Slow learners at school.

  • Great Britain. Department of Education and Science.
Date:
1964
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Slow learners at school. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    methods and arrangements on which firmly held views are based. What advantages, for example, has the backward boy in a special school enjoyed over another of similar ability who has continued his education in a secondary school? Can such advantages be accurately assessed? Can any inferences yet be drawn from the information collected by schools about their pupils’ success or failure after leaving? Are specific follow-up studies needed? There is no doubt that many leavers from special schools seem better fitted for life than others from the lowest classes in ordinary schools. How much advantage is gained from a residential school by a child of low intelligence whose home affords him little encourage- ment or support? How does a boarding school education affect his stability, his general development, his attainments and his subsequent employment? To what extent would more elaborate arrangements made to help and advise parents of backward children—perhaps even before their children reached school age— contribute to their well-being and lessen the need for boarding places? What are the intrinsic advantages, if any, of the boarding school over the day school? Does the day school need, for example, facilities for large-scale enterprise such as animal husbandry which the boarding school can provide? How far can a single special class meet pupils’ needs? Can it include both dull children and retarded? On what basis should the backward children be selected for a special class in an ordinary school or in a special school? On their physical maturity? On intellectual ability? On their social development? What is the best curriculum? Are any teaching methods more suitable than others? Should there, for example, be a difference of approach, perhaps with less emphasis on words, to the education of the very dull? What forms of help after leaving school are proving most valuable to backward pupils? Precise answers to these and similar questions may be difficult or impossible to find, but the questions are none the less worth asking and systematic research is needed. | Special schools and classes will achieve little if the right teachers are not available. Only a minority of the teachers so engaged undertake an extensive specialised training, though many have attended local and national short courses to increase their know- ledge. The extension of the training college course from two to three years affords future teachers time for a more detailed and profitable study of child development and psychology which will prove of particular value should they later decide to specialise in the teaching of backward children. One-year supplementary courses in the teaching of handicapped children (including educationally subnormal children) are now offered by eleven training colleges