On this surely optimistic view, then, only one in ten of the trained inmates is capable of maintaining the struggle for existence in competition with the world.

The development of the colonial system on a large scale begins to make it clearer to all eyes that the safest arrangement and a really happy one for most of the male pupils is a permanent residence on the farm, and for women in domestic employment at school. "Given the land, the plant, the brains, and the entire class of the feeble-minded can be made self-supporting by their own labor," is the claim that is being made. The colony idea is only in its infancy, but it has been shown that large numbers of the trained male inmates are capable of doing a man's work in manual labor on farms.

It is a matter of frequent observation that the feeble-minded, when properly trained, are happiest and most successful in contact with the soil. Many are capital drivers and plowmen who are baffled and beaten in the clash of competition with other men's wits. The mere acts of weeding and removing stones from the soil are enjoyed. These remarks are equally true whether the man be placed in a colony or allowed to become a member of a friendly farmer's household.

Whatever makes them self-helpful, capable with their hands, useful members of their family, will tend to their success in society. Trade education is fairly successful within the asylum, but not largely in the case of those who have left it. Nearly all, according to the general testimony, require friendly oversight.

It may be permitted to say a word in regard to the teachers of the feeble-minded. There is no question that, as a class, they rank very high. Contrary to what might be anticipated, they find distinct attractions in the task of teaching the feebleminded. There are difficulties known only to those who have experienced them, but the overcoming of the difficulties seems to be its own reward. There are very trying pupils, but not, as a rule, cases which excite disgust—at least, among the school classes. Instead of disgust there is sympathy. The children are mostly fond of being noticed, good-humored, and capable of sincere and friendly relations with their teacher. I have been struck with the frequency with which a thoroughly kind and genial tone pervades the classes. Slowness and forgetfulness are overlooked by teachers in the pleasure of gaining definite results. The secret of the matter lies herein, that the improvement and the uplift are often enormous relatively to the pupil. Every scholar is his own standard, and the real effect, thus estimated, is very great. Teachers have few pupils and are able to know each one intimately and to make of him a special problem. The emolument is not large, but the position is highly respected and is secure (as far as my observation goes) from political interference. The attitude of teacher to pupil is marked by friendliness and absence of pedantry, and the scholars almost universally take a great and fresh interest in their tasks.

There are different views in regard to the qualifications and training of teachers, but it seems to be agreed that a knowledge of human nature and an aptitude for finding ways out of difficulties are of very much greater consequence than special training. The training which comes from intimate association with this class of children in the position of attendant has been found valuable. A knowledge of kindergarten work is of great value, and yet the kindergartner has to recast her ideas to suit the new conditions.

Only a high moral purpose and an unaffected sympathy with childhood can enable the teacher to succeed. One's patience is often tried; not to mention stupidity, there are perversity, inattention, mischief to be dealt with, often suggesting the propriety of using the rod; but experience is convincingly in favor of moral treatment for these children, and the "last argument" of physical pain is pretty nearly banished from these schools. Rewards and privileges are thought much of. In a great many hours spent in these schools I have very rarely seen anything that looked like any form of punishment. In reality the place of punishment is taken by training into correct

habits, by the derivant influence of constant occupation, by making life pleasant and full of natural reward, by weight of character on the part of teachers and attendants.

"The more I know of these children the more I like them; every one of them has a character of his own, and they are almost all good." This is one man's way of looking at them, and to my mind a wiser way than it is to make much of their moral weaknesses-their unreliability, for instance. It is not worth while to say, as I have heard it said, that "they are all moral imbeciles," although their sense of responsibility and their appreciation of the value of veracity are not always what we could wish.

The relations of superintendents and their families with the feeble-minded who surround them are often cordial, even intimate; it appears to be the rule that the children know the inmates, play with them, take part in entertainments with them, drill with them, with no particular feeling of oddness in the situation-perhaps rather enjoying the sense of their own superiority; but the conditions seem natural and healthful. Some of the inmates dance, drill, and take part in athletic events in a way to be respected.

The religious question will probably be answered by a majority of those concerned in the education of the feeble-minded in a somewhat negative way. There is a dread of the injudicious interference of a certain class of divines, who insist on dogmatic instruction, or who desire to arouse religious excitement in the manner of a revival. The services of the clergy, for certain reasons, are seldom rendered. The superintendents may prefer to lead the religious services or to conduct the Sunday school, and often do so to good purpose.

I can name one superintendent who sincerely believes in the simple religious teaching he imparts, and who believes it makes his hearers better and happier. They are led to consider life as a relation to their Maker, and death as the beginning of a new and happier stage of existence, little understood, which will bring them into closer relation with the Divine. Funeral services are by him arranged so as to be most attractive to the eye and comforting to the thought; the body is neatly and prettily clothed, with a flower in the hand, and placed in an attractive receptacle, and the words of the service are hopeful and cheering. By such means the old, repulsive idea of "being put away in the potato patch" has been banished from the children's minds.

