[Report 1947] / Medical Officer of Health, Canterbury Borough / City & County.

  • Canterbury (England). City & County Council.
Date:
1947
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1947] / Medical Officer of Health, Canterbury Borough / City & County. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    48/52 (page 46)
    6. Phychological work in the schools has been concentrated on a detailed survey of backwardness and educational retardation among children 7 to 14 years of age, its incidence, and classifica- tion of specific types of difficulty more especially in reading and arithmetic, with a view to providing some specialised form of remedial teaching in these subjects. These children, while definitely not mentally defective, are educationally subnormal in that, for example, at ten years of age their mental maturation is such that they are only capable of the work of an eight year old, but for want of special teaching which would give each child both time and opportunity to achieve at his own rate, the type and standard of education of which he is individually capable, and which will best fit him for citizenship and adult life, he is only actually achieving results at the 6 or 7 year level, i.e., well below his own capacity. Many children were found unable to learn to read at 12 and even 14 years of age, while others nearing school leaving age had made little or no progress beyond the infant stages in arith- metic. There are three main reasons for this : (i) innate slowness or dullness; (ii) absence in early school life at critical stages in the mastery of the basic subjects; (iii) emotional upsets, such as anxiety over separation from parents during evacuation, which are a common cause of backwardness in arithmetic in children of all levels of intelligence. These children constitute a serious ]iroblem in the over-. flowing classes of to-day, where the level of their attainments may fall two or more j’^ears below that of their classmates. Yet with the pi'ovision of remedial teaching in reading and arithmetic for several hours a week, in small groups at a remedial centre, such as it is hoped to provide shortly, these children can make progress commensurate with their own individual capacity to learn, while still remaining in their ordinary classes in their own schools. 7. Development Plan and Memorandum on Special Hostel. A memorandum was submitted to the Education Com- mittee in September, 1947, dealing with the expansion of the work at Tower House, and especially with the need for a small Hostel in the area for placement and treatment of maladjusted children. Attention was drawn to the need for such a Hostel in the Annual Report for 1946. During the past year the matter has become more iirgent, and a considerable amount of time and money has been wasted in fruitless attempts to obtain placement for children who obviously needed it desperately. The matter has, we understand, been submitted to the County Authorities for discussion. A worker from the Ministry of Education, who visited during the year, stated that the Ministry were strongly in favour of such Hostels.