Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/514

510 Newkirk, director of the juvenile-court clinic in Minneapolis, and it merits careful consideration by those formulating our laws.

In rare cases, on the other hand, we find that the mentality is in advance of the child's school attainment. I have in mind one boy whom we examined in our clinic who was brought to us by one of the probation officers from the juvenile court. He had attended one school after another, jumping about from parochial to public school and back again with no assistance at his home and general neglect on the part of his incapable parents. We found him to be nine years old intellectually and yet he was not succeeding in first grade work. He was thus retarded at least two years in school attainment. In thirty hours of expert training, after he had been properly fitted with glasses, he was taught to read in the Second Reader, although he could not read in the First Reader when the training began. A decided deficiency in mathematics or reading has thus been overcome occasionally by special training.

In one system of schools in the east, examined by Dr. H. H. Goddard, about one out of five pupils who were retarded in school attainment were shown by mental examinations to be at least a grade behind the grades most frequently reached by pupils of their mental development. Some of these were undoubtedly kept back because they had started school after they were seven years of age or had been long absent. We should hardly expect a fifth of the scholastic retardation to be corrected by brief expert training, and yet how much might thus be alleviated we do not know. It is one of the most important questions that has been raised by these tests for ability.

The measurement of the intellect, such as is accomplished by the Binet scale, should not be overemphasized. It is only one of the ways in which the study of individuals has of late been undertaken. The Vocational Bureau at Boston and vocational tests in Cincinnati have opened a large field. The child welfare work makes another demand. In mentioning the recent impulses to child study, which seem to be thrilling the social body, we should not slight what promises to give the greatest inspiration to this movement, I mean the work of Maria Montessori. Dr. Montessori has rediscovered the golden rule of scientific education, observe how the child develops. Instead of inviting a healthy young fledgling to ride in his teacher's air-ship, she would let him try his own wings under guidance of a mother bird.

The moral development of the child has been most recently brought under scientific observation in connection with the clinics established at several of the juvenile courts. Dr. William Healy organized the first of these about four years ago in Chicago. Several such clinics are now accumulating most interesting data. We have found in Minneapolis, through a survey of about 300 boys and 100 girls consecutively