for the work. We are just learning that all teachers of the deaf, however proficient they may be, are not well equipped to organize schools. The work of organizing seems to require an ability that but few expert teachers of the deaf possess. Great care should be used in selecting the organizer, because, if the field is once canvassed and the effort has failed, new difficulties are added to further work in the same direction. The work of organization should be directed from some central authority, and in accordance with some well-defined plan, adopted by either the state or an interstate organization of the friends of the deaf, unless it is undertaken by the state itself. This latter plan seems to me to be the most feasible, especially where a number of day schools are already established and the methods of instruction have been thoroly tested. There should be connected with the department of public instruction a superintendent or supervisor of day schools for the deaf, whose duty it would be to pass upon the qualifications of teachers, to have general supervisory control of the schools, with power to regulate the curriculum of studies, books, and appliances to be used therein, and who should be charged with the duty of organizing schools and enforcing the laws compelling the attendance of pupils.

It is said upon good authority that there are between three and four hundred deaf persons of school age in the state of Michigan who do not attend any school, and that a like proportion obtains in other states. Wherever a day school has been established, the compulsory educational law applicable to hearing children can be enforced, but their attendance cannot be compelled at the state institutions, involving, as it does, the removal of the child from the possession and immediate control of the parent. This condition alone should warrant the employment of a supervisor or superintendent of schools for the deaf. In some of the smaller states, where there would be but few of the day schools, the time of such superintendent or supervisor could be divided between other duties connected with the office of superintendent of public instruction and the interests of the deaf. The creation of such a position, with its duties, in each of the several states will require time and much labor preliminary to its accomplishment, and must of necessity follow the passage of a law creating the schools and the establishment of one or more schools under it. In the meantime, I may be pardoned perhaps if I suggest that all work done in the future for the deaf should be under the supervision of one general organization, managed as work of this character is generally done, and constituted of a membership composed of leading educators and friends of the deaf in the different states. Such an organization should be under the control of the friends of the oral methods, who favor the day school in preference to the institution, but who, of course, are at the same time willing to aid all efforts to promote the teaching of speech to the deaf in institutions.

By means of such an organization the progress of the work in the different states, its needs and requirements, could always be determined. The influential friends of the deaf who would be willing to aid in the passage of proper laws for the establishment of schools would be known, and a state organization perfected to further the work. Thru the excellent work done by Dr. Bell, the Census Bureau has obtained a more or less complete list of the deaf children and their parents thruout the whole country. Thru such an organization, communication with the parent would be established, literature distributed, and a general awakening of interest accomplished. While it is true that a state organization might accomplish all this, the history of the movement seems to teach us that state organizations rarely or ever precede the passage of a state law and the establishment of schools. Such an organization would supplement the great work already done for the deaf by giving to it a tangible form, by way of a more detailed effort to pass a law in the several states. Valuable as its services might be in this direction, it seems to the writer that it would render an equally valuable service in other directions, to a few of which I take the liberty of referring. First, it seems to me, as a layman only, not as an expert teacher of the deaf, that so-called training schools for teachers of the deaf should be under the control, as to the degree of proficiency of its graduates, of some national organization. As a general rule, the parent of the deaf child is wholly unacquainted with the methods of instruction, and a local school board does not find itself much better qualified to pass upon them. Both are wholly unacquainted, as a rule, with the training required to make an expert teacher of the deaf, and therefore persons who have had some experience in the teaching of the deaf, whether by the sign method or otherwise, are quite as likely to be employed as those who have had special training in a proper school. The state institutions are constantly sending out into the world persons who have had the care of their children, all seemingly well equipped, so far as the public knows, to continue the work. If a general organization which would, of course, be recognized as authority on the subject would undertake to recommend graduates of schools fully equipped to produce expert teachers, and deny recommendations to graduates of other schools, it seems to me that great good would be accomplished. Persons selected as organizers should also be recommended by it. The work to be done with legislative bodies should be under its immediate direction and control, or of its agents authorized to speak for it. It should aid in procuring teachers for schools and aid graduates of training schools to obtain positions. It should aid local boards in procuring the establishment of schools; furnish legal opinions. when necessary upon the law creating them. I might multiply many times the list of services which such an organization could render to the cause of the deaf, if time did not fail me; but, briefly, it should render

such services as the State Phonological Society of Wisconsin and the friends of the deaf in Michigan have rendered in their respective states, with such other and further services as its more extensive jurisdiction would require.

In this paper I have given you the views of a layman for what they are worth, conscious only that they are given with the hope that to some extent they may aid the cause in which we are all so deeply interested.

