school. Get them into the athletic clubs, swimming and dancing may be easy for them, there they may excel. The glee club may make a special appeal to the child with the voice but not much brains. The girl who cannot get more than fifty per cent of her class work done may be one hundred per cent in ability to manage the class and be the housekeeper if her teacher is off duty for an hour or a day. She may be able to learn the most intricate steps of a folk dance and dance with perfect childish abandon although she can never attain to the "A" record that is demanded in the regular class work.

These are the children all through the grades, that the deficient card with its personal history written upon it, brings out into the light. The card calling for a report of this kind has been instrumental in turning the attention of the teacher to the failures in her class and a consequent search for weakness and their causes, thus making the selection of the children for special classes a comparatively easy matter.

The chief thing in all this selection of children for special classes is to keep the individual child from feeling the hurt of its own weakness until it has got safely past the parting of the ways, one of which leads to delinquency and suffering, and the other to plodding contentment in doing something well, no matter how lowly the work may be, and to eventually earning its own living. When we can educate these weak little ones with the all-sidedness of the education that we plan for children at large, mental, moral, and physical, and to that add the spiritual gift of happy contentment with their lot in life limited though it may be; we have done a great thing for these children of the shadow.

Until recent years we felt as if our work as teachers was well done if after a term of painstaking work we passed to the next grade seventy-five per cent, eighty per cent, ninety per cent of our pupils. We patted ourselves on the back and closed our door at the end of the year feeling that there was nothing more required of us.

I am so thankful that there has come in these later days, the new thoughtfulness, not for the successful eighty per cent passed but for the unsuccessful remnant. The new thought for these is not to make them part of the successful eighty per cent, but to make one hundred per cent of them successful along quite different lines. In other words, instead of trying to fit them with shoes never made for their feet, we make shoes for them that will be their own, quite different in pattern and style from the ordinary child's shoes, but, oh, so comfortable and easy to walk along the highway of life.

Two words that we hear on every side nowadays are "thrift” and “preparedness." They have a great civic meaning. We are all considering them. They should mean much to us in our work as teachers. Thrift in the care of our classes should prevent waste of time, energy, and money by having unfortunate children repeat grades because they are misfits. It is our duty to make them fit well into a new scheme different from the traditional program that has treated all children alike.

Preparedness for the teacher should mean not only the preparing of the normal children to take their place in life but the study of these weaklings so that they may be fitted for some sort of work in the community. For those, fortunately few, who are so feeble-minded that they can never care for themselves, institutions should be provided that will keep them comfortable and happy as far as their condition will permit, and will prevent them from being a menace to society either today or in the future.

I shall close my part of this discussion with the words of one who recognized the true place and duty of the teacher when he said:

Oh! ye teachers! yours the task
Noblest that noble minds can ask.
Of you the growing mind demands
The patient care, the guiding hands,
Through all the mists of morn;
And knowing well the future's need,
Your prescient wisdom sows the seed,
To flower in years unborn.

To the teachers we must assign the task of giving patient care and the guiding hand with double measure to these weaker ones among the children entrusted to them.

MARGARET KNOX,

Principal of Public School 15, Manhattan.

WINDY NIGHTS

Whenever the moon and stars are set,

Whenever the wind is high,

All night long in the dark and wet,

A man goes riding by.

Late in the night when the fires are out,
Why does he gallop and gallop about?

Whenever the trees are crying aloud,
And ships are tossed at sea,
By on the highway, low and loud,

By at the gallop goes he.

By at the gallop he goes, and then
By he comes back at the gallop again.

ROBERT L. STEVENSON.

Data with reference to the 66 pupils not included in the above:

Enrolled in state institutions, Dec. 1, 1915.

Regularly employed...

Irregularly employed.
Unemployed...

Total....

16 or 24.2% 29 or 43.9%

10 or 15.2%

11 or 16.7%

66 or 100 %

In a preliminary report published December, 1915, on children discharged from ungraded classes in New York City, Miss Farrell reports on 350 pupils who have been out of school from one to eight years. Of this number:

54.8% were employed for wages.

8.8% were employable but temporarily out of work at the time of the investigation. 24.6% were cared for at home and many of these at home had economic value.

In the three cities cited, all children in such classes have been certified as mentally defective by qualified psychologists and physicians.

The results of the follow-up work that has already been done and the fact that so large a proportion of the children are employed for wages, leads one to feel that the work done by the special class does carry over into their after life. Dr. Wallace of the Massachusetts School for the Feeble-Minded at Wrentham writes: "We have especially observed these children and believe they are more advanced according to their mental condition, manifest much better habits and their social relations in the institution are much better than the reaction of children admitted without the special training." At the Massachusetts School for the FeebleMinded at Waverly, Dr. Fernald is making a careful after-care study of all the patients who have been discharged from the school for the past twentyfive years. He says: "Wherever it is possible our field workers have visited these patients and the fullest inquiry has been made as to the kind of life they have lived since leaving the institution. The inquiry was planned primarily to furnish a basis of evolution as to the practical results given at the school. The inquiry also sought information as to the social, economic and moral life of the feeble-minded individual in the community."

