Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/350

346 discontented, are usually of delicate make and evince instability and poor vitality. Those who are loquacious, voluble and inquisitive lack inhibition or control.

Courageous children are usually healthy and strong in mind and body. Timidity has a physical basis, but may be acquired from bad environment, habitual discouragement. The 'only child in the family' in 66 per cent, shows disadvantageous traits; they are usually of poor health, lacking much of normality, both mental and physical. The 'youngest child,' the 'only boy' or the 'only girl' often displays many striking resemblances to the 'only child.'

Classification of grades of mental deviation is only important for purposes of teaching. Types of mind there are, and they must be fully appreciated that individuals may secure the right kind of influence and training. Degrees and qualities of mentality are even more important, because by this means we may know where to place the individual, how much control to insist upon, how much compulsion to exert on the parents. Types of all the adolescent insanities merge into each other. Those who have the charge of young children may have no need of psychiatric training, but they do need to employ a common-sense recognition of abnormalities, deviations, obliquities, patent enough to the intelligent observer. Children of pronounced dominant impulses may exhibit at times self-will, naughtiness, ill temper, even exuberant imagination to the point of mendacity, buoyancy or apathy in changing moods, and yet become wholesome admirable citizens. Distinct and continued nervousness, fretfulness, timidity, brooding, causeless variations in moods, cruelty, vengefulness, should put us on our guard and warrant suspicion of deep-seated perturbations foreshadowing psychoses.

Educational methods are still defective in many particulars. Tradition holds us in a powerful grasp. In the public, and in most private schools, the course of study is analogous and aims to meet the supposed needs of the child of average intelligence. This would be well enough if certain fundamental truths were recognized by both school boards and parents. Custom has created a public opinion from which it is difficult to appeal. For instance, it is a fact that all children develop on some lines more rapidly than on others, in differing degrees of rapidity. In one there may be exhibited early motor aptitudes with late intellectual capacities. In another the reverse, yet at a certain age they may be to all intents equal. One child may acquire language, grammar, and the elements of literature early, with a late grasp of numbers, arithmetic, the natural sciences. Another may reverse this, and yet at a given time these two may be on a par. It will be plain that to get the best results due allowances should be made