Vice-presidents.-The Marquis of Bute, the Marquis of Northampton, K. G.; the Marquis of Lorne, K. T.; the Earl of St. Germans, the Right Hon. and Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of London, the Right Hon. the Lord Mayor (ex officio), the Right Hon. Lord Ebury, the Right Rev. Bishop Barry, D. D.; Sir Charles Hugh Lowther, Bart.; Alderman Sir Andrew Lusk, Bart.; Sir Sydney Waterlow, Bart.; Sir Rutherford Alcock, K. C. B.; the Master of the Worshipful Company of Cloth Workers (ex officio).

Trustees.-His Grace the Duke of Westminster, K. G.; the Hon. W. F. D. Smith, M. P.; and William James Armitage, esq.

Executive committee.-The Right Hon. Lord Playfair, K. C. B. (chairman); W. J. Armitage, esq.; James A. Campbell, esq., LL. D., M. P.; J. Whitaker Hulke, esq., F.R.S.; William Mather, esq., M. P.; Arthur Miall, esq.; F. D. Mocatta, esq.; the Hon. W. F. D. Smith, M. P.; Dudley R. Smith, esq.; Sir Sydney H. Waterlow, Bart.; George A. Western, esq. (chairman of house committee); T. Marchant Williams, esq. (retired April 1, 1893); also the president, trustees, and treasurers (ex officio).

Treasurers.-The Right Hon. Lord Stallbridge; the Right Hon. A. J. Mundella, M. P.

Honorable secretaries.-W. J. Armitage, esq.; Arthur Miall, esq.

In addition, there is an extended list of councilors, together with the names of local committees organized in the interest of the college at Dundee, Edinburgh, and Glasgow. Indefinite quotations might be made from those in whose judgment the public would have the most confidence commending the work accomplished.

The venerable Archdeacon Farrar, D. D., remarked to those who had been listening to music furnished by the college:

*

*

"The exquisite anthems, hymns, and service to which you have been listening have been performed by musicians from the Royal Normal College for the Blind. * * * What we should all desire for the blind, above every earthly blessing, is that they should not be a burden to themselves, or to their friends, or to the community in general, but that they should be trained to earn a blessed independence; to become profitable members of the church and commonwealth. * I am happy that, owing to an improved state of things, we now rarely see the once common, but surely shocking sight, of a blind man led along by a dog with a string, and so pitiably exposed to the hundred accidents and chances of the street. But what we should all aim at is to foster every wise effort to uplift the blind above the disabilities of their condition. It should be our duty to alleviate their calamity. It should be our effort to bring courage and brightness into their lives; to provide them, as far as we can, with exceptional chances to compensate for their exceptional difficulties; to inspire into their gladdened hearts the sense that they, too, are dear children, beloved of their Heavenly Father, in the common family of man. * * The Royal Normal College for the Blind enables them to avail themselves to the full of, those blessed compensations which lie in the inexhaustible resources of nature for all who have the faith and the energy to draw them forth. Those compensations are like the water locked up in the flinty crags of Sinai till, at God's bidding, the rod of Moses bade them spring forth, so that in the wilderness did water break out and streams in the desert. But as the imprisoned runnels did not leap forth till the rod of Moses had smitten the stony rock, so neither are these compensations available for the common blessing until the mercy, skill, and perseverance of man has set them free. It is this which is being done in the Royal Normal College with conspicuous wisdom and success.

*

CHAPTER X.

MINOR MENTAL ABNORMALITIES IN CHILDREN AS OCCASIONED BY CERTAIN ERRONEOUS SCHOOL METHODS,1

By Dr. William O. Krohn, Psychologist, Illinois Eastern Hospital,

My discussion of this subject is based upon four distinct premises or propositions, each of which is a clearly proven and fully demonstrated truth-a fundamental principle-in some one of the various particular sciences. It is not my purpose to endeavor to substantiate any particular theory of education. We are not trying to bring forth evidence in favor of any "fad" or "ism." It is an unwelcome fact, but a fact, nevertheless, that mental abnormalities do exist in school children. To what is this seeming mental disintegration due? We know that in a large measure these mental abnormalities are the direct result of erroneous school methods-the logical attainment of a pseudoeducation.

The present paper is not at all concerned with the physical ills of the child, many and serious as they are, due to improperly appointed schoolrooms. "Schoolroom diseases" do exist, and the fact that they do exist is a stigma that we should all hasten to eradicate. That a healthy, laughing, romping child entering our modern school may be doing so at the probable expense of health is a sad commentary upon our modern educational methods. Can you wonder that a parent sometimes hesitates to give his child to the modern school when he knows from observation that his dearly beloved child may come back to him at the end of a few years broken in health? Must the parent of to-day take along with the modern school, possessing as it does so much that is excellent, utilizing as it does so many of the best educational facts and forces-must he needs take also those factors that make against rather than for the child's health? Can you criticise the parent for sometimes halting at the schoolroom door and repeating to himself the question, "What will it profit my child if he gain the whole world of knowledge and lose his health?"

