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then to proceed to try to get this in a very gradual
manner, always encouraging the behaviour that is
nearest to the kind one is hoping to stabilise, and
then as this response is achieved always inching the
behaviour a little nearer to what is ultimately
wanted. Many psychologists—and some teachers
—think that a knowledge of behaviour
modification techniques will ultimately be essential
to all teachers, as an extension of what they learn
already about influencing the behaviour of
children. Even at nursery school level one finds
the use of immediate reinforcers in the shape of
M & Ms—our Smarties in Britain—or raisins if
the teacher is diet-conscious on the children's
behalf. Gradually the young children are helped to
accept tokens of some kind which they can later
exchange for rewards until eventually the
reinforcement of their own success in a task is
sufficient, along with the teacher's approbation for
a task well done. While behaviour modification is
being consciously used not only in some schools
for children with emotional and behaviour
difficulties, but also in some schools for children
with learning difficulties, and with mentally
retarded children—who may also have emotional
and behaviour difficulties—personnel in other but
similar types of school use varying amounts of
psycho-therapy. In some residential schools, both
for children with emotional difficulties or with
learning disabilities, it is considered necessary for
all children to receive therapy, and also to have
counselling for parents. Others may just use
psycho-therapy for selected children. It seemed to
me that psycho-therapy is more readily available
in the United States (and more expensive perhaps)
and therefore possibly the conscious demand
grows to meet the supply. There is a growing
emphasis, on the other hand, on the necessity of
meeting the educational needs of the disturbed
child, and in fact using education as therapy, in
the sense that so many emotionally disturbed
children have learning problems and are school
failures and that unless the school failure can be
remedied the emotional problems will remain .. .
that psycho-therapy by itself, without an attempt
to overcome learning problems, and to involve the
child actively in learning, may not get very far.
'More emphasis is being given, too, to the need
for helping the young disturbed child, and also its
parents, not only by counselling, but by actively
showing parents—particularly mothers—how to
handle the very young disturbed child. At the
League School in New York, I saw not only
classes for older children where the emphasis was
very much on helping them to get educational
success and achieve all-round development, but
also the pre-school department, where teachers
work with the very young disturbed child—some
of whom one would certainly tend to call autistic
children—the emphasis being on showing parents
how to handle the child's behaviour deviation and
develop active learning, including language
learning. In the Dubnoff School in Los Angeles,
one section again was devoted to children with
severe emotional and language and perceptual
problems, again using small group teaching for
part of the time rather on the lines one might use
with children who appear to be dysphasic, having
severe problems in the understanding of language
and the use of speech.
'This leads me on to work with young children
in general. A leading psychologist in the field of
developmental psychology particularly at the baby
and very young stage, told me that a few years
ago attempts to work with infants or very young
children—educational attempts especially—were
looked on as not at all desirable, and the whole
structure of infant testing and the assessment of
infant development etc. was rather scorned. Now
there has been a complete volte face, and not only
is infant work respectable, it is 'in'. I think
several factors have contributed to this: one has
been the complete acceptance of the necessity to
teach deaf children from a very early age,
particularly if oral language is to be acquired.
Because much of this has been outside the regular
school system, perhaps it has been possible to be a
little unorthodox, and teach parents too. The
John Tracy Clinic in Los Angeles has pioneered
very much in this work, and still runs a
correspondence course which goes to parents of
deaf children all over the world. With the growing
interest in the effect of the prevailing sub-culture
on language development—which has been a
subject of research and interest in Britain for some
time too—again it has been speculated that one
ought to start early, if children from 'deprived'
environments are not going to start at a
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