Mentally defective children / Education Department, Leeds.

  • City of Leeds
Date:
1928
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mentally defective children / Education Department, Leeds. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    answer to a questionnaire on the subject addressed to a number of Local Education Authorities, including London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Liver- pool, Manchester and Birmingham. With regard to the decisions taken at the meetings referred to above, no lectures have been given to teachers; teachers do not attend the certifying examinations, and no steps have been taken with regard to a Roman Catholic Special School. Adequate machinery for the ex- emption of suitable children between 14 and 16 has been set up, and is the one recommendation that is in effective operation. The Head Teachers of Special Schools submit their lists of ineducable children every six months, and the School Medical Officer examines the children in the Special Schools, but only a small proportion of the children reported in this way are notified and their places are soon filled by other low-grade cases. No period of probation is insisted upon, and special reports upon children who make no progress are not regularly received. The net result is that ascertainment is only slightly improved, if at all, and that the Leeds Special Schools remain low-grade schools as before. In short, the position has not materially improved, and a thorough and comprehensive review of the whole situation is called for. It should be made clear at the outset that while technical matters which are the special preserve of the medical man and the psychologist cannot be avoided, the problem is here regarded entirely from the administrative point of view. An Education Authority has certain duties in the matter, and the question is whether they are being adequately met and how far improvements can be effected. MENTAL DEFECT Statutory Distinctions and Definitions A brief survey of the foundations of the work may be found useful, familiar as these are to workers in the subject. It is generally held by medical men that mental defect is associated with arrested cerebral development. Some children are born with a potentiality for development which is less than normal; in their case the brain and mental powers develop more slowly than in the case of a normal child, and cease to grow at a point which is far short of that reached by normal children. The Mental Deficiency Acts of 1913 to 1927 present us with a classification which implies a scale of ‘‘more or less’”’ degree of defect whose classes are also distinguished from one another by their social characteristics or more accurately, their lack of certain leading faculties. Idiots fail to avoid common dangers; imbeciles fail to manage their own affairs; feeble-minded persons require assistance in managing their affairs. Also, the idiot is more defective than the imbecile and the imbecile than the feeble-minded, The classification A2
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