Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/485

 CONCERNING A FORM OF DEGENERACY 465

the general state institutions, permanent or asylum care has been the main purpose from their inception. In these the education of the feeble-minded has been understood to mean education for life in the institution. All the other institutions were established in the hope of training the feeble-minded, as most deaf-mutes and many of the blind may be trained, so as to fit them for self- directing activity in the common walks of life.

The early teachers of the feeble-minded jealously guarded their schools from the danger of becoming asylums. Admission was restricted to those classed as improvables, which term meant Such as it was thought could be graduated from the school with a mental equipment equal to or not much below that of the average citizen. Epileptics and the so-called custodial cases were refused admission. The school for the feeble-minded was held to be "a link in the chain of common schools — the last, indeed, but still a necessary link in order to embrace all the children of the state." "The institution, being intended for a school, should not be converted into a hospital for incurables."' "The training of the feeble-minded does not belong to thera- peutics. It is an educational work, governed by psychology and physiology, the former reached through and founded on the latter."

Notwithstanding such strong statements as those quoted above, the fact that the early superintendents were nearly all physicians gave undue emphasis to the medical side of the work, and helped to confuse that easily muddled thing, the public mind, which, in this country at least, associates with the word "doctor" the work of healing, not of educating. Even to the present day, many persons whose positions and general knowl- edge ought to make them qualified to pronounce a trustworthy opinion, imagine that the possession of a diploma of medicine is a prerequisite to the proper executive and educational manage- ment of a training school for the feeble-minded, while they would not dream of requiring such a qualification, in addition to edu- cational and executive ability, from the superintendent of a school for the deaf or blind.

■ Dr. Howe, Massachusetts, in early reports of the school.