the deaf not so well; that the blind reason as well as, if not better than, the normal, the deaf do not; that the blind are more emotional, and the deaf less emotional, than the normal.

The study of feeble-minded children presents entirely new conditions. The difficulty here is one of centralization rather than one of avenues of approach. The whole organism of the feeble-minded is involved in the difficulty; not any particular part, as in the case of the deaf or the blind. Hence the teaching of the feeble-minded has necessarily been reduced to lowest terms. The teacher of the feeble-minded has to do with the very beginnings of mind. All of the avenues of approach are more or less closed. All must be opened. The very senses have to be taught before the child can be taught. The physiological method becomes, not merely an essential, but a necessity. All that is done must be done in accord with established facts of evolution and in harmony with the laws of physi ology. Herein is the great influence that the study of the feeble-minded is exerting upon the teaching of the usual child.

One could not begin to give here even an outline of the lessons a teacher of normal children might gather from the physiological method — the object-lessons, use of play, training of the senses, attention to hygiene, and the study of the individual, displayed in the education of the feeble-minded. These things have been carried to a greater degree of perfection in schools for unusual children than elsewhere. It would be impossible to state how much the schools for defectives have advanced the cause of the kindergarten in this country. In these schools we find a higher and truer development, I believe, of kindergarten principles than elsewhere. Light is coming to the teachers of all children from the schools of these unfortunate, yet fortunate, children.

The study of the unusual child, then, has put the individual child in our midst; has made for sympathy; has disclosed the seat of the difficulty, showing that supposed stupidity was often the result of defect of eye or ear; has emphasized the value of play and spontaneity in education; has helped to fix the relative importance of the several senses in education; has emphasized the importance of sense-training; has practically created the physiological method; has made clearer the application of evolution to education; has kept in the foreground the social object of education, rendering the helpless helpful members of society. The schools for unusual children present the best object-lessons available to the teacher of normal children.

DISCUSSION

DR. FRANCIS BURKE BRANDT, professor of pedagogy, Central High School, Philadelphia, Pa.-Speaking from the point of view of the training of the normal child, I believe that the study of the unusual child has already produced an influence upon the teaching of the usual child that is illuminating, instructive, and inspiring.

In the first place, such study has demonstrated the almost infinite possibilities of education. Sometimes in our public schools we are in danger of turning away from children because they are dull or stupid or incapable of being taught. But one Laura Bridgman and one Helen Keller have taught us, more than all our child-study investigations put together, that there is an avenue to every soul. Such cases have taught, too, the larger lessons that the twentieth century must regret the nineteenth-century dictum of the survival of the fit, to put in its place the higher principles of fitting to survive.

In the second place, such study has demonstrated the supertor effectiveness of special methods and special teachers to accomplish ends which meet the individual needs of the child. In connection with this subject such studies as Superintendent Hall's point out the relative value of these senses, as well as the importance of ultimate emancipation from the senses, together with the necessity of training for some form of social service, that all this can be of incalculable worth in revising our methods in handling the normal child. Again, such study has been highly illuminating as to the importance of right conditions in training a child. The favorable conditions which prevail in many institutions for the special training of special children, in the form of the fewness of pupils' assigned to teachers, the assignment of special subjects to teachers, the adequacy and adaptability of equipment, and the respect, sympathy, and resources of trustees, have important lessons for those in authority who administer the training of the normal child.

Summed up, the study and training of the usual child have rendered the greatest service to the elevation of the individual and the progress of humanity, to the extent that it shows that there is no depth scarcely of physical, intellectual, and moral defect on the part of the individual which the impulse of Christian motive, the intelligence of modern science, and the energy of civilized society combined cannot reach.

CHARLES F. F. CAMPBELL, former inspector of the Royal Normal College and Academy of Music for the Blind, London, England.-The unusual child in this discussion is the blind child. With the blind it is necessary to begin at once to prepare for remunerative occupation. The normal child needs a similar system and has greater opportunity, having a larger field open to him. That he needs immediate training for all possible ends, not for higher education only, as at present given, is shown by the figures in the state school reports. Only an extreme minority continue higher education after the high school; indeed, a large percentage of grammar-school pupils do not enter the high school.

