Backward But Keen

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 461, 17 September 1928, Page 8

Backward But Keen

Training of Sub-Normal Children

IN every community there is a small percentage of children who, through physical disabilities, disordered nerves, or through more obscure causes, are mentally backward and unable to keep pace with their normal brothers and sisters. Provision has been made by the Education Department recently for their schooling, and a special officer works continually for their betterment.

TN Auckland there are four classes for sub-normal children —Beresford Street, Normal School, Birkenhead and Edendale—and the visitor who drops in casually to see their work is impressed by the picture of patience, simplicity and progress. Of the many tasks which may confront teachers, that of coaxing retarded and sometimes defective children along the paths of practical knowledge is surely the most difficult and the most painstaking. It demands almost the spirit of a missionary, with love and an infinite

patience. For every one of the 15 or 20 children she may have under her care, individual attention is essential. All have reached different planes of knowledge, with different means of getting there; she must treat every one as an individual and foster his peculiar talents regardless of the others. The children assemble at school at 9 o’clock, the same as their fellows. The bell rings, and they come into their classrooms, where they stand In the middle of the floor for a few minutes’ conversation with teacher. She calls it “getting together again.” Sometimes they have a little singsong—anything to start the day well and happily. The tuition begins. Where children are mentally retarded or defective, the scheme of education is arranged to appeal to the brain through the eye and the fingers. With infinite care, a system of markers, beads, counters and so on has been arranged, so that the children, in fingering these articles and seeing them daily, may ultimately have an impression photographed on their

minds. The first lesson is given over to the pursuit of numbers; and here, for a start, is that big difficulty of individual treatment. The more advanced children are battling with the four-times-tables, while their fellows can hardly count up to six. EVER UPWARD There are some very clever devices for the learning of numbers. First, the child learns to separate things of a kind from a box in which all are mixed. Then he goes a stage farther, and learns how to separate the same number of things of a kind. He learns how to identify the figure S with a definite pattern of beans — two rows of three each and one row of two. Once the children have mastered the arts of counters and beans, their work is done with chalk on the blackboard. This is good for their bodies as well as for their minds, which can more easily grasp big figures in black-and-white. One of the most extraordinary things about the lesson is the industry with which the children apply themselves to their work. They are quiet and obedient, and seem as anxious to learn as their mistress is to teach. After addition come subtraction and then multiplication. It is a slow process of knowledge, but it is sure and effective. Although much individual help is given, the children are left as far as possible to themselves. It is recognised that, before all reading and sums, they must learn self-confidence. SEEKING INDIVIDUALITY The reading lesson depends upon the same system as the arithmetic— | a system of picture identification. Before they ever approach a reading book, the children learn, by the simplest methods, to put the name to a picture and so they come on to the simplest of readers, and even to the School Journal, which some of the more advanced scholars read quite well. In reading, as in sums, it is the same story of an appeal to the brain through the hand and the eye. The children also take part in many recreational exercises all designed to promote bodily strength as well as to sharpen the wits. There is needlework, basket-work, wood-work, the drawing and colouring of pictures—all simple things, but all requiring the elemental ability to make. In between lessons the children go out for a romp in the playground. Everything possible is done to give variety and interest to their work. And so this splendid work has been going on in Auckland for about four years. Careful, persevering teachers are giving their best to assist the backward children in their pursuit of knowledge, and every effort is made to keep in touch with them after they have completed their course of study. Many have overcome youthful setbacks in this manner, and are now filling useful places in the world.