THE STATE IN ITS RELATION TO THE DEFECTIVE CHILD DR. FRANCIS BURKE BRANDT, PROFESSOR OF PEDAGOGY, CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL, PHILADELPHIA

The education of the defective child, so far as the state is concerned, cannot be considered without regard to the education of the normal child. I have been in some institutions for unfortunate children-deaf, blind, or feeble-minded-so ably managed and splendidly equipped as to almost make one wish he had been born unfortunate. I have been in some public schools intended for normal children that could make one wish he had never been born. Three years ago a police census in New York city showed that there were 702,162 children of school age in that city, but of these only 468,229 were enrolled in either public or private schools. The average daily attendance was indeed only 338,184. We are doubtless properly shocked when we learn this about New York city, but, like jesting Pilate, we stay not for answer when the same question arises concerning our own community. This is a nation of 76,295,220 souls. Of this vast number approximately 21,830,774 persons are between the ages of five and eighteen years. Yet the official figures for the closing days of the nineteenth century show that of this total number of boys and girls of the age just stated but 16,511,597 were enrolled in schools, public and private, elementary and secondary. Nor are the needs of the normal child within the school fully met by the state. Overcrowded classes are criminally chronic and common in most American school systems; the evil of half-time classes equally abounds; adequate school buildings and adequate equipment are lacking everywhere. "There are thirty thousand children in Chicago," said the educational commission which a few years ago investigated the educational conditions of that city, "for whom full and fair provision is not made. Thirteen thousand are in rented buildings, which are in many particulars entirely unsuited for school purposes.”1 The state has not yet solved its problem touching the education of the normal child, whether we consider the child who is within or the child who is without the school.

In its efforts to meet the needs of the normal child, however, the state 1 Report of the Educational Commission of the City of Chicago, 1899, p. 172.

is brought face to face with its duty toward the defective.

Awakening

to the frightful sacrifice of child-life which is resulting from a combination of causes-individual inertness, the ignorance or rapaciousness of parents, the unethical and ruthless organization of industrial life, and the uninstructed indifference of the church-the state, in its effort to preserve itself and to protect the individual, is slowly but steadily extending its compulsory school laws, and forcing all children up to thirteen or fourteen years of age into, particularly, the public schools. The immediate result of this, however, is to force more and more on public attention the demonstrated fact that the school as an institution of civilization is conditioned in its existence and for its proper functioning, not simply by the presence of the normal child, but also by the absence of the child physically, mentally, or morally defective. Neither the public nor the private school can do its work properly and successfully when hampered by the presence of children widely divergent from the normal. How intensely must one be diseased-physically, mentally, or morally—to be educationally quarantined? How extensively must one be defective physically, mentally, or morally-to be thrust from the school? How completely must one be degenerate - physically, mentally, or morally to be excluded properly from the training primarily designed for normal children? Under the operation of compulsory school laws these are becoming burning questions. With the crowding today of heterogeneous masses into our public schools, there arises the imperative need of some authoritative method of detecting and weeding out those that are widely divergent from the normal. Aside from the question of the danger to society of dependent, defective, and delinquent classes-aside from the positive disadvantages to these classes themselves, in not being taught by methods that meet their specific needs the school cannot do its whole duty to the normal child when handicapped by the presence of those who are abnormal.

The first proposition which I wish to lay down, therefore, is that the primary duty of the state, so far as defective children are concerned, is to pass such legislation as shall render their presence impossible in classes primarily designed for the normal child. The importance and necessity of such legislation are not to be underestimated. So far as the publicschool system is concerned, what we need first is an adequate investigation of the facts and an adequate method of ascertaining them. A superintendent of one of the largest cities in the United States informs me that his efforts to ascertain the number of exceptional, backward, and defective children in the public schools were practically unavailing, because of the impossibility of relying on the judgment of teachers and principals as to who were mentally deficient and who not. The system

of voluntary medical inspection being adopted in many cities may ultimately lead to the opportunity of making use of trained physicians for

this purpose. Even with the ordinary methods of common-sense inspection, however, it has developed that in large school systems there is a considerable number of children, whose specific needs are not only failing to be met, but whose presence is a constant menace and handicap to normal pupils. In Providence, Boston, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and other cities, the "special school" is making its appearance in connection with the public-school system, and I am glad to be able to say that the special schools started in Philadelphia two years ago, under the initiative of voluntary associations and individual contributions and enterprise, have in the last month been taken fully and formally under the control and support of the municipal authorities.

But the attitude of the state toward the defective child is not and should not be wholly negative. A second proposition I wish to lay down, touching the relation of the state to the defective child, concerns the necessity of a clearer conception and a stronger conviction of the needs, powers, and possibilities of the so-called defective: the state should distinctly recognize the defective as a subnormal rather than as an abnormal class, to be carefully distinguished, on the one hand, from the diseased, and, on the other hand, from the degenerate, and liberally provide with the specific training necessary to make these individuals useful members of society and capable of some measure of individual perfection and pleasure.

If, under a wise system of school organization, no child who falls into any of the abnormal, or even subnormal, classes should find a place in schools organized for the normal child, the determination of what constitutes abnormality becomes a scientific question of more than academic importance. In another connection I have ventured to suggest that the most complete type of the abnormal individual is characterized by disordered body, disordered consciousness, and disordered conduct; and that within each of these types we may distinguish classes which may be scientifically distinguished as diseased, defective, and degenerate. The physically diseased, the physically defective, and the physically degenerate are types clearly made out. The mentally diseased, the mentally defective, and the mentally degenerate, as well as the morally diseased, the morally defective, and the morally degenerate, are only beginning to receive clear recognition. This classification suggests that society has yet failed to observe the desirability and importance of distinguishing between the abnormal and what, to borrow a term from Professor Cattell, may be called the subnormal. The blind and the deaf should not be placed under the same ban as the degenerate, the idiotic, and the

On the other hand, the operation of compulsory school laws, and increasing psychological intelligence in the management of private institutions, are forcing upon public attention the question whether we do not grossly abuse the terms "idiotic," "imbecile," and "feeble-minded."