Example of a pupil at the Royal Normal College and Academy of Music for the Blind, London, England: With a blind child there, it is recognized at once that there is to be a struggle for a livelihood. The child starts his training with the assumption that he may ultimately go to Oxford or Cambridge, to be possibly a lawyer or a minister. Before ten years of age, however, he is started in music, for that profession offers the greatest opportunities for the blind. Thus the possibility of failure in one direction is provided for in another. Before the child is fourteen years of age it is generally clear whether a legal, ministerial, or musical profession is advisable; but all this time he has had the best of manual training, so that, if these more advanced mental professions do not promise, his attention is concentrated upon a calling requiring manual dexterity. Thus every contingency has been provided for and in ample season.

Application of this to the seeing child: The large majority, owing to family circumstances, must go to work in some factory or store by fourteen years of age. Since many must work thus early, the public schools should provide preparation for this, as well as for higher education. Clear thinking is needed in the best work, even of manual labor; for it is not human machines that are required, but artisans. If public schools offered such commercial and technical training, parents would strive to maintain their children longer in school, to avail themselves of an education having so practical a value.

The ideal should be held out to the pupils that because they cannot go to college a

great and useful career is not closed to them, but rather, by careful application to some congenial art or craft, they may become designers and creators. The supreme end of education will thus be to make them better citizens and, as President Eliot has said, more able to enjoy life.

SHOULD THE SCOPE OF THE PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM BE BROADENED SO AS TO TAKE IN ALL CHILDREN CAPABLE OF EDUCATION? IF SO, HOW SHOULD THIS BE DONE?

MARY C. GREENE, EX-SUPERINTENDENT OF SPECIAL CLASSES FOR THE BLIND IN THE BOARD SCHOOLS, LONDON, ENGLAND

I will answer the question in the topic of this paper by saying: Yes with qualifications which may or may not be applicable under existing conditions.

I assume that the public-school system implies residence at home, or under home conditions, with day attendance at a school. It does now provide for all children excepting cripples, epileptics, the mentally deficient, deaf-mutes, and the blind. Can all these unfortunate classes, or can any among them, obtain suitable education and training under the public-school system? Is it to the advantage (a) of the normal children, (b) of the defectives, that this should be undertaken? The number of defective children whose parents can provide satisfactory training in their own homes is so small that these need not come into the discussionaltho,with every advantage that money can secure, something is probably lost under wholly private instruction.

No argument is required to show that the children embraced in these five groups cannot be required to attend the ordinary schools, in continuous association with normal children, except to the disadvantage of all concerned. The cripple would suffer in body; the epileptic and the weakminded would be unable to keep pace with their school-fellows, or would be a drag upon their progress; the deaf would profit hardly at all; the blind only by the spoken word. Since, then, they cannot be taught as units of the ordinary school, the customary, almost universal, practice is to provide for them in large boarding homes, equipped with everything needed for general care, and also for such elementary, higher, and technical training as may be adapted to the special needs of the several groups under consideration. The defective child is placed in such a boarding. home for a term of years, usually including the entire period of childhood and youth, and extending into early manhood and womanhood, at the end of which period he is returned to his home and friends. In the best examples of such institutions, health, manners, morals, training of hand and brain, are all wisely and carefully looked after; and, in contrast with the life of a defective child in many families, the sympathetic visitor,

noting the well-clothed, well-cared-for little ones, can but regard institution life as the ideal for all such unfortunates.

