poverty, it shall be the duty of the officers and overseers aforesaid to provide for the temporary care of such children until proceedings may be had against them if necessary, according to the provisions of chapter 334 of the acts of the year 1903. SEC. 3. Reasonable expenses incurred by the officers and overseers aforesaid in furnishing aid as provided by this act shall be paid by the city or town wherein the persons have legal settlements, and, if they are without settlement, by the Commonwealth, after approval by the State board of charity; and notice in writing shall be sent to the place of settlement or, if such persons are unsettled, to the State board of charity as is otherwise provided by law. CHAPTER XXVII THE EDUCATION OF SPECIAL CLASSES Legalized Humanitarianism. — In no respect has modern humanitarianism left a more characteristic impress than in the matter of the legalized treatment of children who belong to the so-called special classes - defectives, dependents, delinquents. The contemporary attitude assumed toward these classes by the general social mind, by the law, and by the school is reflected in the three selections that follow: I. DEFECTIVES The Classification of Exceptional Children [From Van Sickle, J. H., et al., Provision for Exceptional Children in Public Schools, Bulletin No. 14, 1911, U. S. Bureau of Education, pp. 19-23.] We assume that this bulletin is addressed to those who are interested primarily in questions relating to the proper treatment of exceptional children rather than in a scientific classification based upon a recognition of the causes of exceptional character in children. The most significant distinction is that between children who can not properly be educated in the public schools and children who can be adequately instructed and trained in day classes. We shall therefore make our primary classification the distinction between institution cases and public-school cases. It is difficult to state any one basis for the establishment of this classification. There are at least three grounds for this distinction. In the first place, there are children idiotic and imbecile, children morally degenerate and delinquent, children severely crippled or suffering from a disease like epilepsy, whom any superintendent would recognize as being unfit for association with normal children in the grade. Many of these children are the subjects of custodial treatment only, even inside the institution in which they may be segregated. A second basis for this distinction has reference to the curability or relative permanence of the child's condition. Certain children who are approximately normal in appearance and in mental character are yet hopelessly degenerate. For their own safety and for the safety of the children with whom they may be associated in the public schools, it is desirable that they should be removed from the schools and placed in institutions. Some of them are educable and can perhaps be trained in the public day schools, but it would be undesirable for them to be thus treated. The most dangerous types of moral imbeciles come in this class. These children some competent authority connected with the public-school system should be quick to recognize. Experts should be called in and the school authorities ought to lend their every assistance to obtain legal sanction for the segregation of these children in special institutions, in order that they may not pass their lives among normal children, with the danger of moral contagion and the possibility of propagating their kind. The third basis for the distinction between an institutional and a public-school case is amenability to treatment in the public schools and institutions. It stands to reason that an institution which controls every hour of a child's existence - sleeping or awake - ought to be able to provide more effective training for difficult cases than can the public schools in day classes. In distinguishing between those cases which should be sent to institutions and those which should not we must take into consideration whether the child requires the kind of work which the public school cannot supply in day classes. A most confusing circumstance arises from the fact that the various types of exceptional children shade off into normal types of children. From children who are slightly slow and dull by nature, there is a steady gradation through children that are only touched with feeble-mindedness to children who are classified in institutions as "high-grade imbeciles," "middle-grade imbeciles," "low-grade imbeciles," "superficial, and profound idiots." Ordinary teachers, superintendents, and casual observers will have no difficulty whatever in excluding idiots and low-grade imbeciles from the public schools. Indeed, it is very rare that children below the grade of middle-grade imbeciles are found in the public schools. The border-land cases, high-grade imbeciles, perhaps even middle-grade imbeciles, will be interpreted very diversely by those who are not familiar with these classes of children. Some teachers and superintendents will think that they have in middle-grade imbeciles very good material to work with in the public schools; whereas expert opinion may advise the removal of such children from public day classes to institutions. Another circumstance is that many children are what some call apparently feeble-minded or imbecile; that is to say, they present all of the features of permanent imbecility excepting that they very rapidly recover or are restored to approximately normal condition under proper physical and mental treatment. Some distinguish these types of children as suffering on the one hand from imbecility and on the other from pseudo-imbecility. We distinguish between them as being permanently feeble-minded or imbecile, and curably retarded in development. Two children may present exactly similar characters and yet one child may, as the result of a year's special training, be restored to the grades and be capable of continuing in the grades and making normal progress; whereas the other child may, after a year's trial, be finally sent to the institution to which he should have been sent without the waste of a year's time. The expert is more capable of classifying children into these two groups of institutional and public-school cases than is the uninstructed teacher or layman; but there are doubtful cases where even expert opinion is unable to decide. There will, therefore, always be reason for keeping some of these children in special classes, under observation pending a final diagnosis. What We shall now briefly and concisely distinguish between those cases which we regard as institutional and the cases of those whom we regard as susceptible of treatment in special classes. It will be necessary for us to recognize a third group, comprising types of children concerning whose treatment, whether in institutions or in public day classes, there may be diversity of opinion and practice. It must be premised that our treatment is largely experimental and will probably remain so for many years to come. place institutions for the training of blind, deaf, and other types of exceptional children shall play in the future and especially in those communities which are approaching this problem for the first time, it is impossible for us to say. Modern criticism of institutional life has led to many reforms in institutional procedure. Much objection that can at present be laid against many institutions for children will undoubtedly be set aside in the future as institutions encourage and develop separation into small groups; for example, separate homes or cottages. There can be no doubt that an institution which need not consider per capita cost can provide children with homes and schools of a character which will conserve the whole life of the child. On the other hand, there is a strong tendency toward the unification of all educational insti tutions and there is little doubt but that the public schools will be held responsible by many communities for the educational treatment of types of children who in the past have been committed to special institutions. For some cases, e.g., persistent truants, disciplinary cases, children suffering from ill health, children who are a heavy economic tax upon their families and children whose home life negatives completely the influence of the school, the public schools of the future may be required by an awakened community to provide parental schools, where children will be boarded as well as educated, and where the advantages of home training and discipline will be combined with the special class of instruction. The grouping which we make, therefore, is to be regarded as a tentative or temporary effort, one which we shall feel under no obligation to defend but which we embody in this bulletin for the purpose of assisting in clarifying the thought of those who are professionally interested in the treatment of exceptional children. Institutional Cases (To be dismissed from the oversight and care of the public school authorities.) 1. Morally insane children. 2. Violently insane children. 3. Demented children. 4. All feeble-minded children below the grade of middle-grade imbecile. (Barr's classification.) 5. High-grade moral imbeciles. 6. Severe cases of epilepsy. 7. Cases of contagious and infectious diseases. (Some to be dismissed temporarily; some for prolonged periods.) 8. Children helplessly crippled or suffering from revolting physical deformity. Children for Special Classes or Special Instruction in the Public Schools 1. Foreign. 2. Late entering. 3. Backward but capable of rapid restoration to normal grade. 4. Dull and feebly gifted. 5. Children requiring vocational training. 6. Children of precocious physical development, especially of precocious sex development. 7. Exceptionally gifted or able children. |