Weak-minded children.

Date:
[1888]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Weak-minded children. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    1/4
    Be/printed from The Journal of Mental Science, Aprils 1888. WEAK-MINDED CHILDREN. In the last number we advocated certain intermediate schools for the weak-minded (Jan., 1888, p. 552). We are glad to receive the support of so experienced and intelligent an authority as Dr. Shuttleworth, the medical superintendent of the Royal Albert Asylum, Lancaster, who communicates the following observations upon The Education of Children of abnormally weah mental capacity :— The reference in the last number of The Journal of iMental Science to the auxiliary schools established in Germany for exceptionally backward children* may serve to draw attention to an important hiatus in our English educa- tional system. Whilst exceptionally quick children are in every rank of life well provided for, and amongst the poor facilities for higher education are given (at any rate, in large towns) in connection with the Board Schools, no systematic effort has so far been made in this country for the special train- ing of those children whose abnormally weak mental capacity renders it impossible for them to keep pace with the require- ments of the code. It is true that the institutions for imbe- ciles and idiots are intended for the education and training of the class designated in America as feeble-minded, as well as, or perhaps more than, of cases of graver mental defect; but considering the paucity of such institutions, and the un- desirability of stigmatizing as idiotic, or even as imbecile, children who are not irretrievably deficient, the plan of auxiliary classes and schools deserves serious consideration hy our educators. It may be of service in this connection to f|uote from an excellent paper by Herr Kielhorn, of Bruns- wick, which appeared in the ■ Zeitschrift fiir die Behandlung i^chwachsinniger und Epileptischer for March, 1887. 'The auxiliary school, he Stiys, is designed for such (children as after a trial of at least two years in a town '''^■liool (t.e„ public elementary school) have not been able to promoted, so that an equal progress with their school- mpanions is impossible. On the other hand, those children * Occasional Notes of the Quarter, p. 552.