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to be in need of supervision, guardianship or institutional care. Consideration in this
instance took place from the adult angle and the determining factor was the apparent
ability of the young person to fend for himself with little or no supervision. It involved
the important decision by the school medical officer, whether the child could and should
be certified as a feeble-minded person. This special medical examination was carried
out within six months of the date on which the child was due to leave school. Should
he decide on notification, the certifying medical officer completed a certificate that the
child was feeble-minded within the meaning of the Mental Deficiency Act, 1913.
Experience of the new special teaching given to M.D. children convinced medical
officers specialising in mental deficiency that many children, whose intellectual development
was little below average, were yet unable to profit to any extent by education in
ordinary elementary schools. That basic mental development was not the main cause
of their inability to learn was evident from the fact that the I.Q. was not constant. One
examination might reveal an I.Q. of almost imbecile rate and the next approach the
border-line of normality whilst the individual test result showed an unusually large
year range which was later described as ' scattering Some factor in the child's mental
or emotional make-up was inhibiting, not the actual development of the brain, but the
child's ability to use the brain development in the normal way.
From this it followed naturally that it was wrong to label a child mentally defective
because it could not profit by education in an ordinary elementary school when special
medical testing (later termed psychiatric and psychometric) proved that the cause was
due not to non-development of the brain but to abnormal emotional impulses or
neuropathic manifestations rendering the child incapable of applying himself in school
or work in a normal manner. Psychiatry had begun to develop as a medical speciality
and to be interested in the problem that this presented. Specialised approved medical
officers of the local authority began to refer cases for further psychiatric investigation
when they considered that lack of progress was caused by emotional and neurotic traits
rather than genuine mental defect. The first child guidance clinics began to take shape
and only those cases which failed to respond to psychiatric or child guidance treatment
were referred back to be dealt with as educable mental defectives.
Public opinion began to make itself felt in support of many parents of special school
children who objected to their children being called mentally defective and relegated to
attend establishments known as special M.D. Schools, situated in apparently inferior
premises to those of ordinary schools. In London the term 'Silly School' was quickly
coined and parental resentment became more and more marked.
This was the position in 1939 when the whole school situation in London was
disrupted by the second world war.
Education Act, 1944
The Education Act, 1944, which came into operation in April, 1945, made
revolutionary changes in the nomenclature, ascertainment and education of mentally
handicapped children.
The offensive and often wrongly applied term 'mental defective', with the stigma
popularly attaching to it, was eliminated. No longer could a child of school age who had
not been deemed totally incapable of receiving education be called a mental defective.
Two new terms were introduced ; ' educationally subnormal' (E.S.N.) for children
whose inability to progress was primarily due to intellectual failure, and ' maladjusted'
for those whose inability to progress was due to abnormal conduct and/or gross
emotional or neurotic impulse.
To make public and parents alike realise that the new schools for the educationally
subnormal were not just schools of the old type under another name, the definition of
the term E.S.N. was made to include children who were unable to profit by education
in an ordinary school by reason of mental subnormality or any other cause. Thus the
local authority could provide education for children better developed intellectually