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circles (especially as communicated through
research papers and at conferences). It seemed to
me that after a wide interest in visual perceptual
functions, and in motor functions generally, and in
their remediation, the tide of current interest was
moving ever more strongly towards auditory
functions, and language development, and means
for remediation. Perhaps I should add here also
that it seemed to me that there was a boom in
special education in the USA, paralleled by a
boom in publishers' materials for remedial
programmes in particular areas. Dr Frostig's
programme for the remediation of visual
perceptual and visuo-motor difficulties was the
first in the field, and is widely used, but many
others are now coming forward too. For example,
the New York Times has a subsidiary called
Teachers Resources Inc. which has produced
many remedial programmes and exercises by
well-known special educationalists. The first
programme produced was by Miss Ruth Cheves,
who worked closely with the course for teachers
on the 'Cruickshank' methods at Syracuse.
Another is by Mrs Fairbanks and Mrs Robinson
of the Vanguard School, whom I met when I
visited Vanguard Junior School. Another is by
Dr Gerry Getman, originally an optometrist who
worked closely at one time with Dr Kephart, and
who has written a book called 'How to Develop
Your Child's Intelligence.' He is Director of Child
Development at Pathway School, which I visited.
Yet another is by Mrs Belle Dubnoff, whose
school I visited in Los Angeles, and with whom
Dr Frostig once jointly ran a school in Los Angeles
where they began developing the methods of
training visual perception used in each of their
schools. I was fortunate to be able to look closely
at some of these programmes, as the Field
Consultant for the Chicago area, Miss Catherine
McBride, had been an Exchange Teacher at
Martindale School a few years ago, and gave up a
good deal of her valuable time to discussing them
with me. Dr Frostig's programme for the training
of visual perceptual abilities was one with which T
was well acquainted already, as I had used the
original experimental edition in some pilot
remedial work at Martindale School as part of a
research project some years ago and think highly
of it. While it is perhaps a good thing to have so
many of these programmes available, I am at the
same time a little concerned that if the same
development takes place here, it will do so side by
side with proper training in the approaches used,
so that the underlying rationale is clearly seen;
otherwise I fear that these programmes will be
looked on as yet another gimmick, to be tried and
discarded because they do not provide magic
solutions to children's problems. Although I have
commented that I think interest is gradually
flowing towards auditory perceptual and language
difficulties, and their role in learning and their
remediation, I did not mean that remedial help in
visuo-motor, motor, and visual perceptual areas
has been discarded—only that it is now taken for
granted that quite a lot is known about what is
necessary and can be applied in the way of specific
methods in the school, based on assessment
procedures which are more developed than in the
language field. The Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic
Abilities has roused a tremendous amount of
interest because it attempts to sift and assess
different underlying functions in psycholinguistic
abilities as the motor and perceptual tests have
done in other areas; it has been in process of
revision and re-standardisation, to meet all the
demands made on it as a diagnostic instrument in
this area of behaviour. Apparatus for remedial
work in motor abilities was very much to the fore
in many of the schools I visited: some of it rather
different from the apparatus that is used here as
part of movement teaching and learning, especially
in the primary school. Walking boards and rails
are quite widely seen, and in some establishments
the Harmon board is predominantly used. At the
D T Watson Home (originally designated 'for
crippled children') where I watched assessment
and treatment at a Saturday morning session for
children with developmental lags, I saw a see-saw
bed, on which children were helped to develop
balancing skills, sitting, kneeling and then standing.
Miss Anne Gray, who trained originally as a
speech therapist, and who worked for some time
with the late Dr Temple Fay, a neurologist, not
only directs this clinic, and this side of the remedial
work at the school, but acts also as consultant to
a pre-school centre for severely sub-normal
children run in a church building by a voluntary
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