HOW SHALL THE CHILDREN BE SELECTED FOR

SPECIAL CLASSES?

FROM THE PRINCIPAL'S POINT OF VIEW

Some one has said that "a teacher is a discoverer of girls and boys, discovering their powers and latent possibilities."

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I should like to add for the theme of the discussion this morning— 'discovering also their lack of powers and latent possibilities of the better kind, and devising ways and means for making up for this lack."

May I introduce this discussion with a bit of personal experience?

In my big school of three thousand boys and girls, seventy-one classes, my most important duty is the supervision of the class room work in every department. Primarily, of course, my object in this supervision is to see that the teacher understands her work, what the course of study requires her to teach in her grade and how to teach it; how to discipline her band of eager, animated children so that their eagerness may be turned in her direction as she instructs them, and that their animation may be the chief factor in enabling them to be well taught.

It is always to me a very pleasant duty this getting into the class room to see the teacher and the children at work. I am never so contented in my busy day as when I relax from the "petty concerns and irritating cares of the office work and turn into these pleasant by-paths where the children are, where the real teaching is done.

You, a body of teachers do not need to have me tell you what the usual procedure is in a class room when the principal comes in. You know only too well how the teacher immediately takes an inventory of the possibilities of her class and the means of best showing off her work.

If it is reading the principal asks for, the teacher calls a child in a certain part of the room and row after row proceeds. You will find child after child standing forth under the scrutiny of the principal's supervising eye and reading without a mistake, fluently, understandingly. So it is with number work, rapid drill question and answer comes tumbling forth like a long steady volley of artillery fire,-quick and correct.

Then the principal asks, "Begin your next series of questions here," pointing to quite a different part of the room, or singling out some child not yet called upon. The teacher's face falls and she says, “Oh, you need not look for much there; that is my third group, "--"I don't expect anything of them";-"Those children are not going to be promoted"; or "These are the hold overs of last term." Or, perhaps she will ask that this child be excused as she is very nervous, or that this one be not asked anything as he seldom answers and when he does he speaks so thickly and then grows hysterical.

A few questions on the part of the principal shows her at once that the teacher is right in her estimate of these children, they are the "derelicts" of the class, they are pushed down and out by the throng and press of the great forward moving mass of normal children.

As I look at them I see the vacant stare, or the childish beseeching glance of questioning which says to the principal, "Why am I in the third group? Why can I not answer like the smart boys? Why does the teacher always call those children when visitors come in? I should like to do things too. Why can I not do them? Why does the teacher not like me? Why does she always talk about me to other teachers and to the principal when promotion time comes? Why do they say you won't like this boy, he is not fit for promotion. He is going on but he shouldn't."

All these questions well up in the eyes of this little child and the eyes bespeak the heart of the child always,—so young and already so disappointed.

With this knowledge of classes and their organization it is my custom to have the teachers report every month upon the class standing. The monthly report cards of all children having an "A" record are given out by the principal from the platform before the assembled school. Here we get the necessary impetus for the spirit of emulation that sets the normal child toward the goal of winning the best record in the class.

At the other end of the class are found these derelicts of whom I have already spoken. These too have record cards, of a special kind. We call them the "deficient records." Each teacher is asked to send to the office a card for every child who is so deficient in the work of the month that in her estimation he is not fit for the class. On this card there is a space large enough to give in detail an account of the deficiencies and their causes,— arithmetic, lacking in accuracy; foundation in tables weak;—no reasoning powers, therefore problem work poor. Room also for a description of the child and the possible cause for failure because of illness or absence, or home conditions that would not permit of preparation at home, or physical condition, such as, nervousness, deafness, nearsightedness, which the teacher has been able to discover for herself.

With these cards, quietly in her office, the principal is able to make a study of the deficient children as individuals.

She is able to trace family characteristics, for, in a mixed school in a crowded neighborhood where the prevailing social order is the large family, she sees on these records family histories that are most interesting. The names of deficient children of the same family appear again and again,the fourteen-year-old, twelve-year-old, ten-year-old, and so on down to the ungest scion of a stock that brings dismay to the heart of the teacher who ot it before, dismay because of the drudgery she knows to be awaiting rying to bring one of that family up to grade.

+hese deficient cards before her, the principal, always in her office, the teacher and singles out those for whose deficiency there is a

cogent excuse such as, prolonged absence, serious illness and consequent physical weakness for the time being, mischievousness and consequent inattention in school, and lack of preparation of home lessons.

These the teacher can explain readily, and by means of a reprimand administered in the class room by the principal and the card sent as a message to the parents the deficiency may be soon changed into a proficiency report.

But after this process of elimination there still remain however a few cards over which principal, present teacher, former teachers all ponder. Those teachers who have had the child in their classes all agree that there is something queer about the child. The kindergartner remembers the trouble she had when he first came to school, in getting him to stay, how the mother brought him day after day, and the agony of fear that the little one went through before he could be persuaded that the teacher would be good to him. She remembers too how he never played, was listless or inattentive, and other queernesses that a young teacher with a big class jots down hurriedly on the tablet of her memory as the busy days go by.

The first year teacher remembers him as a hopeless case, one of the third group "dunces" who was a drag on her class for one or maybe two whole terms and knew nothing after all, although she had worked harder with this one boy than with a dozen bright boys.

