Hadow (1931)

Notes on the text
Preliminary pages Membership, Analysis, Preface, Introduction
Chapter 1 The history of the development of the conception of primary education
Chapter 2 The physical development of children between the ages of 7 and 11
Chapter 3 The mental development of children between the ages of 7 and 11
Chapter 4 The age limits for the upper stage of primary education
Chapter 5 The internal organisation of primary schools
Chapter 6 Retarded children in the primary school
Chapter 7 The curriculum of the primary school
Chapter 8 The staffing of primary schools and the training of teachers
Chapter 9 The premises and equipment of primary schools
Chapter 10 Examinations in primary schools
Chapter 11 Summary of principal conclusions and recommendations
Chapter 12 Suggestions on the curriculum of primary schools
Appendix I List of witnesses
Appendix II Physical development of 7-11 year olds (Harris)
Appendix III Mental development of 7-11 year olds (Burt)
Index

London: HM Stationery Office

Chapter 6 Retarded children in the primary school
[pages 83 - 90]

68. In Chapter 5 we have drawn attention to the need for classifying children according to their educational capacity. In this chapter we propose to discuss the need for grading retarded children, and for providing in the different grades the type of instruction best suited to them. Recent psychological researches, based mainly upon the application of standardised tests of intelligence, indicate that, as regards innate mental capacity, the differences between individual children increase almost in direct proportion to their age. For instance, a child who is backward by one year at the age of five will probably be backward by two years at the age of ten, and by three years at the age of fifteen. Throughout the child's school life the ratio of his mental age to his chronological age appears to be fairly constant.

The range revealed by these researches is unexpectedly wide. By the age of ten, the differences between individual children, exclusive of idiots and imbeciles, cover a range equivalent to more than ten years of mental growth. The dullest pupil of ten may have a mental age of less than five, while the most gifted may have a mental age of over fifteen. By the end of the primary stage the differences have so far expanded that after the age of eleven different types of education are urgently needed. Towards the end of the primary stage, however, that is to say by the age of ten, nearly 80 per cent of the children fall within a range of about three mental years, and may therefore be conveniently spread out over three consecutive classes. The exceptional children, therefore, will comprise about 10 per cent who are unusually bright, i.e. super-normal, and about 10 per cent who are definitely retarded, i.e. sub-normal. (1)

It is important even at the primary stage to differentiate between mentally defective children and children whose mental development is retarded in a greater or less degree. The Joint Committee of the Board of Education and the Board of Control in their Report on Mental Deficiency (1929) have suggested that so far as children under the age of eleven are concerned, the expression 'retarded child' should be taken to mean a child with a mental ratio of between 50 and 80, and that the expression 'mentally defective child' should be taken to mean one who has a mental ratio of below 50. (2) The Joint Committee propose to confine the term 'mentally defective' to those children, whether feeble-minded, imbecile, or idiot, who have been notified by the local education authority to the local mental deficiency authority as 'ineducable,' or as in immediate need of care and control under the Mental Deficiency Acts. This would roughly mean children with mental ratios below 50. (3) In non-technical language these suggestions imply that a child aged ten by the calendar with a mental age of between five and eight years would be classed as a retarded child; if he had a mental age of below five years, he would be notified as mentally defective. The Joint Committee suggest that the expression 'retarded children' should be regarded as including (a) the 'more retarded' children, sometimes rather infelicitously described as 'educable defective' children, who have mental ratios of between 50 and 70, e.g. a child of the chronological age of ten with a mental age of between five and seven years, and (b) the 'less retarded' children, usually known as the dull or backward, who have mental ratios of between 70 and 80, e.g. a child of the chronological age of ten with a mental age of seven or eight. Thus, in ordinary educational parlance, the expression 'dull or backward children' usually means children who about the middle of their school career are backward by about two classes or two years.

Recent psychological surveys (4) have shown that in most industrial areas, although the numbers vary greatly according to the district served by the school, the 'more retarded' or 'educable defective' children amount to only about 1.5 per cent of the school population of the same age, and the 'less retarded,' i.e. 'dull or backward children', to at least 10 per cent of the school population of the same age. In some rural areas it is estimated that about 2.8 per cent of the children should be classified as 'more retarded,' but no trustworthy statistics are available as to the numbers of 'less retarded' children in these areas.

It is estimated that rather less than half of the dull or backward children have been retarded through accidental causes, such as illness or compulsory absence from school. The remainder are children who are innately dull. The available psychological evidence indicates that the slowly developing child rarely catches up with the quick or average child.

