in its capacity of vocational counseling and placement some 300 different welfare groups.
It has been found that one of the first steps in vocational guidance is the possession by the vocational counselor of a knowledge ?f the demands, both physical and mental, made upon the worker by the occupation. Before directing a worker to a job, the vocational counselor should know what capacities are needed for a satisfactory filling of the job. The other requisite, the knowledge of the ability possessed by the worker, comes after.
The Significance of Mental Age in Occupational Adjustment In 1929, with the financial assistance of the New York Foundation, the Vocational Adjustment Bureau made a survey to determine the minimum degree of mental effort requisite for adequate work in each of two thousand jobs. The idea was to ascertain the minimum mental age level required in each occupation. This study occupied many months and involved the job analyses of forty-one different forms of occupation. Some two thousand and forty-nine jobs were studied. It was found that in nineteen of these occupations girls measuring as low as six years mentally possessed adequate ability to secure and retain employment. It was ascertained that the occupations of Assembling, Packing, Miscellaneous Light Factory Jobs of various sorts, Examining, Pasting, Cutting, Folding, Handsewing, Press Machine Operating, Garment Machine Operating, and Stock Work could employ usefully girls measuring less than twelve years mentally.
Girls with a mental age of six years can acquit themselves satis58 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC factorily in Packing, and in simple factory work. At a mental age of seven, they can hold their own in the assembling of parts, as errand girls, and in jobs examining and pasting.
Girls of the minimum age of eight years were found employed in garment machine operating, cutting, and folding. At the nine year mental level, girls were working at handsewing, press operating, simple numerical or alphabetical filing, and stock work. The mental age of ten is the minimum clerical level, while an eleven year mental age seems to be the minimum for success in selling. It is assumed, in working out these conclusions, that the task to be performed by these girls is not complicated by disturbing factors such as excessive noise, too rapid tempo of machinery, or irritability on the part of foreman or shop manager. It is also essential that, in the application of the suggestions made in this survey, the counselor should not rely wholly upon the results of the mental tests, but take into account the total situation surrounding each individual child. It is important that a battery of tests be given to discover special aptitudes. Some idea of his probable mental level is always, however, a pre-requisite to the satisfactory placement of a feebleminded individual.
In arriving at our minimum age levels, we considered the mental age levels obtained by Miss Vanuxem at Laurelton Village as furnishing the lower rungs of an ascending ladder of possible jobs for the feebleminded, but realized that girls who have lived in a restricted environment in which discrepancies are overlooked are not comparable to girls working in outside jobs where no leniency is shown and where distractions are more frequent.
The employer cannot afford to be sentimental in his own factory or workshop. He is concerned with the productivity of his employees, not with their peace of mind. The laborer must be worthy of his hire, and when mental or physical impediments are such as to preclude his giving value received, it is idle to invoke humanitarian reasons for his retention in employment. The employer who would give these exclusive consideration would quickly find himself at a disadvantage in competition with the employer who is moved solely with the idea of low cost and the avoidance of waste.
Factors in Individual Adjustment
The Vocational Adjustment Bureau for Girls proceeds on the theory that mal-adjustment is the underlying cause of most of the failures encountered in the placement of girls of subnormal inADJUSTMENT OF MENTAL DEFECTIVES 59 telligence, psychopathic tendencies, and inadequate social behavior. In order to readjust these workers to tasks within their limited capacities, they are studied individually from three distinct angles: Physical, psychological and social. The first is a constant and the other two, variables in the equation which results in adjustment or wal-adjustment.
Ten years of experience have taught us that mental tests are not sufficient in determining economic adaptability. Every girl who applies or is sent to the Bureau for placement is subjected to ft series of psychometric, eye-and-hand, and manual dexterity tests, to reveal as much as possible the anomalies of character and the peculiarities of temperament that set her apart from normal girls of her age and heredity. In the analysis of these girls, another factor of the utmost importance is the emotional factor. In the examination of applicants at the Bureau, the physical characteristics of the girl are first appraised. Her height, her Weight, the condition of her feet and hands are noted. The state ?f her wearing apparel is even taken into consideration. The next matter to engage the attention of the interviewer is the social situation of the girl. It is necessary to go below the surface and to form an appraisal of all the factors that go to the making of what is called “personality.” An attempt is made to discover the secret urge of each applicant, the thing she wants to do most. This may sometimes be ascertained by asking the girl what her earliest memories are, the first event in her life that she remembers. She may also be asked to formulate three wishes, state the three things she wants most. Quite frequently the answers to this questionnaire give a clue to the thing in which she is interested or likely to become interested. It sometimes throws light upon apparent anomalies and enables one to discern the underlying difficulties in the way of the girl’s success and what has impeded her proper adjustment. In addition to these self-analyses, the girl is asked to write a letter such as she would write to a friend long without news of her. When necessarj- she is prompted by questions about what she does when she returns home from school or from work; what she is particularly interested in; who her closest companions are, whether or not she has a boy-friend, whether she concentrates upon ?ne boy or divides her time among several, whether she has one girl-friend, or many.
