Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/493

Rh in classes. Still another plan that is now being adopted extensively in large cities, is that of having special schools or classes for each type of exceptional child, the deaf, the blind, the lame, the epileptic, the incorrigible, etc. In Chicago, such children are carefully examined and tested by the experts in the child study department maintained by the board of education, before being assigned to the school that it is thought will best fit the individual. Medical inspection and regular examination of eyes and ears of school children have made very clear the necessity of such special provision for exceptional children.

A large proportion of these will have their needs met in classes and ungraded rooms in the public schools, and others in special institutions, especially those for the feeble minded, but a few need still more individual and expert treatment, such as is given in the school for atypical children at Plainfield, N. J., presided over by Dr. Groszmann and in the psychological clinic and school established by Dr. Witmer, of the University of Pennsylvania. In such schools children who are so different from normal children that under ordinary circumstances or even in special classes they would become a burden upon society may, by individual treatment directed by experts, be developed into happy, intelligent human beings and useful citizens.

Although the first and most evident value of child study has been in the treatment of exceptional children, a marked change has also been brought about both in the popular mind and in the minds of educators, whereby children as children, and not merely as the material out of which men and women are to be made, have now become objects of popular and literary interest. This is strikingly illustrated by current literature. A quarter of a century ago if children appeared in literature it was only incidentally or as foils to adults, but now nearly every issue of popular magazines contains stories or sketches, in which portrayal of child character is the prominent feature. The literary needs of children are also being administered to as never before by writers, librarians and teachers, all of whom are giving careful study to the questions of child nature and the literature that best appeals to it. Children are now recognized as a part of the public with distinct needs that must be cared for.

In our schools, although courses of study are not completely made over so as to fit the needs of children in each stage of development, as they may be some day, yet they have been greatly modified by this new interest in children and by the more complete knowledge of their characteristics at each stage of development. The aim is now, not merely to directly prepare for adult life, but to have them live completely, each stage of development, while making some preparation for the future.

There have been still greater changes in the methods of accomplishing results than in the ideal of what education should do. Even when