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tages as pointed out by Dr. Fairfield, Divisional Medical Officer.
London County Council, as follows:—
"It destroys the reputation of the school with parents,
and enhances the stigma ; it prejudices the whole case for the
education of defectives with the Local Education Authority,
and, moreover, seriously interferes with the teaching of the
higher grade feeble-minded whose education has a wholly
different purpose. The true feeble-minded child must have a
chance to float if not to swim in the world, and will want to
know all that his teacher can impart of roughly the three
R's, the handling of money and skilled handicraft."
The institution by the Essex Voluntary Association of an
Occupation Centre in this district during the past year thus seems
to go far in solving the question of what to do with the ineducable
child.
DULL AND BACKWARD CHILDREN.—While the mentally-deficient
child is defective not only pedagogically but psychologically,
the defect of the truly dull and backward child is
pedagogic merely. Of a total of 48 children between the ages of
seven and nine years, notified by head teachers as suspected dull
and backward, 18 on examination were found to be mentally
defective, and certified as such under the Education Act, 15 were
mentally delayed on account of prolonged absence from school or
as a result of neglected physical defects, such as enlarged tonsils
and adenoids, defective vision, hearing, etc., while the remainder
were found to be merely dull and backward. To meet the need
of the last group, a special class for dull and backward children
was opened in October at the Special School. While some
schools of opinion would regard all children not socially certifiable
as mentally defectives but merely backward, and would assert
that it should be possible to give them the benefit of a special
school education without certification, and that what we now have
to do is to commence at the other end and establish a properlyorganised
scries of backward classes and only certify cases as
defectives after prolonged observation, it is well to remember
that other authorities on this question have taken quite the