nd to become delinquent,
special residential schools will be necessary. These schools would also
be used for those whose capabilities cannot be assessed without extended
expert observation for a considerable period.
The special school is to be regarded as a training-centre for such
feeble-minded children as are expected as a result of the training
received there to be fitted to take a place in the community and to
perform useful work under adequate supervision. There is a danger of
filling the special schools with children whose poor mental endowment
renders them incapable of receiving benefit at all commensurate with the
energy and expense devoted to them. Such children are subjects for
custodial institutions.
Institutional care is necessary for mentally defective persons whose
helplessness or anti-social traits would render them either the victims
of the unscrupulous or a menace to society. Such individuals should be
segregated in farm and industrial colonies, so that not only is the
community freed from the responsibility of their presence, but they
themselves are afforded opportunity of leading much happier and more
useful lives, and of becoming, to some extent, self-supporting.
All feeble-minded children within the community, whether in special
classes, or on parole from an institution for the feeble-minded, or over
school age, should be carefully supervised.
It is clear that the problem of making provision for the feeble-minded
and mentally abnormal in the community is first to be encountered in the
schools, though there must be considered also a much smaller number of
such low mental capacity that they have never sought admission there.
In deciding the place of the feeble-minded in the community factors
other than the degree of mental defect have to be considered. Many
feeble-minded individuals are capable of performing useful work, and
provided they have no anti-social traits and can receive adequate care
outside their permanent inclusion in an institution is undesirable, not
only from consideration of their own well-being, but also from a social
and economic standpoint. Many feeble-minded individuals are so dependent
upon routine that having once been trained in the regular performance of
simple duties they find difficulty in breaking their methodical
programme. In this way their lack of initiative is really protective, as
it tends to keep them steadfastly at their labours.
In the case of all feeble
|