In an effort to have the girl express herself freely, the last question reads: ‘’ Tell me more about yourself, anything that occurs to you,” to which one girl replied, “Nothing has occurred to me yet, thank God!”
It is quite obvious that the value of these various ways of testing and of analyzing responses depends upon their interpretation. Tales of persecution at home, of jealousy between brothers and sisters, of preferment by one or the other parent may not always be accepted as gospel. It becomes necessary for the investigator to distinguish between the vivid imagination of a neurotic or of an ego-centric with an instinct for the dramatic and the truthful revelation of a passive and non-imaginative subject whose grievances are justified. It is easier to describe methods for measuring the physical and intellectual limitations of these girls than it is to set forth ways for measuring their emotional reactions.
Tests Employed in Measuring the Vocational Aptitudes of the Feebleminded Having established the fact that frequently high manual dexterity can be possessed by individuals lacking so-called general intelligence, all the applicants at the Bureau are subjected to several mechanical and trade tests which yield fairly accurate and very valuable information.
Since the Terman Revision of the Binet-Simon test offers a well-standardized form of appraisal, this test may be used as a basis for a general testing program. Among other points on this scale it is important to note the ability to comprehend instructions, the memory span, the facility for making change, reading or copying a model. No matter how slightly one type of response may excel another in testing the feebleminded the fact should be noted, for in making suggestions as to training or work, every positive clue as to a girl’s capacity should be sought and given due emphasis. Sometimes a fair sense of size and form may be discerned in an otherwise quite dull and colorless series of reactions. Then, if the girl can sew or has some degree of manual dexterity, she may be placed where copying of a model is an essential part of her work. The most important of the trade tests is the Toop’s Girls’ Mechanical Assembly Test which for vocational purposes is divided into five, groups of tests including: simple assembling, hard assembling, pasting, sewing and the trimming test. Each one of these eleven operations, regardless of its difficulty, is evaluated at ten points. A score of fifty out of a possible one hundred and ten Points is approximately the minimum score upon which placement in an industrial job can be safely recommended. Girls obtaining lower scores than fifty may, with training, become sufficiently skilled to hold a job in which the work is not too exacting. Limiting the girl to the forty-five minute time-limit has been found impracticable at the Bureau and the girl is allowed to work until she has completed, or attempted, the entire set of tests. It would be desirable to time each of the single tests, separately, but this would require more supervision during the test period than it is usually practicable to give.
The Porteus Maze and the two Treat Machine Operating tests, which consist of the paper folding tests, a trimming test and a more difficult set which comprises an electrical device that determines varying degrees of motor control, are of vocational value. I lie second test is a help in prognosticating the innate ability that a girl niay possess for handling the finer grades of machine operating. The MacQuarrie Test for Mechanical Ability includes three tests which are valuable in determining the visual acuity and motor control of subjects of low grade intelligence. The Army Performance Scale is very helpful when administered to persons who do not speak English.
The Thurstone Clerical and Tj7ping Tests may often be of assistance in a negative fashion, as an aid in convincing parents who have determined’ that a feebleminded daughter shall go in for office work, that such a career is not suitable for her. An objective illustration of what is entailed in office procedure and the errors that the poor daughter has made will frequently have greater effect upon the parent than a prolonged discussion.
Industrial Opportunities for the Feebleminded The mechanizing of industry has opened many fields to the feebleminded which hitherto had been open only to skilled mechanics. It is not hard to remember when the operating of an elevator demanded a sure hand, a certain amount of robustness, eye-hand co-ordination, and the exercise of good judgment. This occupation is now quite within the powers of an operator measurlng ten years mentally. Many of our sociologists have expressed alarm over the growing Use of machinery and the gradual elimination of hand labor. What Julius Klein, Assistant Secretary of Commerce, calls “tech62 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC nological unemployment” would be alarming if our modern age did not find new employment for the workers displaced by machinery. In a middle-western state, there is today a huge plant which is filled by what is really a single machine. It turns out complete automobile frames, almost untouched by human hands. At the beginning of the world war, one factory operator in the American Razor Blade Industry was turning out, in a given period of time, five hundred blades. Now, in the same time, he turns out thirty-two thousand blades. The hourly output of four ounce bottles used to be seventy-seven; now it is three thousand. In 1925, one hundred men produced as many automobiles as were produced by two hundred seventy-two in 1914, refined as much petroleum as was refined by one hundred sixty-one, and as much iron and steel as one hundred fifty-nine men. The situation is not as alarming as would at first appear, however, since science has, until now, created new needs and new occupations for those which it has eliminated. The pay-roll last year in the most recently developed of our industries, the radio industry, was more than two hundred million dollars, and it is not surprising to hear that many mental defectives are rendering perfectly satisfactoiy service in this new field of endeavor.
