Florence Nightingale School FOR NERVOUS AND BACKWARD CHILDREN BOARDING SCHOOL: 238th Street and Riverdale Avenue. [Tel. Kingsbridge 316] 315 West 87th Street. [Tel. Schuyler 9121] ¶ Organized by teachers experienced and zealously interested in the work of educating nervous and backward children. Most approved special methods of teaching are employed. Individual instruction by graduate teachers, experienced in the training of difficult children. Kindergarten, Elementary and Manual Training Departments THE BOARDING SCHOOL is in the centre of a former private estate. There are lawns, flower beds, shade trees and a small truck garden where each child has its individual plot. The School is open the whole year. THE DAY SCHOOL opens October 4th and closes the end of June. FULL PARTICULARS UPON APPLICATION. RUDOLPH S. FRIED, Principal UNGRADED PUBLISHED BY THE UNGRADED TEACHERS ASSOCIATION ELIZABETH E. FARRELL, Inspector of Ungraded Classes, President Editor ELISE A. SEYFARTH Associate Editors KATHARINE MCGINN ELIZABETH A. WALSH, on Methods SARAH E. FISKE, on Class-Management Business Manager For Advertising rates, address: Advertising Manager, 3 West 92nd Street Published monthly, excepting July, August and September, at 10 Depot Street, Concord, N. H., by the Ungraded Teachers Association of New York City. Editorial Office, Hall of the Board of Education, 500 Park Avenue, New York City. Sub- scription, $1.50; single copy, 20 cents. Entered at the Post Office, Čoncord, N. H., as second-class matter, under the Act of March 3, 1879. DVS FESTINA LENTE LEARNING TO READ IS OF PARAMOUNT IMPORTANCE TO Dr. C. Banks McNairy, Superintendent of the Caswell Training School (the State School for Defectives), Kinston, N. C., says: "The method used here is the one which seems especially adapted for these children: namely The Aldine Method a combination of the word and phonetic methods. The other subjects are VOL. II UNGRADED JANUARY, 1917 Entered as second-class matter March 28, 1916, at the Post Office at Concord, N. H., Signed articles are not to be understood as expressing the views of the editors or publishers No. 4 COMMUNITY RESPONSIBILITY FOR MENTAL HYGIENE MISS JESSIE TAFT, STATE CHARITIES AID ASSOCIATION, NEW YORK CITY The average citizen in a modern community, and often the citizen who is above the average in background and training, has little or no idea of what is meant by mental hygiene. That there is any logical connection between mental health and mental disease or that he has any responsibility for either is a thought that probably has never occurred to him. This ignorance even on the part of the more enlightened individuals is not surprising when we stop to consider what a recent thing it is for human beings to attempt to study minds as such, with the view of ultimately gaining control of mental processes. If we look back over the course of human evolution we find that the first task man set himself was to learn to control external objects; the second, to control his own body, and it has taken him so long to do these two things that he is just setting about the third task, of learning to control his mind. The first kind of control we call physics, the second physiology, and the third, sociology, psychology, or psychiatry, depending upon which phase of mind we are considering. There was a time in human history when mankind was practically at the mercy of his environment. He had no understanding of the forces of nature or how to make use of them; fire, water, electricity, all of these things were merely objects of wonder and awe indicating the presence of mysterious beings. Everything material was the habitation of a spirit. Objects could be controlled only by magic; charms, ceremonies, prayers, all of these constituted primitive physics. It is hard to realize how long and laborious a journey we have come since that age of superstition in regard to matter and forces. The human mind has now, for all practical purposes, completely conquered the world of matter. Science is ready to give us anything we ask in that line provided only we desire it enough. There are no barriers that we think of as unsurmountable. Only recently man found he needed to fly and to be able to travel underneath the water. When these needs became great enough science gave him the control which he required. The second field of conquest was much more difficult because less external, -the realm of living bodies. And it is not so very long ago that bodies and their diseases were as mysterious to us as fire and water to primitive man. Illness was the result of evil spirits. Cure was brought about by charms, magic potions and ceremonials. There was no understanding of cause and effect in living bodies, of the laws of health, or of the scientific way of attacking disease. Science of bodies like science of objects began in superstition. We have just come to the point where we begin to feel a little sure of ourselves with reference to bodily health. We have accomplished enough to realize that it is only a matter of time when living bodies too will be under more or less complete control. Such things as cancer, tuberculosis, and syphilis, are still in many ways far from conquered problems, it is true, but victory is in sight. In the last and most difficult field-the field of mental science, we are less confident. Mind turns in upon its own operations with the greatest difficulty. It seems to have been designed particularly for the purpose of dealing with objects. To use it, therefore, as an instrument for dissecting itself is the final feat of human intelligence. Mind that has conquered matter, that has partially conquered living bodies, finds it so difficult to conquer itself that we are only now leaving the period of superstition behind us. At this very moment we can find entire classes of people who regard an insane person, or an idiot, with superstitious awe and fear. Psychology is a closed book to the man in the street even today. Sociology also, the science of community mind, is in its infancy-in fact is hardly to be called a science at all, so little scientific control over our social life has as yet been developed. Ask us to build a subway, to lay a cable, or make a machine that will fly in the air, and we do not hesitate. Ask us to stop poverty, to rationalize municipal government, to reform our treatment of criminals and we are appalled at the seeming impossibility of the task. We have no tools, no scientific methods already worked out for grappling with social problems. Theoretically we understand that mind can be studied, that it works according to laws like everything else in our experience, that cause and effect and continuity are as real in mental life as in physical, but we have yet to perfect methods of control, both in the case of the individual mind and in the mind of the group. It is not strange, therefore, that the average person should appear blank when asked what is meant by mental hygiene. It represents too new a way of looking at mind. We have learned to recognize the connection between the sick and the well body, but we have not yet learned that the connection between the sick and the well mind is just as real and that such words as "cure" and "prevention" have a place in mental as well as in physical disease. We have yet to learn that normality is a relative not an absolute term; that there is no hard and fast line which shows where normal mentality leaves off and diseased mentality begins; where a mind ceases to be sane and becomes insane. If one were to analyze the contents of a so-called |