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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    to pay much attention to individual difficulties, and soon the rate of failure showed itself sufficiently high to provoke comment. In 1871 Matthew Arnold, at that time Her Majesty’s Inspector of Schools in the Metropolitan Division of Westminister, noted that ‘in every standard the rate of failure was higher than in 1869; and the total rate of failure was 18°81 per cent against 11°31 per cent in 1869’. By the time universal compulsory education was intro- duced in 1880 there were numerous complaints from teachers that many of their pupils were precluded by the very nature of their intellectual powers from reaching the standards of the Board, though there were others who, incurably optimistic, believed that all backwardness was remediable, provided only that the schooling given were efficient. Controversy over the relative importance of heredity and environment has lasted long. The number of children failing in the schools continued to be large enough to compel attention, and chiefly owing to pressure from both teachers and doctors the Elementary Education (Defective and Epileptic Children) Act was passed in 1899. The Act distin- guished two categories of children—those who were mentally defective and those who were not. ‘Mental defectives’ were described as those, ‘who, not being imbecile, and not being merely dull or backward are, by reason of mental defect, incapable of receiving proper benefit from the instruction in the ordinary public elementary schools, but are not incapable by reason of such defect of receiving benefit from instruction in such special classes or schools as are in this Act mentioned’. The Act was the child of its age. Not only were pupils to be classified into two sharply defined categories—mentally defective or otherwise—but the concept upon which the classification was to be made was clinical rather than educational; the wording followed was largely that recommended by the Royal College of Physicians. But more important was the fact that here, for the first time, statutory recognition was given to the view that ‘special’ schooling was needed for children who had failed to profit from the usual instruction. The Act of 1899 gave school authorities the power to provide special schools or classes for children in the defined categories, and many were established in the larger towns. The Elementary Educa- tion (Defective and Epileptic Children) Act, 1914, went further: it imposed a duty on local education authorities to make suitable provision in their areas for mentally defective children over the age of seven, and this requirement was extended by the Education