But in these latter days reforms are being made in regard to seating, ventilation, lighting, and heating, as well as provisions for exercise, recesses, and recreations, all of which goes to show the steadily growing belief of parents, teachers, and school officers in the dictum that "a ton of knowledge gained at the expense of a single ounce of health is far too dearly paid for." Our schoolhouses are being better builded, better equipped, and better appointed, so that as time advances the physical child-his health-will be more and more conserved.

But the mental abnormalities of school children, resulting from erroneous, misfit methods, have occupied the thought and evoked the sympathy of comparatively few, and for that reason I shall devote the entire time of this paper to the discussion of these mental abnormalities, their causes, and how they may be eradicated.

A paper read at the Washington (1898) meeting of the National Educational Association, and published by the Commissioner of Education according to a request expressed in a resolution of the Association.

My first premise I take from the domain of the science of biology. It is the law of heredity, in which we all believe to a greater or less degree. I mean the law of heredity only in its more restricted but fully established sense-namely, the acquired characteristics of the parent are not transmitted to the child. A strong belief in heredity has become so general and so widespread that the direct results of descent are looked for with supreme confidence. The good parent is supposed to have a good child, and the brilliant parent a brilliant child. Yet this is too sweeping, for goodness and brilliancy are qualities purely functional, and not structural. They are the results of friction, struggle, social conditions, environment. The question of the underlying physical structure of the child is quite different. Bone, muscle, nerve in their distribution are governed largely by heredity. But there is a difference between natural inheritance of structure and artificial acquirements. The father may be deaf and the mother a deafmute, but the child of these parents will have normal hearing and speech. I have made personal observation of one family in which both parents were deafyet their five children are perfectly normal as to hearing and speech. A man may have his nose pushed to one side and the woman he marries may have suffered the same deformity, and yet the children born to them will have perfectly straight noses. Both father and mother may be "star" mathematicians-the result of acquisition and study-but the children born to them may be unable to go beyond the "rule of three." Acquired characteristics are not transmitted. They are functional qualities rather than organic attributes. As Dr. Oppenheimer says in his recent book: The doctrine of heredity, as commonly held, not only is falsely applied to human descents, but also renders the wisest and best efforts of training unnecessary and useless. For if at birth the child's bodily and mental organization is complete, if the characteristics of parents are handed down to offspring, then there the matter ends. Every remarkable parent would have equally remarkable children, and every deficient person would curse his descendants with a like deficiency; work, training, striving after noble ideals would be useless and silly." All individual efforts at self-improvement would be worthless, every individual impulse would be incapable of realization, every endeavor of parent or teacher would be at an end. Not a single educational fact, not a single educational force but would fail of fruition.

But education is not a matter of such utter hopelessness. Pedagogical efforts are not doomed to such complete barrenness of results. To such a hopeless philosophy this world would be a dull blank and man little more than a grinning skull. If one really observe the laws of growth and mental development as they become actualized in every child he will see that there is a more wholesome, roseate philosophy of education. Happily, then, the child does not grow according to some hard and fast rule that has been implanted in him before he was born. The old Calvinistic form of pedagogy, called heredity by Darwin, has given place to the counter dogma of liberally minded men, as Rousseau, who says: "Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Creator; everything degenerates in the hands of man." While both of these dogmas are too extreme-both the old Calvinistic and the more recent liberalistic-the sum of the whole matter is that entirely too much dependence has been placed upon heredity in its commonly accepted significance. Parents and teachers educate the minds, train the bodies, and develop the morals of the children under their care "not so much by what their ancestors were but what they themselves do and think." In the meantime in any case of mental abnormality in the child, the teacher will shift the blame on the parent and the parent in turn on the teacher until finally, with their utter lack of cooperation, the psychopathically disposed child really becomes mentally disintegrated and quite degenerate.

In how far does the school help to develop mental and nervous abnormalities when they could and should be checked and obliterated? In how far does the

school give rise to new evils that affect the mental power of the child-evils that would be entirely unnecessary were the courses of study, the daily programme, and schoolroom methods more fitting and better adapted to the child? This vital question will be answered more fully after our other premises have been set forth. In the light of the true conception of the doctrine of heredity we are warranted, however, in saying that we have usually taken too much for granted in believing that the child of 6 years of age as he knocks at our schoolroom door is more developed than is really the case. We certainly take too much for granted with reference to the knowledge possessed by the children we are called upon to educate. There is in fact next to nothing of real educational value the knowledge of which it is safe to assume at the beginning of school life. The child does not inherit in any form the knowledge acquired by his parents, and we must proceed in his education by bringing into exercise all methods of appeal to the child's mind. We must be prepared to educate the whole child and not take for granted that a certain segment of the circle of his intellectual life has been measureably formed, fashioned, or developed by heredity. We must so place our array of eductional forces that every form of the brain activity may be aroused and that appeal be made to every mental potency. If we take for granted that a certain parcel of knowledge is bestowed upon a child as an heirloom by his ancestors we are creating a possibility for mental abnormalities to appear in the particular child thus partially neglected.