Another serious factor in the placement of workers, whether normal or subnormal, is the seasonal quality of many of the occupations which are open to them. Partly because of this, the placement of mental defectives is seldom definite, and is a continual repetition.
In an attempt to overcome the difficulties which seasonality entails, the workers at the Bureau have compiled an industrial calendar showing the fluctuations in those industries in which many of its applicants are placed. Reference to the calendar makes it possible to direct into active industries workers no longer utilizable in industries which have suddenly become inactive.
The Problem of Emotional Instability The emotionally unstable mental defective is always a most serious and difficult problem. From this group is recruited the delinquent, the shiftless, the gangster’s tool, the hobo and the ne’er-do-well. It is, therefore, of the utmost importance that an effort be made to stabilize, through trade training and the supervised job, the members of this group. Only work involving the use of the large muscles, work that offers variety and little restriction of body movement, will satisfy them.
Boys of this type may be more easily placed in jobs that offer variety and movement than girls. They may be placed as helpers on trucks, as plumbers’ and carpenters’ and farmers’ assistants, as delivery and errand boys, busboj’s, bootblacks and as general helpers in a large number of occupations.
For the unstable subnormal girl, unfortunately, there are few occupations available. Housework has long been considered a job for tlie moron, and it does fulfill the specifications that have been outlined as essential for the unstable mentally defective girl, but applicants at the Bureau usually refuse to enter the field. Housework in all its phases, and this includes waitress and chamberwork as well as tlie tasks of a general liouseworker, is shunned. Social opprobrium has been unjustly attached to this form of service, and even the feebleminded seem to be aware of it. “Looking after a child,” comes within the capacity of subnormal girls, and often they are eager to secure such work, but no emotionally unstable mental defective should ever be entrusted with the responsibility that this task involves.
Errand girl jobs offer freedom of movement, but only the very young girl js jn demand for such openings. Some of the operations a laundry are within the scope of a girl of this type, but out-ofdoor work such as is easily obtainable for the boy cannot be secured for girls. For this reason, better success may be expected when the placement work of emotionally unstable defective boys is compared with that of girls of like caliber.
Occupational Training for the Feebleminded About a year ago, the Bureau obtained the cooperation of tlie ljoard of Education of New York City, who placed at its disposal several teachers and fifteen class rooms in the Harlem Continuation School. There an effort is made to create work habits, and develop manual skill in girls of working age who have proved unreceptive to the fixed school curriculum dealt out to normal children. In a number of cases these girls, who have attained the age of sixteen and do not reach an average mental age of eleven, can eventually be fitted for profitable employment through intensive training in one single industrial operation. The interesting fact which may be observed is that in almost every instance improvement grows out of repetition. The mental defective has a definite economic value and this value can be developed and increased through patient training of the feet and fingers, if not of the mind.
Incidentally, as Froebel and Montessori have demonstrated, physical training involves mental training. The concept of attention is a state of perseverance. The difference between a normal and subnormal worker feeding a belt-conveyor, for instance, is not always to the disadvantage of the subnormal. Power Machine Operating, Sample Mounting, Handsewing, the assembling of radio and electric light parts, have proved the most successful types of training in these unit courses as far as placement of the girls is concerned. Courses are also being given in foot-press operating, labeling, lamp shade work, wrapping, packing, and folding large garments. The folding of small articles demands more speed than this group can attain.
The greatest difficulty is experienced in getting the girls to begin their work quickly. They “fuss around” interminably, and it requires infinite patience over a consecutive period finally to instill in some of them a sense of responsibility to their supervisor. Volitionally, they are weak, often careless and so lacking in persistence that only through constant and tireless effort can satisfactory work habits be established.
Frequently the counselors at the Bureau have found that girls were discharged after a few hours’ trial because they were too slow to learn the process on the job. Sometimes they were frighttened by their surroundings, at the clatter of speeded-up machinery, or perhaps by instructions given them by a stranger in what, to them, was a terrifying tone. Fear grips them and they become incapable of making even their comparatively poor “best effort.” Teaching the girl of this type quietly in an environment resembling a factory, but at a slower rhythm, removes this element of bewilderment. Though these unit courses are a relatively recent development the results achieved are very encouraging.
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