69. Inquiries on this subject have been carried out in several areas, and a wide variety of causes has been disclosed. General backwardness is not as a rule a simple mental condition or defect, but rather a complex result due to various causes. Of these there are three main categories: (a) innate mental causes; (b) physical causes; (c) extraneous causes. A distinction should be drawn between children suffering from an inborn retardation of a permanent character, and those suffering from an acquired and curable retardation; in other words, between those usually described as 'dull' and those generally known as the merely 'backward'.

(i) Inferiority in innate general intelligence. The psychological evidence indicates that 'dull' children with a low degree of general intelligence are suffering from a mild form of congenital inferiority differing only in degree from actual mental defect. There are, however, many degrees of 'dullness.' In some instances it may be so extreme as to amount to mental defect in the sense of Section 55 of the Education Act 1921. (5) In others, the degree of 'dullness' is not sufficiently grave to prevent the child from being kept within the ordinary primary school system, but further factors associated with the innate inferiority in intelligence may retard the progress of the child and call for special attention.

(ii) Special disabilities, such as poor memory, unstable attention, poor visual or auditory imagery.

(iii) Inherent emotional defects, such as instability and emotional apathy. Temperamental defects of this character are often greatly accentuated by extraneous conditions at home and in the school, and be defects of character due to unsuitable training. (6) For instance, a child of this type may have emotional conflicts with parents, teachers, or fellow pupils. He may take an antipathy to a particular teacher or to certain subjects in the curriculum. He may resent or misunderstand disciplinary control; he may worry unduly about conditions at home. Such temperamental or emotional defects under unfavourable environmental conditions often aggravate a child's general incapacity.

(iv) Irregularity of mental growth, which sometimes appears to be associated with slow physical development.

(i) General physical defect, e.g. general poor health and lowered vitality, whether due to general constitutional diseases such as tuberculosis, rheumatism and rickets, or to unfavourable home conditions, for instance, malnutrition, insufficient sleep, excessive fatigue from work done out of school, (7) or to sequelae of the acute infectious illnesses of childhood.

(ii) Some specific trouble affecting primarily a limited part of the organism, e.g. defective vision, defective hearing, defective speech, adenoids, enlarged tonsils.

(i) Absence from school, including late entry and irregular attendance for various reasons, e.g. illness of the child himself; infection in the home; negligence on the part of parents; or the migration of the family from district to district, which is a frequent occurrence in rural areas.

(ii) Environmental handicaps, arising either from poverty, or from ignorance or lack of sympathy on the part of the parents; insufficient or unsuitable food; lack of sleep; overcrowding in the home; anxiety about conditions at home; insufficient recreation; lack of culture in the home; overwork out of school hours. (8)

(iii) Defects within the school itself, e.g. unsuitable premises; inappropriate teaching, due partly to mechanical or ill-devised methods of instruction; inadequate attention to individual children who have been absent from school for comparatively long periods; too slow or too rapid promotion; abrupt changes in teaching methods and general educational environment, particularly on transfer from the infant school to the upper section of the primary school. (9)

Several of our witnesses urged that much backwardness was 'school made', being due (a) to setting tasks to pupils before they are ready for them; (b) to inadequate classification, e.g. bright pupils doing the same work as the less bright; (c) to accumulating things half or less than half learnt; (d) to suggesting directly or indirectly to young children that they are stupid.

70. As we have shown in Section 68, the limitations of the retarded child are not nearly so conspicuous at the age of seven as at the age of eleven or at the adolescent stage. Nevertheless, it is clearly most important in the interests of these children that the main causes for their retardation should be discovered at as early a stage as possible in their school career. In some instances retardation will begin to show itself even at the infant stage, and we would suggest that the teachers in schools for pupils between the ages of seven and eleven should discuss with the teachers of infant schools the previous school history of retarded children. To this end, we think that the practice of passing on a brief report on each pupil is greatly to be recommended. In cases of obvious retardation the head teacher of the primary school, in association with the class teacher, would be well advised to search for the principal cause or causes in each individual instance. It is probable that in some cases the teacher will require the assistance of the school medical officer, the school nurse, the parents or guardians, and where available, the psychologist. It seems to us particularly important in cases of retardation that the head teacher should, if possible, get into touch with the parents in an attempt to counteract any cause of retardation connected with the child's home conditions and environment The Child Guidance Clinics which are now being organised in some urban areas might be able to render valuable assistance in some cases of this kind.

