CHAPTER XLVII.

THE EDUCATION OF THE FEEBLE-MINDED IN THE UNITED STATES.

By DAVID F. LINCOLN, M. D.,
Boston, Mass.

In preparing the material for the following statements visits were made to the State institutions at Waltham, Mass., Syracuse, N. Y., Elwyn and Polk, Pa., Vineland, N. J., Columbus, Ohio, and Fort Wayne, Ind.; to the private schools of Mrs. Seguin and Misses Bancroft and Cox, and to city classes in Boston, Springfield, New York, and Philadelphia.

Those acquainted with the field will see that this list omits a number of large and important institutions; but it is thought that the study of the schools visited would be sufficient to develop the characteristic features of the education of the feebleminded in the United States. It may be added that the practice in Canada is essentially the same as with us.

In the limited time at the writer's disposal for visiting these institutions he is aware that full justice can not have been done, and that points deserving mention must have been omitted. A similar excuse can not be pleaded in the case of Waltham, where the opportunities have been unlimited, and the matter is accordingly treated in much fuller detail. To those who have welcomed his visits, in all places, he owes most sincere acknowledgments for the pains they have taken to assist his inquiries.

No extended history of the training of the feeble-minded can be given here, but the field will be clearer if we recall the fact that it formed the object of a general philanthropic movement, beginning in Switzerland, Germany, and England, and rapidly extending to this country, our first institutions dating six years after the foundation of Guggenbuhl's school on the Abendberg in Switzerland. Dr. Seguin's classic Treatise on Idiocy was published in 1846, and he came to this country in 1848. He is the true pioneer, having established a successful school at Paris in 1837. As an interesting fact we may note that several idiotic children were trained for a few years with fair success at the American Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb at Hartford, Conn., beginning 1818, but the experiment was an isolated one and was discontinued.

A very brief historical mention of the principal pioneer institutions in the United States may here be given.

The Massachusetts School for the Feeble-Minded at Waltham was the first State institution. The resolve appropriating $2,500 annually for an experimental school was passed by the legislature May 8, 1848, and the first pupil was received October 1 of that year, the school being carried on for several years at South Boston by Dr.

Samuel G. Howe and James B. Richards in connection with the Perkins Institution for the Blind.

In the interval Dr. H. B. Wilbur opened his private school at Barre, Mass., on the 1st of July, 1848. This school has the credit of having been the first establishment in actual operation, and has since maintained an honorable reputation.

The superintendency of Dr. George G. Tarbell at South Boston (1878-1883) is marked by the prevalence of new views of the value of manual, especially outdoor, occupations, and of the necessity of making provision for asylum cases. In accordance with his wishes a farm was purchased at Medfield, 20 miles out of town, where the able-bodied boys were placed; these boys were transferred to Waltham in 1889, and the South Boston cases were also sent to Waltham the next year.

A tract of nearly 3 square miles of land was purchased at Templeton in 1897, for the purposes of a colony, and to it have been transferred (beginning in 1900) 141 able-bodied adult males. It is intended to retain adult females at Waltham.

The Syracuse (N. Y.) State Institution for Feeble-Minded Children was founded by an act passed in 1851. The school was opened at Albany in 1851, and transferred to Syracuse four years later, remaining in the care of Dr. Wilbur until his death in 1883. In this case, also, the original object was not of a custodial character, but purely educational. There are, however, about 100 custodial inmates, besides a small number of men on a rural colony. The present site is undesirable, as it is surrounded by a rapidly growing suburb of Syracuse.

The institution at Elwyn, Pa., (formerly called by the name of the neighboring town of Media) made its fiftieth annual report in September, 1902. A very valuable account of the origin and development of the school, by the present superintendent, will be found in that report. The original establishment was formed in 1852, at Germantown, Philadelphia, under James B. Richards. Dr. Alfred E. Elwyn, whose name the place now bears, in company with Mr. Richards, secured in 1854 an act of incorporation with an appropriation of $10,000 and provisions for 10 beneficiaries. In 1859 the family, including 25 pupils, removed to the present central edifice at Elwyn. The title of "Training School," still retained, indicates the exclusive purpose of the founders. The asylum and custodial feature was authorized by an act of the legislature in 1871.

