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Schools for Emotionally Disturbed Children, from
the severest disturbance which would include
autistic children to what we might call mildly
maladjusted. Obviously, this would include also
children who had difficulties in learning.—Both
day and residential, including hospital provision.
Schools for the Deaf. These were sited with
substantial research centres, and in the case of
Kendall School, on the same campus as the only
university college for deaf people* in the world.
Under this heading also come pre-school and
assessment centres, some world famous such as
the John Tracy Clinic in Los Angeles.
Ordinary Schools in two Public School Systems—
one a Consolidated District, the other a County
system, where I was told about the general
organisation and provision for children with
reading disability, etc.
The equivalent of two Junior Training Schools,
both run by voluntary bodies, each with emphasis
on nursery provision. Also an adult sheltered
workshop run by the same parents' organisation
that ran one of the schools.
One School for the Deaf / Blind—located in
Perkins School for the Blind.
Pre-school provision and a Baby-Fold (a creche)
These were research projects particularly geared
in most cases to compensate for adverse
environmental conditions not conducive to later
academic success.
Special Assessment and Treatment Centres. Most
of these were in University departments or
attached to teaching hospitals. In the case of the
Institutes for the Achievement of Human
Potential, which was the exception, this is a
private institution directed by Carl Delacato and
Glenn and Robert Doman.
Research Establishments. Many of these doubled
also as assessment and treatment centres; others
were located in schools, yet others were pure
research centres.
Teacher Training Departments. Again some of
these overlapped with other institutions, in that
personnel were also researchers and clinicians,
particularly if teachers were being trained to use
* Gallaudet College, Washington D.C.
50
methods especially related to the approach and
interests of a clinic or institute.
Optometrists Offices and a University Department
training Optometrists. (An ophthalmic optician is
the equivalent of an optometrist in this country.)
'From each of the above groups, and sometimes
from several groups, I learned about developments
and techniques that are relevant to our educational
system here in Britain, or might be relevant with
a bit of adaptation and imagination. With regard
to the children with learning disabilities, it seemed
to me that the original controversy about whether
these children are brain damaged or not is being
dropped, and the stress instead is on what one
can do educationally to help. Instead of looking
at, say, figure-ground difficulties in visual or
auditory perception, and deciding that this is a
possible sign of brain damage, the emphasis is on
the difficulty itself, which is seen more and more
in educational terms, and on the implications of
this difficulty for the way that the learning
situation will need to be structured for the child.
Apart from the fact that so much research into
signs of minimal brain damage in children has
been equivocal, there is the feeling that what
matters ultimately is not the label, because even a
label such as 'brain-damage' can cover many
different types of learning behaviour and difficulty.
What is important is to make a careful analysis
of each child's abilities and to provide a
programme of learning experiences which is
carefully tailored to strengthen the weaknesses and
capitalise on the strengths. This involves a moving
away from the use of psychometric testing merely
to establish an overall global IQ and instead an
attention not only to sub-test patterns within the
intelligence test battery, but also to the use of tests
of many other kinds—tests of visuo-motor
integration, of auditory and visual perception, of
psycho-linguistic abilities, of gross and fine motor
functions, of directional abilities, of tactile
perception and many others. Having teased out all
these different abilities, and established a profile,
the emphasis then turns on what to do about it,
and many individual schools have their own
approaches to this, influenced to some extent by
the prevailing interest in research and educational