CAUSES OF BACKWARDNESS AND MENTAL DEFICIENCY IN CHILDREN AND HOW TO PREVENT THEM

HENRY H. GODDARD, DIRECTOR, LABORATORY OF RESEARCH, NEW JERSEY TRAINING SCHOOL FOR FEEBLE-MINDED CHILDREN, VINELAND, N.J.

Few persons realize the great changes that have come over the educational world both in material and methods during the past fifty years. Those who are old enough to remember the earlier conditions seldom have time to turn their attention back and make comparisons. The younger generation, not having experienced the older condition, seldom think about it except as attention may be turned to it from an occasional glimpse at the history of education.

Time was in the memory of some of us when the country boy went to school in the winter, ciphered thru the arithmetic, learned to read in the fifth or sixth reader, to spell at the spelling bees, and perhaps added a few accomplishments such as geography and possibly a little algebra. And having gone thru the allotted number of years, he acquired enough, either in the school or thru his experience with life in the various farm occupations, to enable him to have a farm of his own and work upon it, thereby earning a living and filling his place in the world.

If he went to town he was able to transact whatever business he needed to transact-most people being reasonably honest and not inclined to take advantage of him even if he were somewhat ignorant and inexperienced.

The city boy or the boy with better opportunities and higher traditions in his family was of course sent to better schools and received a more elaborate training which might end in the college or the professional school, but if he did not show an adaptation for this, there was always a place for him and he was able to get along very comfortably in the world and take his place and make some sort of a living.

Now all of this is changed; we have our graded systems and we even have our rural school systems, and, whether they are graded or not, we have an elaborate course of study and know fairly definitely what a child should do each year and even each month in the year. So if the boy does not progress as we say he ought, we are immediately met by the difficulty of having a dull or backward child in our schools, and our problem. is, What can be done with him?

There is no longer a place for him when he leaves school to go to work unless he has some sort of school certificate. Indeed, the number of places which require even a college diploma, or at least a high-school diploma, is continually increasing. As someone has said it used to be that "any fool could be a farmer," now it is that many people are not wise enough to be farmers. So the positions open to the boy who has not made fairly good progress at least thru the grammar school are becoming more and

more rare.

To the economist, all this only means the old law that as competition becomes greater the more important become the shades of difference between individuals. Whereas in the past there was room for all and work for all, and whether a boy was bright or dull there was always something that he could do, today competition in all business and all life is so strong that the individual peculiarities and differences often amount to a serious matter. And the boy who comes to be recognized as dull in school finds it difficult to secure work by which he can earn a living.

In looking about for the causes of this inability to earn a living we find there exist varying degrees of mental ability and there is a dead-line below which one is incompetent.

Looking again to the past for an illustration, many of us will remember the time when little attention was paid to those boys and girls who were just a little deaf or just a little defective in eyesight. It was found after a good while that they did not learn well in school, they were unable to reproduce what had been taught by the teacher or what had been demonstrated on the blackboard. Some years ago it was discovered that these children were partially blind and had not seen clearly what was on the blackboard or had not been able to read aright what was in their textbooks; others of them were a trifle deaf and had not heard clearly what the teacher said and consequently were unable to understand the explanations that were given. We then turned our attention to the examination of all children, and the world was startled by the facts when it was found that somewhere from 10 per cent to 35 per cent of children were more or less deaf or more or less defective in eyesight. Out of that has grown to a large extent the school physicians, the eye clinics, the ear clinics, and so on thru the many lines which the school physician follows.

Now, just as there are persons in whom the eye is a little defective or the ear a little defective, so there are persons in whom the brain is more or less defective, and who have not the intelligence (and never can have) that their more fortunate brothers and sisters are provided with.

While these children in an earlier and simpler form of life might be able to learn and do enough to make their way in the world, especially if their needs were not great or if their relatives assisted them somewhat, in these days of stricter competition, in these days of machinery requiring judgment for its management, in these days when the hundred and one occupations which used to be performed upon the farm are now performed in the shop and the larger part of farming and other industrial work is done by machinery, it requires a higher degree of intelligence than formerly and these children who are just a little below the line in mental ability are no longer able to take their part in the world.

The same complicated educational system which compelled us to discover the partially blind and deaf has compelled us likewise to become aware of those who are partially endowed mentally, and so it comes about

that one of the greatest problems before us today is the problem of children who are endowed with low mentality. They cannot do the regular work of the school; they are recognized as dull or backward, or in extreme cases as feeble-minded. First it was thought that these children were bad, and indeed there are yet some teachers who think that the children who do not keep up with the class are willfully negligent or careless and that they could if they would, but the day of such views is fast passing. We are coming already into a condition of things where any teacher who does not look first at the mental and physical condition of the dull child is recognized as a back number.

The child that does not do his school work to the satisfaction of his teacher should be an object of study and not the recipient of a scolding. When such a study is given, it is found almost always that the child is dull for reasons that are beyond his control; that someone else is responsible for his failure, and not he himself.

Now these dull children divide themselves into two main groups: first, those who are dull and backward from causes of temporary action that may be removed, and having been removed, the child may progress at a normal rate, or at least at a rate sufficiently rapid to enable him eventually to become a respectable and useful citizen. These constitute nearly 15 per cent of the school population. There is the other group of those who are endowed with a brain too poor even to enable them to have sufficient judgment to manage their own affairs satisfactorily in any society as complicated as that in which we live. These are the feeble-minded. They are more than 2 per cent of the school population.

