Valid Answer Research Articles

Current trends in special education in the United States

Special education programs must provide a rational and valid answer to the question as to what is “special” about them. Does their distinctive or special nature lie in the content to be taught, in the special skills that are stimulated, or in the design of the educational ecology? A full decade of rapidly expanding programs in the US has generated a promising base for an increasingly sophisticated answer to these questions for children with a variety of handicapping conditions.

The Classification of Depressive Illnesses

As is well known, there has been a good deal of discussion about the unitary or binary nature of depression. Mapother (1926) and Lewis (1934) made a strong case for the unitary view on clinical grounds, Curran (1937) concurring. Kendell (1968) has reviewed the history of this argument; it is marred by confusion which has persisted through recent attempts to use statistical techniques of factor analysis and discriminant function analysis in an effort to find a more objective and empirical solution. It is the purpose of this brief note to draw attention to this confusion, to show how it has affected arguments of both adherents and opponents of the binary position, and to argue that the data are in fact in sufficient agreement to make possible a valid answer to both problems. It is suggested that the apparent disagreement between workers such as those of the Newcastle group (Kiloh and Garside, 1963; Carney, Roth and Garside, 1965) and the London (Maudsley) group (Kendell, 1968) is in fact quite irrelevant and is based on a misunderstanding of the statistical properties of factors, a misunderstanding apparently introduced in one of the first studies of this kind to be concerned with the problem of the classification of depressive illness, that by Hamilton and White (1959).

Zinc, Growth, & Respiration in Euglena

Zinc is essential for normal growth in plants, animals, and microorganisms (cf. reviews 1, 2,17). What is the biochemical basis for this essentiality? One answer to this question can be made by simply citing the burgeoning number of zinc metalloenzymes (12). fact that any one enzyme contains zinc as an essential component does not necessarily mean that the activity of this enzyme decreases in zinc deficiency. Much less does it mean that the activity of this enzyme limits the growth of the zincdeficient organism. means for obtaining a more valid answer to the question of the biochemical basis for essentiality were stated by Professor Pirson (9): The first criterion includes the requirement that all biochemical and especially enzymological evidence must be critically tested for validity in vivo; i.e., the living plant itself must always be asked. In seeking the biochemical basis for the essentiality of zinc our strategy is to examine broad areas of metabolism for a lesion occurring in zinc deficiency. Thc lesion, or failure in some process, must be of sufficient degree to account for the corresponding failure of growth. Upon discovering such a lesion, we should then try to identify the enzyme or other reactions responsible. Since the pyridine nucleotide (PN) -dependent dehydrogenases are among the zinc metalloenzymes previously discovered, we have first examined respiration for a possible growth-limiting lesion in zinc deficiency. test plant used throughout is Euglena gracilis, an organism particularly suitable for physiological and biochemical studies involving zinc. Part of these results were previously communicated to the American Society of Plant Physiologists (6).

What Is a Minimum Adequate Farm Income?

PROMINENT among the needs of planning groups in agriculture has been some valid answer to the question of what constitutes the minimum adequate farm income. The answer has frequently rested either on authority or expediency. To many it has appeared a moral issue and, therefore, not susceptible of rational or empirical solution. To others it has seemed to belong to the specialist-the home economist and the budget expert. However vexatious the problem, it is nevertheless inescapable. Without some reliable solution there is no adequate objective for many farm programs, no satisfactory answer to the subsidiary questions of what is an adequate size of farm or what is an economic unit. The approach most widely employed is that of the budget which specifies that an expenditure of a given number of dollars for food, clothing, housing, recreation, education, etc. is the least expenditure for which an adequate supply of these commodities can be obtained. These expenditures added together yield a sum which is thought of as a minimum adequate income. Such budgets rest on slight scientific or pragmatic foundations. The exception is, of course, food. In the instance of nutrition more valid scientific standards of adequacy of diet have been developed and are in current use. There is no lack of specifications on what constitutes adequate housing but these specifications are in the nature of a trade agreement among professional housers and depend more on unanimity than on evidence. In the matters of clothing, recreation, and education there is not even unanimity. An equally serious objection to the budget procedure concerns the technique employed. The householder's problem is one of choice in the distributing of a given income. The technique he employs is one of preference or substitution. The budget experts' arithmetic is based on addition. Customarily an adequate income is the sum of a series of expenditures in adequate amounts for purposes considered proper or necessary. At almost every step moral issues intrude. We have to deal not only with whether one or two suits of clothes are sufficient, whether one movie a month is essential and two are excessive but whether an allowance should be made for tobacco, liquor, and a better automobile. It is obvious that if provision is not made for certain of these wants which may on moral