The Public School and the Problem Child
- Author:
Gladys G. Ide
Director of Special Education, Philadelphia Public Schools The Division of Special Education is a part of the Public School organization in Philadelphia. The Division includes a director, thirteen psychologists, four supervisors of academic subjects, one of industrial arts, two speech supervisors, with cooperation from the Divisions of Physical Training, Music, Art, Commercial Education, Industrial Arts, in supervision of special subjects. Such an organization is handicapped by all of the problems faced by schools in the matter of equipment and help which must be paid for by the public. Many items which are desirable are missing from the organization but on the contrary, all that we have have been paid for.
The clinic conducted by the Division of Special Education finds plenty of cooperation among the hospitals of the city in regard to physical examinations and treatments which are deemed useful. We have within the school group our Division of Medical Inspection but as this division is a public health organization it does not function in treatment, except as occasional personal relations make it possible to get suggestions from our physicians. However, the psychologists usually know the social organizations of the various hospitals and are acquainted personally with doctors to whom they may refer cases for which medical care must be provided. The Division of Compulsory Education has within its group, not only attendance officers, who are socially trained, but also a social organization which will make home visits when necessary. It is through this division that placement is made through the Courts and to whom placement problems may be referred. It is also possible for members of the clinic to make use of the social agencies which are a part of the welfare service of the city. Many of the agencies like the White Williams Foundation and the Mothers’ Assistance Fund, make use of our public school clinic as a regular part of their routine and their services as well as many others not mentioned, are available to the public schools.
The school is an educational institution and the first problem of the psychological clinic is concerned with the education of the children rather than with any other aspect. That is, when a child is referred to the clinic, it is usually necessary for recommendations regarding school placement to be made immediately and the possibilities for different types of school placement are of course limited. We have the regular grade routine which consists of: a kindergarten, from which the children are automatically promoted at five and a half years or thereabouts; six grades of elementary school and three of junior high school; followed by three grades in the senior high school. In addition, in the lower grades of elementary school the children are divided into sections in many organizations, so that a child often may be placed in a slow moving group, which gives him an opportunity to take it slowly, at least for the first year or two. And then he may be placed in any of the special classes?restoration, disciplinary, backward, English, orthopedic, sight-saving, deaf, nutrition and nutrition tuberculous. He may also receive, in many of the different school organizations^ speech correction and lip reading. In the junior high schools the children are divided into sections, oftentimes the lowest group being a special class. It is possible, therefore, for children to be grouped fairly well as to their capacity to do school work. In special classes for the backward, groups are divided into adolescent and preadolescent groups and then sub-divided into school proficiency groups and the same holds true for the disciplinary children. The line between the different groups is very vague and children may be changed if the principal and teacher feel that they will be benefited by the change. The supervisor and psychologist also make recommendations of this type.
The psychological clinic is in session all day, every school day with two psychologists in charge each day. On Saturday there are six clinics. The psychologists who do not work in the clinic are sent into the schools. They are employed in schools of every type, in the district offices of compulsory bureau, in the employment offices and the trade schools. Any child attending school within the school district of Philadelphia may be examined at the clinic. Reference is made by superintendents, school principals, social agencies, supervisors, parents or any other who stands in relation to the child.
The best therapeutic agent in regard to school peccadillos and street non-conformity is the teacher. If the child is so non-conformed as to be unable to get along in his regular grade group, he will be referred to the clinic for both treatment and placement. Many of our children are disciplinary or non-conformed or unhappy, because they do not fit into the school organization to which they are sent at first. It used to be that schools tended to hold their children until after they had had what was called a chance and a group of children eventually reached special classes who were retarded, often non-conformed and with a very poor atitude toward school and with poor school habits. A campaign has been rigorously waged for many months to get the principals to refer these children before bad habits should have been established and truancy, which is the first symptom of dissatisfaction, be started. This campaign has been successful in that the age level of the children entering special schools has been consistently lowered and there is more and more tendency for the principals to insist upon placement of children who are not now capable of doing the work of the regular grade. Their solicitude is directed for the benefit of the children who are left in the regular grade, who receive all of the teacher’s time and who respond much better when a large residue of the class is not backward.
