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15
They may cut out and they may sew, they may dress and
they may learn parts of a play and they may carry through an
evening's entertainment to the wonderment and delight of audiences,
and nevertheless they have no sufficient dynamic urge to carry out
an hour's consecutive work demanding the least personal initiative.
Many of these children, if left to themselves, would merely
sit about in odd corners twirl their fingers, make grimaces,
probably foul themselves, and be altogether objectionable.
Between these children and the normal and bright children
there is every grade, and there can be no doubt that many children
who under the constant stimulus of our educational system acquire
information at such a rate that they may be looked upon as more
or less ordinary children, who are nevertheless mentally defective
from this standpoint, that they have not a sufficient dynamic urge.
To these children the end of school life is something more than
the end of acquiring information—it is the beginning of a definitely
backward tendency, and before long these children are but little
better than if they had had little or no education at all.
If our educational system is to be efficient and economic we
must not only deal with the problem of the child who is both
mentally defective and educationally backward; we must also
deal with the problem of the child who is not specially educationally
backward but who notwithstanding this is inherently mentally
defective.
In what way the educationalist would deal with the problem
I do not know and I for my part would not be so bold as to suggest
a method of dealing with this difficulty, but I may perhaps be
allowed to suggest a line required, and that is that all children
of a certain age, to be decided upon, shall be given a certain period
of time during which class teaching shall stop and individual study
take its place with the least possible degree of supervision, and that
amongst other things, children be graded according to their educational
response during this experimental period.