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form, save perhaps the lighter standing work that the potting shed entails, should
be barred. There are few myopes of less than 6 dioptres admitted to the classes,
the majority of the children in the classes have a myopia of between 6 and 10
dioptres. For these children gardening would be safe, providing digging and carrying
were excluded, and also if they were taught to sit whilst weeding and planting,
and not to stoop down to the work. It will be obvious that the limitation is considerable,
and not easy to maintain. Hence the scope of this training must be small
for these children.
Reading
capacity of
retarded
children.

According to the researches of Professor Burt, a child in regular school attendance
should read two letter words between 4 and 5, three letter words between 5
and 6, four letter words between 6 and 7, and five letter words between 7 and 8.
None of these children presented intelligence quotients as low as 70, and most had
much higher quotients, the average for the whole group being 80, yet but few had
attainments up to the six year average, and few could read sufficiently to be able to
use books with any profit. In most cases they appeared to experience great difficulty
in word building, and such words as they knew, which were of varying length, they
seemed to have acquired as word-wholes or single symbols. Some of the difficulty
appears to arise at the change from the infants to the senior departments, the child
who has not really commenced to acquire the ground work in the lower school is in
a position of great disadvantage on promotion, despite all efforts made by the class
teachers to give individual instruction. Part of the disadvantage appears to consist
in a loss of incentive, and the child almost immediately discovers that it is easier
to abandon effort until the need for certain words is brought home to him by
the impact of reality in the out-of-school world. Such children then make an
effort and acquire as word-wholes a limited number of words of special interest.
In some of the cases the intelligence of the children who were nominated at the
lower ages, and who could read was such as to indicate that lack of scholarship in
the sense of the rudiments of literary ability could not have been the cause of their
nomination as prospective defectives.
Of those nominated after the age of 11, only half were unable to read more than
four letter words, and about one-third of those who could read had clearly been