The two ought to be sharply diagnosed and differentiated, for they are as different as measles and smallpox, and it is as important to note the difference as it is in these diseases. Like these two diseases, it is sometimes in the beginning hard to differentiate; and like them, too, in one case it is harmless and the patient will recover, in the other it is likely to be fatal and nothing can save him. Indeed, this is absolutely true of the feebleminded.

As has been said, the causes of backwardness are local and temporal; they may be such things as malnutrition, defective sight or hearing, adenoids, a misfit, even such a thing as taking up a study before the mind is prepared for it, or anything that temporarily blunts the child's ability to do the work that is prescribed for him. Indeed, we may go farther than that and say that there are children of such slow development physically as well as mentally that the things that we assume that they ought to do because they have arrived at the age of six or ten are as far ahead of them as tho we had asked them to do the things which were suitable for a child of eight or twelve. Just as you can make a child bow-legged by insisting upon his walking before he is ready, so you can spoil him for almost any subject of study that you like by putting him into it before his mind has

developed to that point; and just as the bow-legged condition once produced will always interfere with his walking and can only be corrected by very special attention and outlay of money and effort, so the child made backward by being placed in the wrong class to start with is very difficult to overcome, and backwardness will impede his progress at all times unless very definite measures are taken at a good deal of expense of time and money and effort on his part. We have learned to send the child that is physically below par-that is, crippled or disabled or deformed in any way -to a specialist. In the same way we must come to the position where our one thought when we discover a child that is mentally below the average will be that he must go to the specialist, too. That specialist is the psychologist or the teacher of the special class.

But if we have discovered a case of smallpox and not measles-that is to say, if the child is feeble-minded rather than simply backward—we have quite a different problem. The feeble-minded child is born with a brain which does not develop to the point where he can exercise enough reason and judgment to enable him to take his place in any society that is as complicated as that in which we live today.

Now, this condition can be discovered in school. (The method of detecting and differentiating him I leave for another discussion in another section of this Association.)

The causes which have produced this type of defect are many. One has but to read the older literature on the subject to be impressed with the fact that we not only believe that there are many causes, but it is also evident that we are very largely ignorant of what these causes are, and the percentage of cases in which the different known causes act.

Recent studies have led us to make at least one very sharp differentiation—that is, between those cases where the mental defect is a truly hereditary matter and those cases in which it is the result of causes acting in the form of acquired characteristics.

In 65 per cent of all cases of feeble-mindedness there is feeblemindedness in the parents or in the grandparents or somewhere back in the ancestry of the child; in the other 35 per cent we have various forms of disease and accidents and injury. Most of these are in a general way well known to all, such as the after-effects of scarlet fever, spinal meningitis, and perhaps other diseases; dangers, difficulties, and troubles at the time of birth; certain causes that act upon the mother previous to the birth of the child. All of these give rise to a defective brain which can never develop to the point at which it can function normally. Whatever the cause, all of these cases of feeble-mindedness are incurable. They are helpless and hopeless so far as their ever being normal iş concerned.

Nevertheless, there are certain kinds of training that they may receive and under the influence of which they may be made happy and somewhat useful. They will not become an absolute burden upon the community,

altho relatively so. So much for the causes of backwardness and feeblemindedness.

But I am to speak to you also on the prevention of these conditions, and this is a much more difficult problem. It is evident that in regard to the 35 per cent of feeble-mindedness that is due to what we may term "accidents," whether it be of disease, or fall, or injury to the mother or to the child at time of birth, the only prevention for that condition of things lies in greater care which shall prevent the accident. This would in many cases undoubtedly depend upon a greater knowledge and skill on the part of the medical profession, by which the conditions in the parents which underlie the production of a defective child would be better understood and therefore prevented.

The method of preventing the 65 per cent of hereditary cases is manifest without discussion. It is only to prevent their being born. It is merely a question of time when the general public understands the tremendous hereditary force in this particular that we shall take the necessary steps to prevent this type of feeble-mindedness.

When we understand that if two feeble-minded persons marry, all of the children must be feeble-minded; when we recognize that when one parent is feeble-minded the probabilities are that half the children will be feeble-minded and that if the other parent is alcoholic the chances are that all of the children will be feeble-minded-it is only necessary, I say, to understand this to make us resolve that such people shall not marry.

Not only that we must go farther and either provide homes for such people where they can by no possibility procreate their kind, or else we must by surgical interference make it impossible for them to perform that function.

This is the answer to the question, How shall we prevent 65 per cent of feeble-mindedness?

Turning our attention to that part of the subject which is of immediate interest to the schoolman-because it is his problem, the one upon which he can work—we are led to ask, How can we prevent the backwardness in children? The first step toward a prevention of the condition is to recognize it. As I have said in an earlier part of this paper, it has taken us a long time to recognize that this was a condition over which the child had no control. Now we are able to recognize backwardness at an early age. As the result of the studies of a Frenchman, Professor Binet, we are able to diagnose the case as early as three years and find out whether the child is normal or subnormal, and to what extent he is subnormal or backward.

Having recognized the case, we have before us, as was said, a case for the specialist. If everything has been done that can be done to improve the child's condition, then it only remains for us to fit the child to such an environment as he is able to function in. We must not put him in the