Latin and Greek, technical grammar and much of mathematics are becoming of less importance, and manual training, domestic science and domestic art are being substituted for them-for the reason that the useful as well as the cultural side of life is more and more appealing to educators-for that same reason it may be well to cut out most of the intellectual work in the training of the idiot and emphasize the hand work. This is the method followed in many institutions; the industrial side in its various phases is emphasized. It may be this emphasis rather than any natural aptitude which accounts for the fact mentioned by Ireland, when he says, "It strikes us that a constructive or mechanical turn is more frequently preserved among idiots than any other gift." In some institutions we do find the feeble-minded studying physical geography, composition, music, painting and arithmetic, but in many, and among them some of the most advanced, it is the laundry, cooking and sewing for the girls and the carpentry, gardening and painting for the boys, to which most of the attention is given. As these individuals can never be leaders among men, it seems the best plan to have them learn a trade rather than to have them bother over the more intellectual kind of work. However, we should remember that this is probably a matter of expediency rather than one of necessity, and there may be much that is good on the other side.

It is certainly true that the more like ordinary people these feebleminded are treated the more like people in general they will become. As they tend to be more immature than other children they are open to suggestion for a longer period of time. They should have schools, churches, entertainments, trades and the like, just as ordinary people do. They need not be mixed in with people in general, but in every case they should be made to feel as nearly like other people as possible.

§ 17. Application of the Results to the Methods Used in the

Education of Defectives

IN the present-day criticism of the modern educational methods are three points, which to my mind have vital bearing on the education of the feeble-minded in the field of physical, mental and industrial training. In the first place, our best educators believe that but a short time should elapse between an act and its result, and that in most cases the result should be definitely pleasurable if the act is a desirable one. The younger the child, the greater the force of this rule. Taking up the first point, if much time elapse between the act and the result, whether that result be pleasurable or painful, the

result has lost much of its efficacy, for the child has forgotten the act. If not completely forgotten, yet the impression is comparatively dim by reason of all that has happened between. A result to be of value as influencing a future act must be so closely connected with that act that the two ideas have to the mind something of the same vividness; and close sequence is the best means of securing this end. The second fact, namely, that pleasure should follow an act if that act is desirable, seems to be one of nature's fundamental laws. The simplest method, the animal method of learning, is the one which has been called 'the selection of accidental successes,' and the selecting factor is always pleasure. Animals learn to do a trick when some reward is offered, and the movements which bring the reward are the ones stamped in. If the result be indifferent the act is almost as likely to be obliterated as to remain. This method combined with imitation is the one adopted by children and if the results are to be successful the element of pleasure must enter in. When 'the act' becomes a mental one instead of a physical, the same law holds. Here the pleasure may be of a higher grade, a word of approbation, a smile, an extra piece of work to do, but reward in some form is essential. This rule holds good with the training of ordinary children and, therefore, must hold doubly true of these very children-the defectives. In all their training, physical, mental, moral or industrial, a reward of some kind must be forthcoming-the sooner the better if the act, whether chiefly mental or physical, is desired as a habit.

The second point of note is the influence brought to bear by the psychology of memory on our methods of teaching. The memory of any event or fact depends upon two factors, the native retentiveness of the brain substance itself and the number of associates which the particular fact has in terms of 'brain paths.' The former factor can not be improved. Every individual is limited so far as memory is concerned by the kind of brain with which he was endowed at birth. If it is easily impressed and also one which retains this impression, other things being equal, that person will have a good memory. This being true, it seems rather a poor way to improve the memory, either of ordinary children or of defectives, to employ the method of repetition, so endeavoring to hammer a fact home by mere brute force. The better method, certainly, would be to work along the line of the second factor determining memory, namely, to increase the number of associates. The more clues there are connected with any one fact, the more likely will it be that that fact will come to mind when wanted. Now this method seems particularly applicable to the defective class of children in the light of what we know of the brain development of the feeble-minded. Hammarberg found

