BACKWARD CHILDREN

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 104, 26 January 1939, Page 10

BACKWARD CHILDREN

More Special Classes May Be Established The possibility of the establishment in Wellington of additional special classes for backward children is envisaged in a letter from the Education Department read at yesterday’s meeting of the Wellington Education Board. It would appear that classes might profitably be established in the Berhampore and Mount Cook Schools, the letter stated, and the board was asked to comment on the suggestion and also to report on the accommodation that would be available should it be decided to go ahead with their establishment.

On the motion of Mr. C. H. Nicholls, the board decided that a committee consisting of the chairman, Mr. W. V. Dyer, tire city members, Messrs. J. J. Clark, C. H. Nicholls and L. J. McDonald, arty other board members who liked to attend, the assistant-director of education, Dr. C. E. Beeby, and the department’s supervisor of special classes, Miss Valentine, should investigate the possibilities of making better provision for the education of handicapped children in accordance with modern educational trends in other countries.

In the course of a brief discussion, members agreed that the need seemed rather for making normal provision for children according to their capabilities— their individual abilities or disabilities, its the case might be—in a way that would avoid segregating them and thus conveying a suggestion of sub-normality.