71. In view of the comparatively slow development of differences in mental capacity between children up to the age of seven, there is little need to make special provision for retarded children at the infant school stage. There was general agreement, however, among our witnesses that during the stage between the ages of seven and eleven it was of great importance to make suitable provision for the retarded children, while at the same time giving adequate scope to the more gifted children. As regards children who are 'more retarded', i.e. those who are sometimes described as 'educable defectives,' several of our witnesses thought that it might be desirable to provide 'special schools' wherever possible, as in fact is done at present in many of the larger urban areas, e.g. London, Manchester and Birmingham. This, indeed, is the policy recommended for such areas by the Joint Committee of the Board of Education and the Board of Control, who, however, have produced strong arguments for abolishing the Medical Certificate. To this we find no objection, providing that the local education authority has some equally effective power to direct the child to the appropriate educational institution. Any such 'special schools' should be closely related to the general educational system, while preserving freedom to provide for the educational requirements of particular types of children.

The age at which the child should be placed in a 'special school' is rather a debatable point, and the solution adopted will probably vary from district to district. The cases of individual children should be carefully considered before a decision is taken as to the age of transfer. As a rule no child under the age of seven will be sent to a 'special school,' and probably in most cases it will be wiser to give the borderline child a year or two's trial in the ordinary primary school.

The 'special school' needs to be large enough to permit of satisfactory organisation and the proper grading of pupils, in order that the children may be given full opportunities to develop such potentialities as they possess. Its establishment in any area will depend upon the size of the school population in the district which it is required to serve. In large portions of England and Wales the numbers of the 'more retarded' children to be found in a given district will be too small to justify the establishment of 'special schools'. The children will have to be cared for in the local schools; or where special classes for the 'less retarded' children are formed, they may be included in these classes. In any case it should be possible to engage a teacher with a knowledge of 'special school' methods who will visit the local schools and, in conjunction with the class teacher, will plan courses of education suitable for the few children who are to be classed as 'more retarded'. (10)

72. Much careful attention has been devoted to the training and education of 'educable defective' children, who may be regarded as the lower section of the category of the 'retarded'. On the other hand, comparatively little consideration has hitherto been given to the complex educational problem presented by the 'less retarded' children. It is true indeed that in a few areas, and in a number of individual schools, the special needs of these so-called 'dull or backward' children have been carefully studied. But on the whole there has been hardly any attempt to pool experience. In the following passage of their Report on Mental Deficiency (1929) the Joint Committee of the Board of Education and the Board of Control lay special stress on the importance of early attention to the needs of these children between the ages of seven and eleven. (11) 'The sooner the retarded child is discovered and the sooner he receives a special measure of attention, the greater is the hope of remedying or compensating for his particular disability. If scientific methods of case study are employed, the majority of those who are likely to be dull or backward can be detected soon after the age of seven. One of the greatest obstacles to accelerating the progress of the retarded child is the child's growing consciousness of his own inferiority. Before the age of eleven he may hardly have realised his unfortunate position. But with the increase of self-consciousness that the approach to puberty brings, he begins to contrast himself with his normal fellows and strongly resents the babyish methods that are used in trying to teach him the elements of reading and of number. Here lies one of the most important reasons both for attacking his difficulties at an early age, and for placing him when he is older with those who are on a level that more nearly corresponds with his own.'

We strongly endorse the recommendation of the Joint Committee that retarded children should be recognised as requiring special attention between the ages of seven and eleven. Classes which are specially organised for this purpose, or those which contain any considerable proportion of such children, should be small.

Note. Sections dealing with the classification and the appropriate curricula for 'less retarded' children within the primary school itself will be found in Chapters 5 and 12.

Footnotes

(1) Children may be broadly classified in respect of their natural capacity into (a) those who are highly gifted, i.e. super-normal, (b) those of average ability, i.e. normal, and (c) those whose ability is below the average, i.e. sub-normal.

(2) Report on Mental Deficiency (1929) Sections 151 and 156.

(3) It is necessary to emphasise the fact that the restriction of the term 'Mentally Defective' to children in this group is recommended for administrative purposes only.

(4) See page 80 of the Report on Mental Deficiency (1929) Part IV.

(5) '(1) A local education authority shall, with the approval of the Board of Education, make arrangements for ascertaining (a) what children in their area not being imbecile, and not being merely dull or backward, are defective, that is to say, what children by reason of mental or physical defect are incapable of receiving proper benefit from the instruction in the ordinary public elementary schools, but are not incapable by reason of that defect of receiving benefit from instruction in such special classes or schools as under this part of this Act may be provided for defective children: and ...'

(6) See also (c) (ii) and (iii) below.

(7) See also (c) below.

(8) Cf. Chapter 3, Section 48.

(9) See Chapter 5, Section 63.

(10) The existing law regarding the duties of Authorities to provide for the education of 'educable defective' children, as described in Section 55 (I) (a) of the Education Act 1921, is contained in Section 56 of that Act.

(11) Chapter 12.