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8
Defective Children.
Another favourable feature in the statistical returns to which
I desire to draw attention is the relatively small numbers recorded
under the different categories of Table III.
For example, there is only one totally blind child—a girl
attending the Residential School for the Blind at Brighton;—only
four partially blind children, attending the Myopic School at
Wood Green, only one totally deaf child and four partially deaf.
These happy results are attributable largely to the soundness of
modern methods of dealing with ophthalmia neonatorum
(inflammation of the eyes of the new-born), which is by far the
commonest cause of total blindness, and of treating the common
infectious diseases, such as measles, whooping cough and scarlet
fever, the ear complications of which are the chief causes of
deafness.
The group of mentally defective children requiring special
education is not subject to much variation in numbers and
remains at about 30 to 35; and epilepsy (numbering 6) is an
inherited condition which also remains fairly constant in numbers.
Coming to the physically defective, the numbers are so
striking as to require some explanation. There is a nil return
under tuberculosis, which means that we have not ascertained
any boy or girl to be suffering from any tubercular condition in
such a stage as to be definitely diagnosed and to require treatment
in a sanatorium or elsewhere, thus rendering the child
unfit to attend an ordinary elementary school. There are, doubtless,
many children in the elementary school population who have
been infected with the tubercle bacillus and who are reacting
mildly to it, children who are, in fact, undergoing the process of
tuberculisation," or natural vaccination against tuberculosis.
Again, the nil return under the heading of delicate children
is an expression of the belief that there are better methods of
dealing with a physically sub-normal school child than sending
him or her to a special school. The more I see of this type of
child, the more I feel that there is no greater dis-service an
Education Authority may do to any child than send him to a
"special" school (of any kind) if he is at all fit to attend an
"ordinary" school.