The schools for the feeble minded are alike in possessing kindergarten classes and higher classes for primary and lower grammar work, forming the school proper. A large share of the day is given to classes in manual training, trade education, physical training, music, etc. A great deal of time is given to the training of those too dull to be placed in the school proper.

The kindergartens are not conducted in all respects as regular kindergartens are. One may find the class seated at ordinary school desks in a common school room, without piano or ring. I believe all use the games, however, and some do so quite freely, passing to a special room for the purpose. Abundance of kindergarten material is supplied, as it furnishes an excellent means of training the sense perceptions, the hand power, and the knowledge of number; indeed, it has come to be considered indispensable. Those elementary faculties which in ordinary children come to view without much tending are in these children overlaid by constitutional inertia, and have to be forced to sprout, as it were, by the use of a host of appliances which common children manage to get along without.

The upper kindergarten classes usually begin number work and language along with their proper work; and the primary grades are apt to retain much of the kindergarten element—a very desirable fusion, which prevents or anticipates that break between the two periods which is sometimes seen in common schools.

The higher grades, usually termed "primary," really carry the child up to the

standard of about the age of 12, though the usual number of the grades is only three. Grading is even more urgently required with feeble-minded children than with the normal. Great differences in capacity for acquisition and for development exist side by side in the same class, and the difficulty of keeping a class together is often spoken of. Grading can not be based (as in common schools) upon the progress in arithmetic without doing injustice to many whose language work is good, but who are behindhand in number. Language is therefore preferred as a basis of promotion, where a basis is required.

In the primary grades a variety of the ordinary primers and readers, up to the fourth reader, are used; no special text-books are required. Special aids are used for beginners-picture cards, cards with words and letters. Some use is made of books in arithmetic, and histories are in general use, but beyond this (and reading of ordinary library books) the instruction is generally oral. The enrichment needed for this peculiar class of pupils is given by the incorporation of object material in large variety, much of it derived from kindergarten sources. The abstract ideas of numbers are apprehended with great difficulty, and all kinds of inducements are offered to lead them to grasp the subject through handling and dealing with real things. Nature and life in many forms are shown pictorially and objectively. Stories are read-largely realistic; and fairy tales are much liked.

As a rule, they are fond of music and have a fairly good ear. Manual training makes a strong appeal to them, in the forms of wood working and carving, basket work, clay modeling, and to some extent drawing; but if their capacity in these lines be compared to that of normal children, it is quite distinctly inferior. Literary culture, as represented by the poetry used in primary schools, is not given a prominent position. One of the chief difficulties among the more intelligent is to write and speak English without making childish and outlandish blunders in construction. The technical details of school administration differ. The idea of progress or promotion from grade to grade is everywhere present; as a rule, it is the individual rather than the entire class that receives promotion, and one is transferred to a new class or grade at any time of the year when he is thought fit to go up. There are also general promotions at the end of a school year. Consistently with this, the attention given to individual members of a class is very great; and, indeed, it would be impossible to carry on the work otherwise.

Grading is carried out with logical strictness at Elwyn, where one sees three kindergarten and three primary or intermediate grades forming a continuous sequence. The plan is similar in general in most of the other schools, the large share assigned to kindergarten work being universally noticeable. In some places, however, there is a tendency to multiply kindergarten classes, grouping the children not so much by the formal progress made as by their ages and dispositions, and even by the character of the teachers. Of this Columbus, with its very large school population, offers a good instance.

The grading is traversed at Syracuse and Vineland by the principle of specialization. At the end of every forty or sixty minutes in these schools the classes break up and are redistributed all over the school, so that a child is not rated as a member of such a grade or of Miss's class, but has a distinct grade or class. in every study. Where classes are quite small and periods long this does not seem to prevent that intimate personal knowledge of one's pupils which is desirable.

Specialized teaching is required in certain departments, as manual and physical training and music. A plan combining this requirement with that of continuous personal relations -between teacher and class is in use at Waltham and Fort Wayne, which may be called the "half-time system." Elsewhere we find the two-session plan, three hours in the morning and two in the afternoon, the regular school desk in a certain room being the pupil's headquarters, but with changes back and forth for object work or gymnastics. The half-time plan gives the scholar about three hours

in continued attendance under one teacher, either forenoon or afternoon, and each teacher manages two classes. The spare half day gives each child the opportunity for special instruction in sloyd, gymnastics, music, trades and other things outside of books. The time allotted to book work may appear inadequate, but the results are perfectly satisfactory. The amount of regular grade work performed under the half-time system is practically the same as under the two-sessions plan. Elwyn, for instance, with two sessions, gives less than three hours a day to this class of work in the upper grades, and the remainder to manual work and the like. It is a question of distribution of time. The loss of time in changing classes may be inconsiderable.

The chief point to consider, it seems to me, is the greater moral influence which a teacher can exert if allowed to retain her class for a whole session without interruption. From the instructor's point of view, also, there must be an advantage in having one's whole session at command with leave to shorten or omit this, to introduce that exercise, according to the special need of the hour and the state of the children's minds; not working without programme but with an elastic programme.

