Report on the scientific study of the mental and physical conditions of childhood : with particular reference to children of defective constitution : and with recommendations as to education and training.

  • Committee on the Mental and Physical Condition of Children.
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the scientific study of the mental and physical conditions of childhood : with particular reference to children of defective constitution : and with recommendations as to education and training. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

    68/130 (page 58)
    Teachers are well aware that their educational resulta depend in great part upon the child material admitted into the school; when the school places are not full they are not free to select applicants for admission ; but this does not apply in all cases. The proportion of ill-made brains appears to vary much in different schools, and probably varies in different localities; in a school designed to represent the requirements) of a neighbourhood, it seems that allowance should be made in assessing results for the average material placed under the care of the teaching staff. A high per- centage of defects in a district calls for special attention on the part of the Sanitary Authority, and also for special care in training the children, while a lower standard of intelligence must be expected. Favourable opinion was formed concerning some of the endowed pai'ochial schools where special attention was given to the require- ments of the neighbourhood, one or two epileptics, one or two feeble- brained children who could only be trained and not presented for examination were allowed to attend, and the admission of a few ill- favoured applicants made the schoolroom a fair sample of local childhood, with the result that in examination a less favourable report was made than would be the case if the best children only were admitted. These points are mentioned not as praise or in criticism, but to illustrate that a correct allowance for the material in a school is fair in estimating the money grant earned, and that the care of the feeble children, as well as of the average, may be encouraged by judicious assessment of the child-material and their intellectual culture. On the other hand certain philanthropic institutions claim credit for the badness of the material collected and justly claim support on the ground that it is to the public interest that the best should be done for the paralysed, the crippled, the blind, &c, and for those of criminal tendencies. If these principles be accepted, if it is true that the national interest lies in having a population of children well made and well trained, is it to our advantage that the day school system should ignore or reject the weak and defective children, and might they not in appropriate cases be kept under their parents' care, and at day schools, with due allowance to the teachers, thus being retained in their own neighbourhood ? Certain schools, if not all, and in particular the endowed schools of a parish should be encouraged to show results in dealing with the worst child material of the neighbourhood, and in preventing it from gravitating to the Poor Law, or to degradation and failure.