Many backward children are not nonformed because of the development of feelings of inferiority since they were unable to do the work which the school demanded and the only way in which they could make compensation was in changing their activities into responses to which the teacher objected. By far the largest number of disciplinary cases of all types belong to the group of children who are definitely backward in their school responses and who are either retarded or are potential retardates. The placement of these children in classes by themselves, presided over by attractive and well trained teachers, and with curriculi of the type which is termed unit” in educational circles, and which is accompanied in the younger classes by activity programs, has resulted in a marked drop m the number of cases of truancy or of objectionable classroom behavior. The child who is successful in school work and who may obtain a place of honor in his school organization is likely to give fuller cooperation with the school so that the best psycho-therapeutic agent which we have for the ordinary backward-disciplinary type is a good school organization in an adequate school building, with excellent teachers, administering a curriculum which is arranged so that each child may gain a feeling of success and interest in the school work to which he is expected to give his attention. Following these children through their school lives are attendance officers, who see to it that the children do not get led away by groups who may be truanting, and who find each year the problem is a little easier, the number of cases, a little less.
Among the high school groups, including the junior high school, truancy is also a symptom, oftentimes of a mental level which is too low for any possibility of success in a high school organization. When vocabulary is very narrow, the use of abstractions, definitely impossible, and taste and desires are such as to call the child away from school work, the problem is again one of the backward child who is in a school grade higher than that in which he can hope to succeed. The problem is one of school placement in groups suitable to the needs of the child. However, the high school child who is dissatisfied with school, and who is capable, mentally of doing the work in a high school, is often found by the psychologist, either in the school or in one of the offices of the Compulsory Bureau. In most cases, dissatisfaction, especially at home, disgust with the school because of some emotional response, to which the child takes exception, are causes for the undesirable behavior, and a large number of causes do not recur after they have had examinations with psychologists, who attempt to get the children to understand that they must stand upon their own feet and make the accommodations within their homes themselves and as far as it is necessary, also to make accommodations within the school. Some of the problems which these adolescent children face, have to do with relationships in the home with which they are dissatisfied, relatives in some cases, divorces, or the presence of boy or girl friends of the parents, jealousies because of fancied or real difference in treatment afforded to members in the family, and step-parents. In many cases these grievances are real and the child has a right to feel disgruntled but also in many cases, there is nothing that can be done about the situation and the adaptation must be made by the child himself. The psychologist tries to make the child see his own problems and make his own adjustments unless the parents are willing to give full cooperation in a program about which they are already convinced. The clinic makes no effort to secure cooperation from hostile parents or from indifferent or uninterested parents as there is too little money to be used attempting what is usually not too successful. Many children in high school, after their treatment by the psychologist, are able to make their own adjustments and are not afterward school problems.
High school problems are often related to the antipathies which grow up between teacher and pupil especially when the pupil is adolescent and the teacher not grown up and most intolerant. Here again, except for possible transfers to different educational sections, the psychologist must deal with the individual. The major part of the problems which the adolescent child presents are those involved in sex. The impossibility of confiding in parents or teachers brings the child to the psychologist, working in the school, through the school counselor, who contributes a great deal in this city to the stabilization of the adolescents. The inability of the children to get exact information concerning sex; the problems “which arise in foreign homes where children are attempting to bring in the ideals and attitudes of the larger part of the group; the problems of matrimony, especially in cases of Greek girls; the falling in love, with individuals both inside the school and out, including teachers of both sexes; homosexuality and other sexual irregularities are problems which must be met in the high school. Typical responses are of the following types. A boy refused to go to school because he took a very popular young lady to a school dance and then insisted on sitting out the dances and discussing socialism with her. She threw him over and the feeling of shame and inferiority, which had probably induced the situation in the first Place, were such that a great deal of time was required to bring the boy around to the viewpoint that inviting young ladies to a dance implied dancing?his attitude being that she was “dumb” or she would not have wanted to dance. Stories told to a group of rather infantile and unsocial girls concerning anatomical problems, about which they were curious, were so far from the truth that it would seem impossible for them to be believed, especially when they included as one of their tenets the fact that the child was likely to drop dead at any time, produced such an emotional reaction as to keep the children from functioning in school and rendered them more anti-social than ever. Shock, resulting from the death of a seemingly beloved mother, but really a much hated one, changed a girl’s work from good to failure and resulted in her being referred to a psychologist. Many cases in high schools would be unobserved were it not for the change from good passing ratings to failures, which make the teacher or counselor question the causes.
Similar types of cases occur in the compulsory bureau where children are brought into a magistrate’s court or before the supervisor in an attendance office, because of difficulties on the street or truancies. Prevalent among this group is the failure to be satis4 fied with home conditions, most of which are deplorable, and the failure to compensate for dissatisfaction in school, so that the only satisfaction which can be found will come from the glorification of the gangster and imitation of him.