Such conclusions may, however, be qualified by two considerations, deduced from long experience. First, the practical training of home life, which defective children in common with normal children need, is missed in an institution. It is true that valuable lessons in order and regularity are learned, and the motto "together," so well worth impressing, is deeply impressed upon them. Some such experience is useful to all. But these children are taken from home at a very early age. From that moment every need is supplied. Food and clothing, schooling, and care come to them as freely, as naturally, as the air they breathe. There is no question of cost-of sparing or saving. No committee of ways and means deliberates in their presence, as members of a family talk together of what can, or cannot, be afforded. At home there may be anxiety, struggle, hard work, privation. Of all this the little exile knows nothing. So pass the years till the youth leaves school. The institution, the artificial home, is left behind, and the youth comes forth to make use, or no use, of what he has learned in school and shop, with such help as friends or strangers can give. He must face life—and of life in the world he is profoundly ignorant.. Already handicapped by his infirmity, the lack of all practical experience puts him still further at disadvantage, and it is hard, if not impossible, for him to get his bearings and adjust himself to his surroundings. Without knowing it, he may be selfish and exacting. This is my first qualifying consideration.

The second tendency to be deprecated is the inevitable result of exclusively institutional training in weakening home ties thru too protracted separation in early life. In the course of years, childish interests have been exchanged for those of maturer life, and the home-coming youth finds himself much of a stranger, having little in common with others of his family. The earlier habits of consideration, of tender pity, have lapsed thru disuse. Moreover, the limitations of his infirmity keep him more or less to one side, and he may be overlooked or forgotten, when he would gladly share the common interests and the common pleasures. If intelligent and sensitive, he may grow morbid in the feeling that he has come to be only a care and a burden.

Now, is it practicable so to enlarge the scope of the public-school system as to include any portion of the whole number grouped as defectives, and thus to secure a more practical training, while keeping them in closer touch. with friends on whom they may, to a degree, be dependent in future years?

Without discriminating between that form of institution where all inmates are gathered into one great family and the institution organized on the cottage system, I concede its necessity in some form, except in large centers of population. In great cities the public-school system can be utilized to the advantage of many defective children.

Instead of leaving this statement as an unsupported assertion, it will be more definite to indicate what is actually done for defectives in one metropolitan area that of London-in connection with its work of popular education.

From the problem are eliminated nearly all epileptics, and the lower grades of the mentally deficient, who, for such training as their condition allows, are better under the constant watchfulness of a permanent boarding home.

The census of the school population of London—that is, of all children between the ages of five and fourteen-is annually taken in houseto-house visitation by the school board visitors, each in his own area. When the excuse for non-attendance places the child in any one of the defective groups, it is so recorded, with age, address, and character of disability; and the respective lists, when complete, are sent to the three superintendents in charge of defectives, cripples and epileptics being assigned to the superintendent of the mentally deficient as a matter of convenience.

Not only at the annual scheduling, but thruout the year, it is the duty of the visitor to report at once to the superintendent each new case that comes to his notice. The age of compulsion for deaf-mutes is from seven to sixteen; for the blind, from five to sixteen. The superintendent, having received the data from the visitor, proceeds to amplify; and this can be done in no way so well as by friendly personal calls, wherein details of the cause and degree of disability, and the condition and history of the family so far as it has affected the child, are obtained. These are useful in establishing cordial relations as well as for information.

Three of the groups-viz., the blind, the deaf, and the mentally deficient―are gathered in centers under teachers specially trained to the work for each. Cripples, not requiring specially trained teachers, make a fourth group.

I wish to say just here that, next to thoro training in the special work which is undertaken, there must be, even more than in ordinary teaching, a real love for, and interest in, that special disability, and a rooted conviction that to a large degree it may be surmounted.

Not more than twenty feeble-minded, eight deaf, or sixteen blind are allotted to one teacher, tho, if numbers warrant, there may be two or more classes at one center. This permits satisfactory grading.

If possible, each center occupies a building of two or more rooms, detached from the main building if on the school premises, and having independent entrance from street and playground. When desirable to establish centers for two or more groups in the same or adjoining premises, it is important to provide for entire separation, both in and out of school hours. If cripples are of the number, their center is on the ground floor.