and no one has contradicted his statement-that the brains of defectives as wholes or in parts were poorly developed, not so much in the sense that the cells were smaller or necessarily ill shaped, but that they lacked the arborizations and the multitudes of associative fibers which go to make up a complex cortex, a cortex of the kind which is accompanied by intelligence. This fact of brain anatomy seems to be corroborated by the results noted in § 14, namely, that the greatest divergence in ability between ordinary and defective children was in the test of power of association. This, to my mind, is the test of intelligence-a very rough one, but one which will point out those individuals who fall at the extreme low end of human ability, those who fall in the class known as defectives. A dozen or more different traits have been pointed out by various writers as the essence of feeble-mindedness-lack of judgment, lack of will-power, lack of imagination, or lack of ability to look at consequences, besides the lack of ability to form abstract ideas, etc., etc. But the underlying cause of all these lacks is this inability to form associates. The specialization of this ability helps us to understand those defectives who are above par in some one particular branch. The knowledge of this fact helps in the training of these defectives. Physiology shows that a high rate of intelligence goes with a complex cortex, that the existence of many associations and the like is paralleled by an increased arborization; but which is cause and which is effect no one knows. However, we do know that any one may increase his memory in any line simply by increasing the number of associates in that field. The resulting suggestion is not to depend only upon repetition to fix facts but to let the same fact be met in a dozen ways instead of simply in one. Of course in the case of some of the lower grades of defectives the process would have to be very slow and very simple. But certainly what the defectives need is an increased power of association in its broadest sense; and when nature has provided two ways of securing such power, one of which is much narrower than the other, it behooves us to use both and certainly not to neglect the broader of the two.

The third point of modern criticism which was mentioned as particularly adapted to the defectives grows directly out of this and concerns the facts or associates to be given to the children in school. Shall we consider them simply as storehouses and pack away in their brains everything that they may possibly need at some future date? Or shall we consider them as living beings, living as children a life as full and rich as they ever will live as adults, and hence give them in school and home facts which they really need and in the way in which they will need them? As evidence that the second point of

view is the one which is being accepted more and more in our public schools, witness the presence of manual training, domestic science, nature study and the absence of much of the Latin, Greek and mathematics of fifty years ago. Psychology certainly supports this point of view. Interest and attention-and if attention then memory, understanding, appreciation, etc.-go hand in hand. Voluntary or forced attention is of value largely because interest may result-if it does not, the attention passes to something else. Now interest is dependent largely on use. 'Consciousness is in its very nature impulsive.' Anything that the child or adult needs-finds a use formust of necessity be interesting; for it brings pleasure in some degree. The outcome of this must be, to preserve the child, of whatever degree of intelligence he may be, from dry facts for which he has no use, for to him they are not facts! They can only be artificial and his interest can not be in them to any degree; his attention must be forced and his understanding and memory of them must be superficial. Give him living facts, things that he is really wanting to know about-if necessary create or make felt the need, but by all means have the need and therefore the interest present! This perhaps is an extreme statement of the case for the ordinary child with our artificial requirements of modern civilization, but for the defective it is not extreme. It is the only possible means of progress for him. In his training let the facts which he gets, the habits which he forms, be living, vital ones; let everything function then and there the sooner the better. Let the result be pleasurable as often as may be, so as to reach interest and through that medium the understanding.

The question which has always confronted the student of defectives and which still confronts him is 'what is the ultimate end of the feeble-minded?' The answer has been stated in decided terms by some writers-"We can not cure what is not a disease but a defect, and that which the cradle rocks the spade will cover."- Barr.

But to-day we realize that between ordinary children and defectives there is a difference not of kind but of degree, that there may be every grade of deficiency, 'passing insensibly into ordinary intelligence'-'that the lines separating one class of deficiency from another are hair lines and artificial in the extreme.' Hence we may

feel that the case is not quite so hopeless. When we see the weak wills, poor imaginative powers, poor memories, inability to deal with. abstract subjects possessed by people considered normal in the world to-day, the thought forces itself upon us that probably we are most of us defective in some field and to some degree. We believe that for us all there is a possibility of improvement, and so we find there

is hope for the defective. Few of us ever expect to reach the status of eminence, but some of us may; and so may some of those classed as feeble-minded or defective reach ultimately the class spoken of as normal. Some from the London defective classes have done so. For many of them, there must remain only custodial care on one hand, the colony on the other. It is all a matter of degree. The danger is to think that we definitely know the point which may be reached at the higher end. Until we know more about the psychology, the physiology and the chemistry of human life at its lower extreme, it is unwise to prophesy the possibilities.

Until then all we can do is to have as high ideals as are practical and to develop the individual to the highest possible standard-which standard must be discovered in the process, not determined upon beforehand-physically, mentally and morally.

In summing up this whole matter I would say that the difference between idiots and other people is one of degree and not of kind. The same difference exists between the very bright among school children and the mediocre, and between the mediocre and the stupid, as exists between the idiot and the ordinary person, and in some cases the former differences are greater in degree than the latter.

Consequently we must criticize the methods of educating idiots from the same standpoint and use the same arguments either for or against that we do in criticizing the methods and curricula used in the general education of the masses. They are not special and peculiar in any other sense than the one in which the dull, stupid child is peculiar when compared with the bright, quick child. What in education is not good for the idiot is probably not good also for at least 10 per cent. of school children at large.