Cases referred in the elementary school for discipline or behavior difficulties, outside of the group who are retarded in school proficiency, include the different types of truancies, stealing and other criminal acts, sexual maladjustments, and so forth, all of which may be adjusted through the efforts of the psychologists and the cooperating school authorities.
Good results are secured with the deaf, the semi-sighted, the crippled, the heart cases and the nutrition groups through segregation and good teaching in their own fields, with school accommodation for the defects, including such items as bus service for the crippled and car tokens for others physically handicapped, rest period, food service and medical care, either from the school physician or the hospital. These children succeed at their level in the classes for children of their types and fail in elementary school. Unless they have very fine personalities and are equally good mentally they do not do very well in the upper schools, because they are attempting to compete with those who are their superiors and they build up a feeling of inferiority from which they are not likely to recover.
Another group of children appearing in our schools are much more difficult to deal with than those which have been cited. Children suffering from the sequelae of birth injuries, epidemic encephalitis, or other brain injuries, which may possibly be caused by measles, mumps, meningitis and brain tumors, are brought into the schools and sometimes do well but many times do not. Children whose minds are deteriorating will not do well and will eventually have to be excused from school. They are primarily medical cases and not educational problems. Amazing results, both in the acquirement of school proficiency, and in social response are sometimes made by those suffering from various forms of birth injuries. These children require of the school a great amount of accommodation for some of them are so queer as to make it almost impossible for them to respond to school routine. A boy with a suggestion of petit mal but with no other outward symptoms seems to go almost insane at times and becomes destructice, vulgar and noisy. He is certainly unconscious at the time of his acts and there are apparently few preliminary symptoms. His teachers and principal must expect suddenly to find themselves with a violent, screaming, destructive child on hand. At times, when the teacher thinks this boy may burst out, he is sent from the room and allowed to wander through the school, choosing the class in which he prefers to be. He likes the kitchen and oftentimes will stay there when he will not remain in any other classroom. Sometimes he will sit in the yard for hours, taking no part in the activity of the school. Another child of this type states frankly that he desires to commit suicide because he knows that there is no place in the world for a child who is handicapped as he is handicapped by birth palsy. He speaks the truth and though the school makes every effort to give him some notion of success for himself, he is a bright boy and does not believe there will be a place for him.
The number of cases of skull fracture due to automobile accidents or accidents connected with hopping freights or trucks, present much the same picture as other types of brain injuries. Some of the children as they approach sixteen, really show well defined symptoms of dementia praecox but others are only erratic and unstable, difficult to get along with and requiring an enormous amount of patience on the part of the teacher. A boy of this type rolled up and down the aisle, over and over, for more than an hour, then cuddled in the corner, went to sleep and after a while awakened and resumed his rolling. He had never done this before, although he was highly nervous and excitable. He responds fairly well to school training. On this occasion the teacher let him alone and in the afternoon he did his reading as well as usual but he was distinctly off all the morning. Other children of this type are highly excitable, at other times morose and are difficult to control, always. The teacher is to be commended who can establish habits of work and conformity in these children.
One type of child is difficult for everybody to deal with. This is the child whose emotional life seems to be entirely absent and whose responses are so egotistic as to require every effort on the part of school authorities to keep him from dangerous acts. Such a child recently, after leaving school, is charged with the killing of a young girl; several have become gunmen in gangster groups and those of better mentality are panhandlers of rather higher type. These children are less motivated than those of any other group and we are unable permanently to motivate them for all of our efforts, although on occasion they may be motivated by a single individual, through their own viewpoints, however.
A certain residue of failures may be expected in any organization. The psychological clinic or other school authorities fail where diseases cause deterioration or where there is a lack of emotional response. In the case of adolescent outbreaks unusual conflicts, spoiled children, the need of explanation of social customs and the clearing up of both school and home difficulties, the prognosis in general is good.
Court cases are oftentimes brought to our attention very late and success with them is not as good as with the group who are studied early and followed through regularly. The children are a little too old and a little too street-hardened to work with satisfactorily. Two organizations in Philadelphia?Elliott House, subsidized by the public schools, and Shallcross School, a residential school for boys?both do well in carrying the younger boys through difficult periods in their lives and the percentage of successes is high. Both fail if the children placed in the school are older, for adolescent boys do not respond as well to corrective treatment as do those who are younger. Cases placed in reformatories return to the social group less well prepared to adjust after their incarceration than before. Groups of boys who have come under the tutelage of gangs do not do well, for the schools have nothing to offer them which equals the excitement of the gang.
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