My second premise I take from the domain of genetic psychology. It is also a firmly established, clearly demonstrated principle-an ultimate fundamental truth in the science that has given it its being. This principle is: Mental development in the child occurs by stages-by periods. Just as the entire body is not growing at any one time, so all the mental powers are not unfolding and growing at the same time. In bodily development growth settles for awhile on one set of muscles, one set of organs, and then another, and another, until the entire body is developed. Likewise, there is a nascent period for each mental faculty.

The first mental power to develop is sensation. At birth a child possesses but two senses-touch and temperature. They are the only windows of the soul open to receive the impressions that Mother Nature has to bestow upon him. A few hours after birth vision is added, then hearing, and after some days taste and smell, followed by the muscle sense and the others in turn.

The second epoch in the mind's process of unfolding is the memory stage. This is the period when the child is characterized by a prodigious power of remembering detail. A single hearing of rhyme or rule of song or catchy phrase is sufficient to insure its correct reproduction. We are all aware how much more difficult it is for us to commit rhymes or rules now than it was during our second or third year of school life.

The third epoch is the period of the growth of the imagination. Children love to live in a world of make-believe; they love to play circus, church, or school. How easy it is for the child to assume the rôle of Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, Robinson Crusoe, or Buffalo Bill! During this period there is developed a mania which frequently occasions grave concern to parents. I refer to children's lies. Now, the lie of the child, it must be remembered, is by no means the same despicable moral offense as is the deceitful lie of the adult. It grows largely out of his desire to excite wonder. It is a bit of incipient research. He tries it, and if it works he tries it again; if not, he quits. But, in these rovings of the imagination he is not attempting primarily to deceive.

The fourth period is characterized by the peculiar activity of the powers of judgment and comparison. This in turn by the period of curiosity. Curiosity must be properly developed. No child whose curiosity is throttled and starved will ever become a good reasoner. He must first ask questions and reasons of others in order to be able to ask questions and reasons of himself.

I have thus outlined the periods of mental development for the purpose of showing that a well organized course of study must be in harmony with these processes of development in order to be successful. More depends upon the order of studies assigned than upon the contents of the studies themselves. You have heard of the experiment made some years ago by four teachers in the city of Paris, in the Lycée (the school for boys), who asked permission of the minister of education that each of them might give to his 25 pupils the same studies prescribed in the required course, but in a different order, an order believed by them to accord with the natural development of a boy's mind rather than in the arbitrary order demanded by cast-iron law. These boys completed all of the required studies in this natural order in three and a half years, instead of seven years, the time assigned for the completion of the course as regularly given in the Lycée. Upon examination they were found to be equally proficient mentally, and above the average in physical development, as compared with those who had spent seven years in going over the same ground. As teachers we should have constant regard for the great principles of mental waste and mental economy. The course of study should fit the child; the child should not be jammed into an arbitrary curriculum, sustaining no relation to the natural order in which his powers of mind and body unfold.

66

In some of our schools seven or eight years are still devoted to the study of arithmetic; yet we know that all of arithmetic can be taught the child and better taught, in the years between 7 and 10. This is admirably done, to my personal knowledge, in at least 150 schools, saving much time and energy, and making room for important studies which would otherwise be crowded out. Now we all know that the time to educate any mental capacity is the time at which that particular mental power is most rapidly growing. The time to educate memory is when memory is most rapidly developing; the time to educate the senses is when the senses are most alert-i. e., when they are rapidly unfolding. We would not have diseased imaginations" in our school children if we would only properly cultivate imagination when it is most rapidly growing. A host of mental abnormalities in school children can be traced directly to the fact that the course of study is not formed to correspond to the child's various periods of mental development. If at any period of mental development, the proper mental food, the proper school study is not given, then the mental faculty that would otherwise grow so rapidly and unfold so perfectly (had it been properly fed and exercised) will be stunted in its growth and in all probability atrophy, because of disuse. The child's whole mental development will thus be impaired and a whole line of mental abnormalities will present themselves at a time too late for their complete eradication. Especially serious are the mental abnormalities which result from improper and insufficient training of the senses. All of the "raw material" of thought comes through the senses. All of the raw material acted upon by memory, imagination, judgment, comparison, and reasoning is gained through sense experi

ences.

senses.

It can be said without fear of successful contradiction that if the education of the senses be neglected all subsequent education will partake of a vagueness, haziness, and inefficiency which will never admit of complete cure. From any sense-error any other conceivable error may arise. And yet how many methods of instruction there are so inopportune and inefficient that they really dwarf the Train the senses of the child and the rest of the mental development will almost take care of itself. The truly successful teacher is the sense teacher, for she is trying not merely to impart knowledge but also to develop mental force. In cultivating the powers of sense of the pupil we accomplish four things for him, each one of which is vitally important: (1) We make his knowledge more accurate and clearly defined; (2) we make his knowledge more comprehensive and complete; (3) we develop his mental power; (4) we make his acquisition of knowledge pleas