BACKWARD CHILDREN ARE NOT SUB-NORMAL

Manawatu Times, Volume LII, Issue 3614, 15 September 1927, Page 8

BACKWARD CHILDREN ARE NOT SUB-NORMAL

Segregation of Pupils Roundly Condemned

INTELLIGENCE TESTS NOT TEST OF MENTALITY

Before the meeting of the Palmerston North School Committees’ Association last evening, Mr W. F. Burward gave an address upon the subject of “retarate” children in schools. He strongly condemned the practice of segregating the apparently slow pupils who, he said, really required more personal attention on the part of the teacher. The speaker also denounced tests which, he said, did not measure the child's mind, hut were nothing more than examinations in scholastic attainment. “And yet,” the speaker added, the pupils who tailed to pass these tests were classed as mentally sub-normal.” It required a knowledge of more than one subject for one to deal with the subject of retardates, continued Mr Durward. It required a knowledge for instance of mental disease and psychology, yet unfortunately in New Zealand there was a tendency to form classes ..of retardates by teachers who knew nothing about such subject. He maintained that no teacher or body of people had a right to class a child subnormal. The average child classed as retardate was not mentally defective. In Otago. 30 per cent of the children had been classed as retardates. Surely all those children were not mentally defective. The method of classifying the children in school was to use the intelligence tests. Those tests, applied to the U.S. Army during the war, showed that 70 per cent of the soldiers wer e allegedly sub-normal. Was that to be believed? It proved rather that there was something radically wrong with the tests and not the men themselves. The speaker considered that the tests were not of intelligence but of scholastic attainment. Where would the committeemen show, for instance, if tested upon what they had learnt at school? They would be all classed as subnormal. (Laughter.) There' was nb scientific basis for the tests which were of no use except as examinations. One could not test intelligence —there was no measurement for the mind. When a teacher classed a child as slow it was often the results of the failure of his own teaching. The teacher had failed to arouse the child's interest although that child might be brilliant if it could be only “got at.” In many cases it was a case of lack of interest on the part of the boy Or girl—not mental deficiency . Had Sir Isaac Newton been tested for intelligence at 11 years of age he would have been “pu.t away” immediately. Darwin was what would be called “a dud” at school. The speaker quoted other instances and added that it was very much easier for a teacher to class a child as retardate than take a lit'Ue extra trouble over the pupil, and in that state of affairs lay a very dangerous situation. No teacher was likewise competent to judge the physical fitness ' of a child stated Mr Durward, who i instanced cases where want of medical attention had been the cause of children being classed as retardate. As soon as the afflicted pupils had been attended to. they progressed so rapidly that they caught up and finally surpassed the others in the class. So it seemed that it required a person with a greater knowledge than that possessed by the average teacher to class a child ,as really backward in intelligence. He thought that parents should object strongly to headmasters classifying their children as retardate upon the lAochanical tests that were at present applied—• tests that really only revealed the scholastic attainment of the pupil. To classify a child as a retardate before the whole school was a very improper procedure as it gave the child a bad start which stuck to him all his life. The apparently slow children should not be segregated—what was wanted was more Individual attention.

"This address- has wiped away many doubts that we as committeemen, have had on this subject,” said Mr C. H. Whitehead, In moving- a vote of thanks to Mr Durward for his- address. The motion was carried by acclamation. \