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 à 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 care. 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.

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 coördination of existing records, and the coöperation 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 coöperation 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 early 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 supervision is necessary; and finally: that the National Associations for the Feeble-Minded formulate a program both educative and constructive, so that the nation as a whole may realize the "menace of the feebleminded."

With definite knowledge and mutual coöperation much can be done to bridge the gap between the school and the institution.

ADA M. FITTS, Supervisor of Special Classes, Boston, Mass.

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."

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 youngest scion of a stock that brings dismay to the heart of the teacher who has met it before, dismay because of the drudgery she knows to be awaiting her in trying to bring one of that family up to grade.

With these deficient cards before her, the principal, always in her office, consults 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."

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