Then comes the conference with the parent. The principal explains to her that the child is not keeping up with his class and she has the teacher explain the whole situation. At first the parent will not admit that there is any cause for this backwardness, particularly if the deficient child is the eldest of her family. She has not yet had experience of comparing the ability of this child with others having the same opportunities. But in this consultation with parent how often the cause of the defect comes to light; the child who has had a bad fall; who was terribly shocked by finding her mother dead, a suicide; the child who was born while mother was suffering from a temporary fit of insanity.

However, mother promises that they will help at home and that she will have the father punish him until he becomes a smart boy. And so the extra instruction of this child begins with teacher and principal and parent, all hard at work trying to bring it up to march in step and in time with its classmates.

The parents reluctantly admit in a short time that they are helpless; the teacher puts the child to one side in her room and spends very little time upon him for she knows that it is not fair to the rest of her class to waste their time trying to teach him. The principal knows now after this process of elimination that there is in every class this small group of suspected defectives."

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Perhaps that word "suspected" is not well used for it has a different value dependent upon the one who uses it. The teacher does not suspect, she is quite positive that these children are defectives; the children them

selves know that there is a defect but what it is and why they cannot say. The principal and the parents realize that there is some defect but they suspect only the cause of it and are anxious to call in the expert physician and psychologist and reformer to help in setting this defect right.

I am afraid that so far I have dwelt only upon the intellectual side of defectiveness. My reason for that is, that I have been thinking chiefly of the children of the lowest grades of the school;-kindergarten, first year, second year, and in my estimation the defectiveness of these children is chiefly on the intellectual side. Later as they fall behind their classmates, the defects that lead to delinquency are developed and the children become truants, and bad boys, wayward girls, fit subjects for our institutions founded for the reclaiming of delinquent children, and later for those institutions for the care of criminal adults who menace the welfare of the public at large.

I should like to bring forward at this point a strong plea for the establishment of special classes for these weaker ones in the very lowest grades of the school course. Again to be personal in my remarks may I describe to you the sort of experiment I am trying in my own school?

About two years ago I examined very carefully at the end of February, the first month of the term, the deficient cards sent by the teachers of all the first and second year classes. After the eliminating process described above, by conference with all the teachers of the children since entering school, and with the parents, we selected twenty boys and girls, the slow, or retarded, or naughty, or most defective little ones, call them by what name you will. At all events they were derelicts even at this early age.

These children we put in charge of a fine kindergarten teacher and gave them the use of the kindergarten room for one session of each day. The plan of oranization was that this kindergartner should apply all her fine kindergarten and Montessori methods in teaching these children in the primary grade subjects, especially drilling by these objective and manual methods the three "R's,”—reading, writing, and arithmetic.

This work was done every morning; and, in the afternoon the class. separated into age groups or grade groups, was dispersed among all the regular primary classes where the teachers gave them opportunity to take part in all the work of their classes, and reported to the teacher of the special class just where the greatest weakness presented itself or where improvement was noticed when working with the normal child.

We were able at that time to get the services of a visiting teacher who studied closely the entire environment of each child, procured a thorough physical examination of each child and was able also to get the students of a psychological clinic interested in study of normal children, to make a special mental test of these little ones. This was all done in a pleasurable way, as, for example, a trolley ride to the oculist or to the Neurological Institute and a little outing in the park by the way so that the children became perfectly docile, and were easy to study. There was no barrier of fear because of the teacher's displeasure at his stupidity, no shame because

he could not do the tasks set him, no heartache because he was different from the others and could not understand why. There was the community spirit most to be desired which because of the weakness of all, made no such distinctions as first group, brilliant children, second group, ordinarily good students, and third group, "the dunces,"-here all were happy, lighthearted children who were all first group in the mind of the teacher and the principal, and in their own little hearts they were no longer the dunce group. The results of this class make very interesting reading at the end of each term since the experiment was begun. Usually it is as follows: five or six children who have had corrected vision and are wearing eye-glasses, or who have been discovered to be partially deaf or to have an impediment in speech are returned to their own grades with a good description of the needs of each particular child so that the regular teacher may not be obliged to push it to one side until she has time to study its individual stupidity, the time which seldom comes to the hardworked teacher of fifty children. That has all been done for these little ones and they will now get fair play in the big class.

Three or four have been discovered to be mental defectives incapable of ever taking their place in the regular classes; while others are recommended to be kept in the special class for a while longer because of the greater opportunity here for individual study of their mental ability, and experiment with them in finding out their ability in other lines before putting them either into the regular classes below their age groups or dooming them to go into the classes for mental defectives.

With the establishment of such special classes as observation rooms or clearing houses early in the school career of the children, there should come, too, the establishment of special classes as low as the third year with a course of study quite different from the traditional academic course but which would be quite as high in value. In other words when it is found that children in the second year cannot be taught to read, and write, and work problems in arithmetic because of some weakness of intellect, then it is our duty to find wherein their strength lies and provide classes for them that will lead them happily on to perfection in some one line, even though it be only as a hewer of wood or a drawer of water.

As things are now it is customary to wait for the establishment of these special classes until the fourth year. In the fourth- and fifth-year classes we find an accumulation of over-age dull children. When the special class is formed to accommodate these older children by picking out overage, foreign, slow, stupid and disorderly, it is a difficult class to handle for already the iron has entered the soul of these children and they are at war with the world. They are usually angry, rebellious, morose, dogged, and quarrelsome, because they have never yet found themselves-never yet been told that they could do anything right.

This lack of ability in the academic subjects should lead the teachers to try to interest their slow, stupid children in the outside activities of the