being perfected more and more every year. Still we have only too many teachers of limited training and experience; and often the tyros, those who have the least basic knowledge of the child mind, are placed in the kindergartens and primary classes where the foundations of mental work are laid. The mistakes made by these novices in teaching, in experimenting with the precious budding minds, are legion, and only too frequently warp a child's conception from the very start.

Professional Training.-Teachers, however, do receive, at least in large numbers, some sort of professional training. But parents are, as a rule, sadly deficient in such training, and often lack the wisdom of understanding and handling their children properly. Mothers' clubs are often mostly composed of women who have already made their fundamental mistakes with their own children; and fathers' clubs there are none. A few attempts have been made to establish mothercraft schools, which so far are attended by an infinitesimal fraction of the prospective mothers of the land. The author has never heard of fathercraft schools. Thus a child's chance of being himself, instead of being moulded according to the whims and prejudices and notions of his unenlightened elders, is very slim.

No wonder, then, that we have so many children who are difficult of management-"naughty," troublesome, spoiled children. Some of them are troublesome because they do not know how to employ their perfectly normal and legitimate impulses and activities. A child is naughty to parents and teachers on the same principle that will make a gas-tank explode when touched with a burning match-it is the only natural method of response to a foolish method of approach!

Sense Defects.-When it comes to difficulties in the province of sense reactions, great caution is needed. Defects of this nature are more common than is generally supposed; they are apt to escape attention, the children themselves hardly being conscious of having any defect; they have no criterion for comparison. A hard-of-hearing child learns the art of lip-reading almost instinctively, and is therefore producing, to himself and to others, the illusion of being able to hear. Many cases have come under the author's observation of children whose power to hear articulate speech was so greatly diminished that they were almost deaf; sometimes they were suspected of some slight defect in the matter of hearing, but as a rule both their parents and their teachers were absolutely amazed to learn of the extent of their infirmity after the application of proper tests. Children of defective hearing and vision are often accused, unjustly, of course, of inattention, stubbornness, laziness, and backwardness.

Observational Attitude.-To be able to make a more detailed study of handicapped children we must first develop the observational attitude of the diagnostician, and train ourselves to consider everything we cannot readily explain as a symptom to be studied. For every symptom we must train ourselves to look for a cause. Proper observation implies a careful distinction between facts observed and the explanation we may give them. It is a very common error to substitute our interpretation of a fact for the fact itself, and thus records of children are often vitiated. To say: to-day the child was naughty, or annoying, or lazy, or what not, means nothing at all. Such a statement implies a foregone conclusion, a judgment, not a record of fact-unless of the fact that the

child's conduct affected the recorder in a certain manner. Manifestations on the part of the child which may be displeasing to us are not necessarily expressions of a child's evil genius or defectiveness. The entire idea of discipline and punishment is undergoing a change. Only one who can inspire the child with confidence and who puts the child under observation absolutely at his ease, will gather reliable data.

Atypical Children. The various groups of "atypical" children will be further discussed in the following chapters. Even with them, however, we may first emphasize the necessity of studying the sense-reactions of each child. The acuteness of the two principal senses of vision and hearing should be determined by the ordinary tests, which are so simple that the preliminary work. can be done in any school or home. Eye-strain is frequently accompanied by headaches; chronic headache is therefore a danger-signal. The other special senses-taste, smell, touch-not to speak of the muscular sense, the temperature sense, the sense of balance-rarely receive the attention they deserve. Yet we often find curious defects which may be considered as indicative of incomplete potentials, and consequently of incomplete sensation, making the sufferers really subnormal. If we remember that under certain circumstances we may have to fall back upon one or more of these neglected senses, as in the cases of Laura Bridgman and Helen Keller, we may well be reminded of their importance. The sense of touch is, indeed, the most fundamental of all senses, from which the others have become differentiated in the process of evolution.

Blind and Deaf Children.-Although belonging to the subnormal group, blind and deaf children may possess

such other splendid mental and physical endowments that their competency is often considerable, and the efficiency increment they may contribute to social life and progress represents values as great as those of normal children. They may therefore justly be mentioned in this connection.

Real blindness and deafness are defects which deprive a child of potentials which are necessary for completeness of sense-perception and mental conception. For them some elements of human knowledge will forever be eliminated, at least in their direct bearing upon thought, and they will depend upon the experience of others along these lines of observation. These vicarious experiences must symbolize to them what can never be their own. experience. For this reason the author has placed them in the subnormal group, as physically and physiologically defective, with a corresponding psychologic deprivation. This does, however, not imply at all that they are more prone to be also mentally defective than seeing and hearing children. Helen Keller (Case 16), whose case has demonstrated better than many another the wonderful possibilities of a mind which is deprived of both the seeing and the hearing paths to knowledge, wrote the author in a telling letter:

I, too, was handicapped in the earliest years of my life. I, too, had a potentially normal mind. Strong barriers had to be broken down before my mind could be awakened and developed. Only the skill of a wise, loving teacher made this possible. Only a patient study and clear understanding of my mental needs lifted me up to a happier, freer existence. It is of the utmost importance to give every child the best education of which he is capable. No effort, no money, no sacrifice should be spared. The more severely a child is handicapped, the more precious is whatever equipment is given him for the struggle of

...

life. Let the public once realize how far such children can be helped, and nothing will be left undone to prevent the fearful waste of human minds which lies heavily upon our civilization. This is true conservation-the saving of valuable human faculties from neglect and unskilful teaching.

The other groups of subnormal children will not be separately taken up here, as they are discussed in connection with causes and conditions of exceptional development in later chapters. But it seems to be the place here to call the readers' attention to some of the symptoms which the educator must learn to observe, to secure timely recognition of DANGER-SIGNALS which would indicate that the normal development of a child is put at hazard.

Principles of Growth.-Human life is determined by principles of growth and development; growth as to size and weight, and development as to organization, differentiation, and function. There is the size and weight of the body as a whole; there is the evolution of the bony skeleton, of the muscles and viscera, of the central and peripheral nervous system, with the "sympathetic" branch which regulates the functions of the viscera. Upon the growth and development of the nervous system depends the development of the functions of intellect and will. Abnormalities of growth and development are distinct danger-signals. There may be irregularities in the matter of growth periods. Anatomical growth may not keep pace with mental growth. By Crampton the helpful distinction has been made between chronological, anatomical, physiological, and psychological growth, or age. Though he had years of life in mind, we may apply his distinction to the developmental periods upon which the author bases his analysis and argument. Mental pre