The Royal Albert Asylum, Lancaster : a training institution for the feeble-minded belonging to Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cheshire, Westmorland, Cumberland, Durham and Northumberland forty-fourth annual report.

  • Royal Albert Asylum (Lancaster, England)
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The Royal Albert Asylum, Lancaster : a training institution for the feeble-minded belonging to Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cheshire, Westmorland, Cumberland, Durham and Northumberland forty-fourth annual report. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    tions, an impossible one to accomplish. They found that the temperaments and idiosyncrasies inseparable from a defective mental organisation too often nullified their labours, and operating through the abnormal channels of impulse, lack of control or apathy, precluded the individual from recognition as an effective or responsible unit in the community. This being the case, and although admitting that a very few are sufficiently responsive to training as to fulfil under sympathetic oversight a small part in the world, it naturally follows that the object to be gained is the provision of life-long care, and it is to be hoped that the legislature will at no distant date make it incumbent upon local authorities to provide custodial establishments for this purpose. It is in reference to some scheme of this nature that Scholastic and education and training on proper lines may be hoped to Tmining1 yield satisfactory results. Mere school instruction per se is productive of little, but the environment which secures the maintenance of physical health does much to enable the feeble-minded to assimilate what they are taught, and the firm but gentle discipline of the Institution is a powerful factor in helping them to turn the knowledge they have assimilated to practical use. Reading, writing, and elementary arithmetic should be the only subjects on which attention should be concentrated, and this in¬ struction should be begun as early as possible. For the achievement of tangible results in this direction, it is imperatively necessary that the classes should not be too large, and that the members of them should be of about the same degree of intelligence. Large classes of feeble¬ minded pupils are impossible to handle profitably, and those containing children of varying degrees of mental power are hampered for the reason that the extra attention needed by the more backward ones is that which ought to have been given to the others ; from this cause progress cannot be expected. We have not found that highly trained and certificated teachers are necessary ; what is really required is knowledge of the children, tact and patience. It is a sheer waste of time that is spent on the cultivation of one faculty only, and it is a matter of common knowledge that this abnormal development in the feeble-minded is constantly associated with other defective intellectual and moral senses. The performer of difficult classical music by ear, who is deficient in other respects mentally and morally, is no longer hailed as a