Mentally defective children / by Alfred Binet and TH. Simon ; authorized translation by W. B. Drummond ; with an appendix containing the Binet-Simon tests of intelligence by Margaret Drummond and an introduction by Alexander Darroch.

  • Binet, Alfred, 1857-1911.
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Mentally defective children / by Alfred Binet and TH. Simon ; authorized translation by W. B. Drummond ; with an appendix containing the Binet-Simon tests of intelligence by Margaret Drummond and an introduction by Alexander Darroch. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    of caring for their ailments and preventing overpressure. It includes, lastly, all the reforms of but yesterday's date which make for a better hygiene, a better physical educa- tion. One might add also the work that is being done almost everywhere, in Germany, in America, in Italy, and in France (Laboratory of Psychology of the Sorbonne, and the Society for Child Study), with reference to the special aptitudes of children, and, as has been said a little ambitiously, the making of education an exact science. Education of Defectives.—The movement referred to, of which we see only the beginning, but which will result, let us hope, in an amelioration of the lot of the great majority, is now being directed to the education of the mentally defective. Their problem has been discussed theoretically for a long time, but nothing has come of it. Now the problem is entering upon a new phase, and something prac- tical will result. Without attempting to write the whole history, which would be nothing more than the study of what has been done in other countries, let us state where we are ourselves. It was in France that alienists first began to occupy them- selves with the children knowTi under the various names of abnormal, backward, idiot, mentally defec- tive/' unstable, etc. Esquirol made the important dis- tinction between the idiot and the dement; and after him many other alienists—notably Itard, Falret, Voisin—de- scribed the principal symptoms of idiocy, or attempted to show that it is capable of amelioration. Seguin, a teacher of defectives, who has left an honoured name, showed ex- perimentally how one may, by dint of much ingenuity and patience, increase the intelligence and improve the charac- ter of some of these unfortunate children.^ Lastly, in ^ It is common to cite with respect the names of one's predecessors, and Seguin's portrait may justly hang in such a gallery of one's an- cestors. But Seguin's work must not be examined too closely; those who praise it have certainly not read it. Seguin impresses us as an