The Ohio Institution for Feeble-Minded Youth was established by the legislature in 1857, and located near the city of Columbus. It has from the outset owed much to the faithful zeal of its superintendent, Dr. G. A. Doren, whose guiding hand is still at the helm. In 1898 the State provided for the purchase of land for a colony; this "Custodial Farm" is situated about 12 miles from the parent institutution and embraces 1,068 acres of beautiful land.

The Connecticut School for Imbeciles, at Lakeville, was commenced by Dr. II. M. Knight in 1858, and became a State institution a little later.

The Indiana School for Feeble-Minded Youth at Fort Wayne, Ind., was established as a branch of the Soldiers' Orphans' Home in 1879, as an independent institution in 1887, and came to its present location in 1890. This school has also an agricultural colony, of recent origin, and rapid growth.

The State Home for the Care and Training of Feeble-Minded Women at Vineland, N. J., issued its fourteenth annual report in 1902.

The New Jersey Training School for Feeble-Minded Girls and Boys, at the same place, issued its fourteenth annual report in the same year. Like Elwyn, it is managed by a private corporation, but seven-eighths of its pupils are maintained by the State, and it belongs, like Elwyn, in the class of institutions which represent their States.

The State Institution for Feeble-Minded of Western Pennsylvania, at Polk, Venango County, completed its sixth year of work in 1902, having been authorized by a legislative act in 1893. It shares the care of the State feeble-minded with Elwyn, upon a geographical division, and is growing very fast.

Of the private institutions seen that at Orange, N. J., is of historic interest as being conducted by Mrs. Seguin, widow of the illustrious teacher whose work in New York City forms a brilliant page in the literature of the subject. Her association with his school began in 1880.

The Haddonfield Training School, at the village of that name in New Jersey, was instituted by Miss Bancroft in 1883 and incorporated 1895.

It will be noted that instruction, largely with a view to curing the mental defects and restoring the child to social life, was the object chiefly held in view by those who founded these "schools," as they were called. The idea, now so prevalent, that provision must be made for the custody and care of large numbers of the feeble-minded, did not begin to seem important until a number of years later; not, in fact, until years of patient effort had demonstrated how large a part of the field of beneficent activity lay outside of strictly school work, and how imperfect the results of the best training must be. The original idea of curing imbecility had to be tried and found untenable before justice could be done to its subjects.

The expression "custodial inmate" requires some explanation. It is sometimes understood to refer specially to the adult feeble-minded females who are detained in institutions; but it properly includes all who are being retained rather than educated. The distinction is commonly drawn between "school cases" and "custodial cases,” the latter being very often graduates from the school course who are spending their lives at the institution. There is also an implication of low mental grade in the word "custodial." At Fort Wayne the "custodial kindergarten" classes are composed of the less intelligent.

In estimating the value of this education we must guard ourselves from errors in two directions. On the one hand, we must not be misled by the brilliant results of the "school proper," into a too exclusive attention to this part of the work done; and I suspect it is very easy to allow oneself to be thus misled. On the other hand, it is natural to look on the mass of "custodial" cases as merely so many cases for detention, burdens to society, now neatly shelved in a safe place. This would be a very grave error; it might truly lead to the logical result of doubting whether it he necessary to prolong the physical life of such an order of beings. The "custodials" are almost without exception improvable to some extent, usually to a relatively very great extent. The amount of training on a very humble level which is given to these persons is enormous. In all institutions their physical habits are trained. They are taught decency; they are made useful in many humble petty employments; they are, in short, given a life to lead and are shown how to lead it. The training thus imparted does two things: It first raises them out of their brutishness to the level of social beings, fitting them to mingle in the daily relations of a home with the other inmates, and second, it is so continued as to form a check to the general tendency to degeneration of mind and body. The intellectual results of the training of the lower grades of the feeble-minded are therefore as distinct and as valuable to them as in the case of those who learn to read and write.

