| Abstract: | "For children suffering from physical defects, whether remediable or not, much can and is being done by our schools. For all but the lowest grade of mentally deficient children, too, much also can be done. The latter it is possible to educate to a degree, to train and improve them, and to guide them vocationally. While we know that mental deficiency is incurable, in a medical sense, and that by education we cannot make over a mentally deficient child into a normal child, we have found that it is nevertheless possible to organize and condition his behavior, to train him for certain forms of employment where he can make a reasonable success, to build up an educational program for him that will meet his individual needs, to help establish him in earning service, and to make his life comparatively contented and reasonably safe for society. The problem for the school, as it relates to these special classes of children, we have found, is one of diagnosis, proper classification, curriculum adjustment, restatement of educational objectives, revision of teaching methods, differentiated instruction, and proper training and habit formation, with a view to the removal, in so far as is possible, of the social menace of those children who enter school life in a handicapped physical or mental condition. In studying the needs of these special classes of children, a flood of light has been thrown as well on our school practices as they relate to the handling of those backward, misbehaved, and maladjusted individuals who often cause our teachers much trouble and the school much loss of time and energy. A careful analysis of this fundamental educational problem is of much importance to all those charged with the responsibility of the direction of public education, and the editor of this series of textbooks feels that he is fortunate in being able to present, in this volume, the carefully organized results of years of careful clinical study of thousands of handicapped children, as found in a number of our large public-school systems and child-welfare clinics. The author has been able to organize his results so that the volume forms an excellent textbook for use by our schools of education in studying the problem, and also an excellent guide for practical workers in any line of service that deals with the care or training of handicapped children"--Introduction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
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