While speaking of the half-time system, an institution for boys of good natural endowments may be mentioned, the Farm School on Thompsons Island in Boston Harbor, where less than three hours of ordinary school work, in combination with a strong and diversified course of manual and agricultural training during the rest of the day, has given extremely good educational results.

If we attempt to estimate the amount of school work accomplished by the so-called "high-grade imbeciles" in classes, we find so great individual variations that no definite statement can be made which is not open to wide exceptions. Many who begin fail to complete a regular school course, being removed to a manual or trade class. Those who continue are not expected to "make a grade" every year like ordinary children. Those who reach the highest grade are largely between the ages of 14 and 17, and their attainments correspond in general with those of children of 11 or 12 in public schools. Yet they have not performed the same amount of work, for their attention has been largely fixed on "the three R's," to the comparative exclusion of such branches as literature, memory gems, declamation, physiology, drawing, music, reading, and part singing.

The systematic appeal made to all the faculties by the modern education of the feeble-minded constitutes a far more powerful and far-reaching agency for stimulus and development than the ordinary education of public or private schools. Its effects in many cases still seem as miraculous as they did to the eyes of those who first devoted themselves to this profession. They are due to several causes. First, the profound appreciation of the value of the physical side of training; second, the minute analysis, the abundance of resources in the way of material, the concrete attitude assumed in class work-to which the kindergarten has made most important contributions; third, the fact that the institution is home as well as school, so that children are literally in training for the whole of the twenty-four hours.

care.

The public has now fully accepted the necessity of schooling.and that of custodial To these elementary principles some others have been added which promise to be of far-reaching importance. First, there is the doctrine that no truly feebleminded person is ever so restored to a normal status that his or her marriage is desirable; second, statistical evidence has accumulated of the large number of weakminded offspring borne by weak-minded females, and as a consequence a general policy of detention of such females in custodial asylums during the period of marriageable age is beginning to be introduced; third, the economic value of the trained adult, and reciprocally, the improvement in health and happiness which follows when occupation is furnished, and the value in both respects of the farm colony for men in good health; fourth, the extension of the work to the so-called backward pupils of

our public schools has begun to attract the attention of educators, and the possibilities of extension in that direction seem very large.

While the pedagogic methods in use in different institutions are essentially similar, there is a marked difference as regards preferred subjects and tendencies. One is strong in the direction of the economics of the institution; another is attached to the æsthetic development of the child; another to the social amusements or to music; another to the trade idea, and another to the physique of the pupil. No single phase can justly represent an institution's whole tendency.

There is an element of feeble-mindedness in a certain proportion of the criminal class and of reformatory school children. The special treatment of these cases by the former superintendent at Elmira Reformatory, Hon. Z. D. Brockway, remains a brilliant illustration of the value of measures addressed to the physical awakening of pupils by bodily treatment.

If a similar attitude of devotion to physical interests, as constituting the basis of their whole education, were generally taken by superintendents of the feeble-minded, it is possible that it might be for the benefit of all. In reality, this is the attitude already taken by the best boarding schools for well-to-do boys, where a teacher's athletic capacity is as much inquired into as his language. This is not a temporary fad; it represents a gain to education. If any class needs physical elevation, it is the class of the feeble-minded, with their original defects of vitality, their restriction to asylum life, and their notorious and lamentable liability to tuberculous diseases. Ought these deaths from consumption to be acquiesced in, or to be interpreted as a possible educational hint? It is with pleasure that I am able to say that these considerations have been taken to heart by some in certain quarters.

THE MASSACHUSETTS SCHOOL FOR THE FEEBLE-MINDED AT WALTHAM. a

Superintendent, Walter E. Fernald, M. D.

This institution lies in a very beautiful tract of country about 6 miles from Boston. The buildings are principally in two distant groups. They are well separated, well sunned, well drained. The larger dormitories contain 80 beds or more. The school and gymnasium with manual-training rooms occupy a detached edifice. There are (June, 1903) 645 inmates, of whom about 125 are in the school proper, besides 141 men at Templeton.

Templeton colony is situated in the central part of the State, about 50 miles from Waltham. It occupies a tract of about 3 miles long by 1 mile in average width, mostly hilly and rough, rising in summits to the height of 1,200 to 1,400 feet, and giving abundant opportunity for the wholesome exercise of clearing land. The colonists are those already trained at Waltham. Three farmhouses at widely separated points have been made the nuclei of groups of buildings, each accommodating 50 men. The colonists require very little supervision; they have the liberty of the entire grounds and are not constantly under the eye of keepers. The effect of transfer from Waltham to the freer and more robust life at Templeton is marked in an improvement of their physical well-being. They labor regularly and well. There is no school work, but for evening hours there are provided the usual means of recreation, books and games, and there is reading aloud by the persons in charge. They show signs of mental improvement, as well as satisfaction with the change. The colony is in its infancy and further developments are possible. No female inmates are sent there.

The institution is growing rather rapidly. The transfers made to Templeton make room for admitting unusually large numbers of young, improvable pupils in the school department. These changes have greatly improved the grading of the school

a Often spoken of as "Waverley," from its post-office address.