SUB-NORMAL CHILDREN

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 59, 7 September 1926, Page 6

SUB-NORMAL CHILDREN

BENEFITS OF SPECIAL CLASSI6

HOPES FOB EXTENSION.

Discussing the question of establishing special classes in the primary schools for the benefit of children who are not of normal intelligence, the Chief Inspector of Primary Schools (Mr. T. B. Strong) state* in hi* annual report that it is most gratifying ito note the skill they soon acquire in the use of their hands when placed in I separate classes. "It is remarkable, too," he states, "how the acquisition of such skill reacts on their power to advance in literary subjects. Such pupils are certainly enabled to advance to the limit of their capacity in such subjects when they are in a happy environment and doing work in which they can excel and which, therefore, yields them the maximum degree of satisfaction. I hope that it will be possible to extend such classes, and to establish them in the near future in all the main centres. "As our public school classes are reduced in size teachers will be enabled to give individual attention, to those pupils of normal intelligence who have been retarded by some misfortune during their school career. Such pupils require only an opportunity to make up the leeway they have lost. If the country could afford it, this could be done most effectively in what are sometimes called opportunity classes, but it appears to me that our first care should be the education of those children who are of somewhat subnormal intelligence, and these can be educated satisfactorily only in classes specially organised for the purpose."