MENTALLY-DEFECTIVE CHILDREN

Evening Star, Issue 18252, 17 April 1923, Page 1

MENTALLY-DEFECTIVE CHILDREN

PROPOSAL FOR SPECIAL SCHOOLS. THE MOVEMENT DROPPED. Towards the end l of last year n committee of the Otago Education Board r ported that there are in this district quite a number of rncntally-defcctivo children whose presence in tho schools is detrimental to the interests of tho normal children as well as to their own, and the committee recommended that a class of twelve or fifteen bo established, that an available section in St. Kilda be set apart as a site, and that application be made to the department for the money wherewith to erect a building and pay an instructor. This report was adopted by the board and sent on to the Director of Education. The board expressed the opinion that there was extreme urgency for the .-citing up in the main centres schools specially equipped and' officered. Stress was laid on tho necessity of having teachers trained for the purpose. It is to be noted that this proposal was pub forward as supplementary to and certainly not as replacing the Otekaike establishment, which is about sixteen miles from Oamaru. The Otekaike School is professedly for children of marked incapacity but. not so dull intellectually as to bo taken away from their own people. The scheme proposed was to gather together in each district such children as were not so mentally incompetent, as to bo fit. for Otekaike, yet were a. drag and a, hindrance to the general work of tho schools. Tho Director of Education promptly replied. Pile pointed out that full provision is made in the Act for tho establishment of classes of the kind l desired. There was, he wrote, no need for a special site or building or for a separate building. Tile class coultj, be established in any school suitably Situated iu which there was a vacant room. If there was no such school the board might recommend some narltcnla.r school to which a room could be added or for which -a temporary room could be provided, A class so formed would he an integral part of some existing school. Only defective children- of the I igher grade type could suitably be under day school conditions. The lower grade or seriously defective children would require to be. boarded out in a special instihtjon. Tho, Director added 1 that in Ha opinion there was no need to have, teachers specially instructed at Otekaike.

This answer enc Jed the negotia,Lions. Nothing further has been done. The position is that the Director of Education in effeefc says that scliools of the kind required can be set up in any vacant room, and as a fact there is no vacant room. Apparently that lias been taken as the whole answer. In the director's letter there is mention of an alternative, ns to adding a temporary room somowrie.re, but the. main proposal is declined, and the director does not deem specially-trainov teachers necessary, and these discouragements in combination are, so far as can be gathered-, regarded as throwing cold water on the proposals as a whole, and the result is that the movement is dropped.