There is an economic value in such training, too, for it is far easier to care for them after they are trained in good habits. An illustration of this has been mentioned to me in the case of the custodial institution at Rome, N. Y., where efforts have been recently made to improve the least improvable patients by means of gymnastic, kindergarten, and manual training given daily in classes. As a consequence of this training, the greater part of those who were formerly filthy and destructive are no longer such; many have learned to talk, many have become useful helpers, and the general health has been much improved.

As regards the effect of training upon the higher grades of pupils, the attitude usually taken by experts is that feeble-mindedness is not cured by education; if a case turns out "all right," then it was a case of wrong diagnosis. There is an intense interest attaching to the class whose condition is not wholly certain or obvious.

Some such cases get into institutions, often on account of early neglect and ill treatment, often because of mere backwardness. I do not refer to children who, though really foolish, possess some single faculty in a high state of development and make a remarkable show, but to children who really turn out "bright" after a short time of trial.

It is in connection with such cases that we feel the difficulty of giving in words an exact definition of the word "feeble-minded." Children who are very far from being what is popularly called idiots are nowadays taken into these institutions— occasionally a rather shrewd child is admitted—and the definition is practically a broad one. Typically, the feeble-minded child is weak on all sides-weak in perception, attention, memory, in power over number and language, in combination, in judgment, in mental endurance, and no less defective in touch, in hand power, in general bodily activity, and constitutional vigor; but while a full definition comprises all this, we must acknowledge that in some cases the defect is only partial, while in others it is so concealed as to require a skilled judgment to detect it. If there be one thing which is pretty generally acknowledged as characteristic of the class, it is some form of weakness of practical judgment which renders its possessor unfit for independent life. A want of moral insight or self-control is equally disabling. This trait is noted in the fortunately small class to which is given the name of “moral imbeciles," the "unmoral" through defect.

The definition, however, is incomplete unless we emphasize the anatomical or physical basis of the disorder. We have to do with the fact of arrested or defective development of body and mind. The evidences of constitutional weakness, of slow growth, of inferior size, of defects in the formation of palate, teeth, ears, skull, ete., are associated with poor sight and hearing, defective articulation, inability to grasp objects or to use the legs, and psychic weakness in any or all respects, and in many cases there is manifest disease-as rickets, palsy, hydrocephalus, cretinism—to which we can point as a cause. Imperfect as is our knowledge of the ultimate anatomical basis of these defects, their general "constitutional" character is admitted, and their ultimate incurability is as distinct as is their susceptibility to amelioration.

To return to our main point: If the "school" be really educative, for what sort of a life does it educate?

With very few exceptions-perhaps none--all the inmates of an institution for the feeble-minded are its pupils as truly as in the days of Seguin. Hardly an individual is really untrainable. The idiotic are improved in their personal habits, the semiidiotic are trained to usefulness and to the happiness which health and occupation bring to all. Such children belong in the tutelar care of an institution for life. Those of a higher grade of intelligence, when trained and taught, often show a degree of improvement which misleads the parents to a belief in the child's recovery, and many such are sent out, year by year, at the request of parents. What success these young people have in their new relations can not be stated in a word. The home is not always the best place for them; their defects may reappear after a trial; their want of self-control may lead them into difficulties, even crime. In Massachusetts a great many are sent back to reapply for admission after remaining outside a while. In Indiana, on the contrary, there appears to be an urgent call for comparatively unskilled labor, in response to which a good many young men are withdrawn. In regard to these Mr. Johnson, of Fort Wayne, writes me that most of those who have been allowed by the institution to go out to work are very successfully and creditably earning their living as farm hands, house servants, stable boys, and a few in trades learned at the institution, but none of them, as far as he knows, are married. This appears to be quite different from the experience in Eastern States. But even in Indiana Mr. Johnson considers that the proportion that could be wisely discharged as "graduating" on the line of self-support is not more than 10 per cent of the boys entering, although more than 10 per cent are taken out by parents, etc.