omen are eligible. The hours of work in mentally defective
schools are from 9.30 to 12 and from 2 to 4. In physically defective
schools the hours are nominally from 9.30 to 12, and 1.30 to 3, but in
practice they are longer, as the children begin to arrive at school
in their ambulances by 8.45, and in the afternoon the last children
rarely leave till an hour after the time of stopping actual lessons.
It is usual to arrange things so that the teacher who comes "early"
one week, is free to come "late" the next, and it is also usually
taken in turns to stay late in the afternoons. The short dinner recess
is due to the fact that most of the children necessarily have their
dinner at school, so there is no reason to allow the usual two hours
for going home and coming back. During the dinner-hour the children
are in charge of the school nurse and the ambulance attendants.

Work in both sorts of special school has its own particular
difficulties. One great drawback is the impossibility of adequate
classification. In a small three-class centre, there will be
children from five years old up to sixteen years. That, of course, in
physically defective schools means that the work usually divided
among all the classes of an ordinary infant school must be done in the
lowest class, the second class must take the work of standards I. to
III., while the highest class must take that of standards IV. to
VII. It is true that the special schools have a great advantage
over ordinary schools in that the classes never contain more than
twenty-five children, but even granted the small numbers, the need for
taking several groups in a class makes the work very exhausting. The
more successful the teacher, that is to say, the more truly she draws
out the individual powers of each child, the harder does her work
become, for she tends more and more to have a class of children
working at varying stages. In the mentally defective schools it is not
possible to reach the work of the higher standards, so that there
is not the _same_ difficulty, but there is the even greater one of
dealing with different standards of defect, instead of different
standards of attainment.

Another difficulty encountered in the physically defective schools
is the interrupted school-life. Children will frequently drop out for
three months, six months, or a year at a time in order to have some
operation performed in hospital, or to go to a convalescent home, or
because of an at