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qualifications in education also, is now Director of
Instruction, and is in the process of reorganising
the remedial services to bring them closer to the
schools and undertaking a good deal of work
within the schools themselves. His particular
interest is in critical reading—in other words,
helping children to read with comprehension, and
by looking critically at the written material, to
deduct a good deal of information that is not
explicitly given but is implicit in the statements
made. I watched a videocording of Dr Schiffman
teaching a small group of children how to do this,
reading a short passage about American Indians,
and was impressed by the children's interest and
their keenness to participate. I also observed the
same children being helped to discover ideas of
classification, from simpler to more abstract
classes, looking at a large group of miscellaneous
objects that Dr Schiffman had set out.
'As far as work with the deaf is concerned, one
of the big problems the United States is having to
deal with is the number of children handicapped
as a result of the rubella epidemic of 1963/64.
The number of children affected is thought to be
probably quite large, but because of the lack of
something similar to our own Risk Register, there
is some difficulty in finding the children, and
therefore planning special provision for them.
Nevertheless, new training courses for teachers of
the deaf and of the deaf/blind are being set up,
the two latter in San Francisco State College and
in George Peabody College, Nashville. There is a
growing realisation in the United States as there
is here in Britain that more and more deaf children
may have other handicaps besides deafness—and
that in fact there is a general upswing in the
numbers of multiply handicapped—and that it is
going to be necessary for teachers, psychologists,
and other workers in the field of education, to
revise many ideas, learn many new things, and in
general actively to come forward to initiate change
rather than fight it. New research findings from
the field of psycholinguistics are raising questions
as to the best ways of teaching language to deaf
children, and in research departments such as
that in Lexington School for the Deaf in New York
I was told about pilot studies embodying new
concepts of language learning based on recent
psycholinguistic theory.
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'A general report of this nature is not the place
to give detailed descriptions of the diagnostic or
teaching techniques I observed. These have
certainly influenced my own approach to the
diagnosis of educational difficulties and to remedial
teaching. The most effective way to communicate
what I learned of new or different techniques is
by demonstration rather than verbal description,
and this I have to some extent been able to do
already, and hope to continue to do in the future
to groups of professional people who are involved,
as I am, in helping to diagnose and remedy the
learning problems of many groups of handicapped
children.'
School Psychological Service
I am grateful to Mr B R Barnett BA for
submitting the following report: —
Introduction

'The steep rise appears to be due in the main to
the development of the service, thus leading to
more contact with schools and head teachers. The
number of referrals has trebled from this source
compared with 1965, when 88 children were
referred.
'The staff of the service consists of the following
members: the senior psychologist, two educational
psychologists, seven remedial teachers, one social
worker and one clerical assistant.
'The year has been eventful from the point of
view of the department, and there have been a
number of changes and developments which are
outlined below.
A ppointment of educational psychologists
'Mrs M Dunne (formerly Brent Child Guidance
Service) who was appointed as full-time
educational psychologist in November 1966 was
allocated the Brentford, Chiswick and Isleworth