The results of this and similar studies will enlighten us as to the training best suited to prepare the child for adult life in the community. Besides the special class and after-care officer, there should be a definite plan of awakening community interest in the problem of the feeble-minded. Springfield, Massachusetts, has such a plan and in order to supplement the work of the psychological laboratory and the special classes, the Committee for the Study of the Feeble-Minded was formed in December, 1912. I quote from a recent report of Miss Cheney, the chairman of the committee, and a special class teacher of Springfield. The membership and purpose of this conference are outlined as follows:

Active members. Those actively engaged in individual efforts to educate and protect the feeble-minded.

Associate members. Representatives of various educational, religious, philanthropic, medical and civic organizations, who may confer with the active members at all times and in semi-annual conference.

Purpose. 1. To discover and record cases of mental defect in the community.

2. To persuade parents or guardians to place improvable cases in public school special classes or in private schools for atypical children or in state institutions for the feeble-minded, for education.

3. To interest employers in protected mentally defective persons who may have acquired the ability to perform skilled or unskilled labor.

4. To endeavor to remove from the community all unprotected feeble-minded persons to the permanent custodial care of state institutions.

5. To hold meetings at the call of the Chairman.

6. To keep a confidential card catalog with records of each case.

7. To record such facts in connection with mental defect as may shed light on the general problem, and to cultivate an interest in determining the causes of mental defect and the means of prevention.

8. To help mold public opinion to the need of providing opportunities for the education of the feeble-minded to the limit of capacity, and to the dangers of unprotected feeble-minded persons in the community.

During the three years of its existence, this committee has recorded 296 cases of definite or suspected mental defect. It has been actively engaged in arousing public opinion as to the need of further local and state provision for the feeble-minded and in securing support for legislative action, to provide a third institution to the located in western Massachusetts.

The committee maintains that the care of the feeble-minded need not fall wholly upon the community or the state, that the burden may be shared by the coöperation of both, with the purpose of providing not only education and protection for the feeble-minded, but of preventing the increase of mental defect and its attendant social evils.

Such a committee should also help to secure a law authorizing the permanent control and custody of the defective delinquent. These cases should be eliminated from our prisons and correctional institutions and cared for by themselves. The committee might also coöperate in establishing in the vicinity of their city, farm groups which would serve as training schools. Through visits to such schools the parents might overcome their prejudice to institutional life and later, if necessary, consider permanent custodial care for their children. Such a group could provide supervision and also be a clearing house for those who develop the need of institutional Several states have already in the farm colonies connected with their institutions such a combination of training school and permanent home. There the boys, many of them able to do the whole or part of a man's work under direction, are utilized to develop absolutely worthless land into valuable soil ready for cultivation. If the farm colony can be used to such good advantage by the institutions, it would seem possible to secure good results from a similar colony under the direction of school authorities and a committee similar to the one at Springfield.

care.

As the problem is recognized and public opinion created, it becomes evident that these individual community efforts should be systematized and have supervision. As so well stated by Dr. Fernald at the National

Conference of Charities and Correction, Baltimore, 1915, "Many feebleminded persons eventually become permanent public charges. Many run the gauntlet of the police, the courts, the penal institutions, the almshouses, the tramp shelters, the lying-in hospitals, and often many private societies and agencies, perhaps eventually to turn up in the institutions for the feeble-minded. At any given time, it is a matter of chance as to what state or local or private organization or institution is being perplexed by the problems they present. They are shifted from one organization or institution to another as soon as possible. At present there is no bureau or officer with the knowledge and the authority to advise and compel proper care and protection for this numerous and dangerous class." With a complete census of the feeble-minded, community interest, the help and coordination of existing records, and the cooperation of all existing agencies, the state with such supervision would be dealing with the problem of feeble mindedness in a broad and constructive way. The bureau would then be in a position to make a comprehensive study of the whole situation and make suggestions which, carried out, would affect future generations. With the development of state supervision would come a greater demand for the cooperation and help of much societies as the National Committee on Mental Hygiene and the National Committee on Provision for the Feeble Minded.

In order to "fill the gap" or better in the words of Dr. MacMurchy, to "build a bridge" between the special class and the institution, I have suggested first: that the public school insure diagnosis and treatment at an carly age, act as a clearing house for cases needing permanent segregation, and attempt to train the others for appropriate employment; second: that the pupils upon leaving school be still further provided for in workrooms. or in farm groups; third that the guidance begun by the teacher be continued by after care and supervision, fourth: that there be a definite plan for awakening community interest in the problem; fifth: that state-wide supstyision is necessary and finally that the National Associations for The Foelle Minded formulate a program both educative and constructive, s that the nation as a whole may realise the "menace of the feebleHawksl

With dorite kowledge and mutual cooperation much can be done to bisige the gap between the school and the institution.