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Who Are the Mentally Retarded?

IN PROPOSING any curriculum adjustment, we must have

clearly in mind the pupils for whom adjustment is being made. We must know something as to their number, their mental equipment, their possi bilities of development, and their relation to the total population of school children.

What Are They Like?

"Mentally retarded" children are here defined as those who constitute approximately the least able 2 percent of the juvenile population.1 “All men are created free and equal" before the law, but it has long been an established fact of biology and psychology that from a physical and a mental point of view there is great inequality among them. The problems of education arise in part from the facts of intellectual differences.

Individual differences among school children have been studied by scientific methods for many years. Begun in 1904, with the development of mental tests by Binet, the investigations made have established numerous facts. One of the most important of these concerns the frequency with which various degrees of intelligence, as measured by mental tests, occur among school children. Most children are about normal (average) in respect to intelligence, for in a statistical sense the word "normal" means "what the majority can do." A few fall so low on the continuous scale of ability that they seem quite incapable of learning. Just above these are

1 Some writers and some school authorities include all mentally retarded children under the term "slow-learning," regardless of the degree of retardation. Others differentiate between "slow-learning" as referring to boys and girls who are of dull-normal intelligence and "subnormal" or "mentally deficient" as referring to those who are seriously defective in intellectual development, but not necessarily feeble-minded. It is with the latter group that this bulletin deals. In day schools they would range in terms of intelligence quotient from approximately 50 to 75.

the much more numerous ones who are somewhat less retarded, and who in turn merge by imperceptible degrees into the normal group.

At the extreme opposite to the mentally deficient are the children so bright that they learn much more and much more rapidly than the average and are ultimately capable of mastering much more complex ideas. These form a minority of approximately the same size as that included among the retarded, but it is not the purpose to deal with these children, here. They are mentioned merely to complete the picture of the pattern resulting from the variability of human nature. Human beings are far more variable in mental traits than they are in physical traits. Among thousands of pupils, all of the same age, the tallest will probably not be more than twice as tall as the shortest in stature, but the amount or complexity of the work performed by the most intelligent one may be many times as great as that performed by the least intelligent.

The curriculum of the public schools is based primarily upon the abilities of the great number of intellectually average children. Incapacity for academic achievement becomes more and more pronounced as degrees of intelligence become less. The least intelligent children cannot attain any effective control over words and numbers. Even those who test as high as 75 I.Q.2 can reach only a limited degree of literacy. According to early studies of intelligence of school children, about 2 percent of an unselected school population have an intelligence quotient of 73 or less, and about 5 percent have an intelligence quotient of 78 or less.

Intelligence tests, however, are not infallible, nor is the rating of a child on an intelligence scale the only thing that should be known about him. Emotional conflict, physical condition, or the environmental situation may interfere with the full expression of his intelligence. When circumstances change, he may be better able to respond and thus to rate higher on an intelligence scale. Moreover, a child may be intellectually retarded, even to a rather serious extent, and still have enough social competence to get along in the world fairly well. No child should be called "mentally retarded" or assigned to a special class for mentally retarded children without full consideration of all these facts.

* All references made in this bulletin to the intelligence quotient (I.Q.) are in terms of results on the Stanford-Binet scale.

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What Can They Do?

All pupils can deal with things, persons, and abstract symbols, but in vastly different degrees of complexity. Theoretically, a retarded child of any chronological age can acquire the information related to school subjects which normal 7-year-olds acquire when his "mental age" is 7, as determined by standardized mental tests. Theoretically, too, it is pos sible by means of mental measurement to tell to what extent a child is capable of mastering abstract symbols such as numbers, letters, and words. Actually, however, this principle applies to groups rather than to individuals, and here, as elsewhere, exceptions occur that must be treated in keeping with the needs of the individual case. Factors of physical health, personality, and environment may be responsible for a seeming deficiency in intellect that disappears when the causal factor is removed.

Because a deficient child can by the time he is 16 years old learn a little of a given school subject, it by no means follows that such learning should become the goal of his education. It would be a far wiser investment of time to center his education on the activities which will be of greatest use to him. Mentally retarded children and young people are not equally deficient in all directions. Most of them can learn to work with concrete materials and objects better than they can learn to work with symbols or abstract ideas. A great many different kinds of useful work can in fact be mastered by them. Education should, therefore, take account of these facts: (1) That mentally retarded pupils can work more successfully with objects and materials than they can with the tools of literacy (words, numbers); and (2) that in the realm of symbols they can, as a group, learn about as much as their "mental age" may indicate, in terms of what average children of that age accomplish.

As for emotional experiences, the mentally retarded share the ordinary human emotions. They "have feelings," and their feelings are much more like those of ordinary persons, apparently, than their intellectual abilities. are. They hunger and thirst just as others do; are made glad or sad, as their desires are gratified or not; are capable of affection, discouragement, and all the other emotional experiences common to man. These observations apply to all above the extreme of idiocy, where mental life is at a low infantile level.

What Can We Expect of Them?

On the basis of a study, made by Kuhlmann, in which the mental development of nore than 600 institutionalized children was followed over a period of 10 years, as well as on the basis of the work of other pioneer 'investigators, it was concluded that the condition of most seriously retarded children is one of simple and continuous mental inferiority. For instance, it was thought that a pupil of a mental level represented by an I.Q. of 50 would probably when mature have approximately the mental ability of an average 8-year-old child. No sudden and unpredictable "improvement,” or "spurt of growth," could be expected.

Many research studies have been carried on during the past 30 years to check these early conclusions, and the results have been varied. No one would assert today that the I.Q. is absolutely constant in individual cases. The most reasonable action on the part of the school would be to study each child as a whole not only his intelligence rating, but also his personality, his behavior, his health, his home situation, and his social maturity. Any possibility of error in regard to mental test results should be fully checked by making reexaminations whenever doubt may arise and by taking into consideration the influences of all other factors. If this is done, errors of judgment and evaluation of the child's ability can be minimized. And the door should always be open to permit a revision of judgment as the child's total personality unfolds under competent guidance.

Under the system of school progress by grade, retarded children are frequently subjected to tasks which they cannot possibly understand or perform; and frequently they are permitted to go from grade to grade without achieving anything of satisfaction to themselves or to their teachers. To escape the sense of inadequacy and blameworthiness they may become truants or engage in mischief. Studies of undesirable behavior among pupils show that there is a tendency for disciplinary problems to be concentrated among retarded children who are not given the special educational help that they need. The known facts about child development and the instruments of child study give to educators the opportunity to free backward children from the problems that arise from expecting them to perform tasks that are beyond their ability. Failure and wasted effort can be avoided. This fact has been demonstrated in the lives of many retarded children who with understanding guidance have found a measure of success in the world's work.

Summary

We may summarize our knowledge of mentally retarded children by saying that we know approximately how large a group they comprise; we have tentative measures for identifying them; we know we must take into consideration the total child and not only that part of him that responds' to an intelligence test at a particular time. We also know that such children can work more successfully with concrete objects and materials than with symbols and abstract ideas; we know that we cannot expect them to compete either in school or in the world's work with persons of much keener intellect than theirs; and we know that with proper guidance and curriculum adjustment many of them can become contributing citizens of the community.