The Care and Education of Weak-minded and Imbecile Children in Relation to Pauper Lunacy

Abstract

The care, training, and education of physically and mentally defective children is now an accepted public duty undertaken by the State at the public cost, to the extent at least of providing the necessary schools and institutions, and other needful arrangements. Blind and deaf and dumb children are provided for by legislation, which was passed as the result of the facts of the case relating to the special needs of those children having become apparent by the general enforcement of compulsory education. Imbecile and idiot children have also been provided for by laws passed during recent years; but inasmuch as all the laws relating to those classes of children are either Lunacy Statutes, or have as their object to make provision for weak-mindedness viewed as a special or modified form of insanity, they have been found to be inadequate for providing the necessary facilities for the proper care and education of children of defective intellect, but devoid of those insane characteristics which distinguish true imbecility and idiocy. The probable reason for this hiatus in the legal provision for the education of weak-minded children, is that it has hitherto been assumed that a child who is not a certifiable imbecile is capable of being taught in an ordinary school. That such is a mistaken view many who have had experience among children of defective intelligence have recognised, and the Committee on Defective and Epileptic Children, whose report has just been published, recognise the distinction between the two classes of feeble-minded children and base their recommendations upon it. Indeed, the Committee was appointed to consider the case of such children, because it was found in practice that many children of school age were unable to profit by the instruction of ordinary schools, and yet were not imbeciles or idiots, and the reference to the Committee was limited to that class of children. The Committee say in their report, “the word ‘feeble-minded’ as used in the report denotes only those children who are not imbecile, and who cannot properly be taught in ordinary elementary schools by ordinary methods.” It is clear that if legislative sanction is given to the recommendations of the Committee, a great benefit will be conferred upon non-imbecile feeble-minded children, and upon their parents; and an important step in advance will also be taken in the direction of making more reasonable use of existing facilities for the care and training of imbeciles and idiots.