qjiild suffer cold. But it is precisely the
moral sense that would suffer under such a
system. Suppose that the child did learn,
through suffering cold, not to break win-
dows, the lesson would apply only to windows,
it would carry no general idea of respecting
property, and since he must live in a man-
made world, would prolong the process of
12 TKe Backward Child
education beyond patience. So much is
evident. Rousseau's idea was a reaction
against the prevaiHng method of corporal
punishment. He saw such a punishment
to be ineffective, but he did not reahse the
reason: that it is useless to imitate in punish-
ment the methods of chastisement which
Nature has reserved for violations of herself,
for we can never give to corporal punishment
the fatalistic swiftness that makes Nature's
retribution chiefly effective, and if we must
raise moral issues, we must develop abstract
sensibilities to meet them.
One takes an illustration like this dawning
distinction between wrong and inexpedi-
ency to understand a little the infinitely
complex interweaving of sense impressions,
memories, associations, and abstractions.
But, after a certain point, this mental com-
plexity gets beyond the range of description,
and it straightens out, even partially, only
under analysis.
Now as the child grows, conditioned by
a thousand infinitesimal incidents which
PsycHolo^ical Basis 15
we can neither predict nor trace, he develops
faint tendencies which in their turn deter-
mine the more pronounced quaHties of his
later years. He is more sensitive to colour
and form, for instance, than to soimd, so
that he will call up more readily how he saw
a thing than how he heard it. Many people
will say that their idea of a concert, when
they think of it, is the strokes of the con-
ductor's baton. Or he may be sensitive to
sound, that is ear-minded, and will say that
the humming of bees is his mental image
of a sunny meadow. But besides the
tendency to favour one or the other sense,
many people lose their mental sensitivity
to sensations in general, the sensations which
originally were the foundation of all their
ideas. This sense dulness that one finds is
often not a physical matter (since examina-
tion shows no defect in the sense organ) , but
it is a mental quality which is of some im-
portance in understanding the interplay of
faculties.
Now as the primitive impressions of the
14 THe BacK^ward CHild
senses expand and elaborate into ideas,
so that most of the impressions come to us
directly as ideas instead of formerly as
sensations, it appears that we can get an
impression in two ways: we can get it as a
whole, or we can get it in parts. If we
introspect, we shall find that either we are
more disposed to ask in such and such cir-
cumstances, what will the outcome be, or
our interest is more excited to know, in such
and such a combination, why is it, what has
brought it about ? The normal person's mind
is receptive to both kinds of impression, is
active in both kinds of inquiry, just as he
gets facility with both hands, but he never-
theless remains a little more apt in one
direction or the other. This psychological
mould, as one might call it, has determined
two great schools of philosophy, the inductive
and the deductive.
The inductive turn of mind is the one
which makes for details, for working the out-
come of a chain of events; it is the turn of
mind which produces scientists, and far-
PsycKological Basis 15
seeing business men, and which in the school-
room makes a child better at arithmetic
than grammar, but better at composition
than geometry. In psychological terms,
the inductive turn of mind is the synthetic
mind, seeking to bind parts into a whole,
working to make something out of the given
materials.
The deductive or analytical turn of mind
is less practical, and therefore less often met
with in its pronounced form nowadays.
Until modem times, the two casts of mind
were for the most part the sign of a man*s
calling. The deductive men were scholars,
the inductive were practical men of affairs.
But with the spread of knowledge these
same men of affairs began to apply general
principles to get particular results, until
Bacon once and for all split off science from
philosophy by declaring that the truth
can be arrived at only by following a
train of particular circumstances to their
conclusion; in other words, by experiment.
The inductive man, the synthetically-minded
i6 The BacKward Child
man, therefore, is the type of successful man
to-day. But leaving the extreme case with
which we have pointed the distinction, there
remains a predisposed cast of mind. It is
not the part of education to foster one or
the other, but if the teacher knows in which
of two ways an idea is most readily grasped,
the business of explanation is simplified.
This constitutional cast of mind and the dis-
tribution of sensitivity previously described,
determine the process of presentation. But
interwoven with presentation so closely
that the distinction is largely figurative, is
the process of representation, the vehicles
of which are attention and memory. The
close analysis of attention and memory are
of prime importance in understanding school
children. To say that a child does not pay
attention, explains nothing, for analysis
shows not one but three kinds of attention.
In the first place, there is the faculty of
getting a very definite impression without,
as we say, "paying attention." The ap-
pearance of a room, in which we were ab-
Ps^cKolo^ical Basis 17
sorbed in talk, how someone looked in the
street whom we saw and did not look at,
and a thousand fleeting impressions whose
haziness or clarity is of the utmost importance
in mental activity ā this is simultaneous
attention. When, however, we give con-
scious thought to a thing in hand, oiu* effec-
tiveness depends partly on will power and
partly on the quality of the second type,
or homogeneous attention, which is another
way of saying the persistence of attention,
and which of all faculties responds best to
training. The degree of facility in doing
two things at once is roughly the meaning
of disparate attention.
Again, in commenting on a child's memory,
it is futile to say, "He never seems to re-
member anything," for it may be that of
his three types of memory, two may be fairly
normal and will become quite so when the
third type is trained. Faulty memory of
some kind underlies a great deal of back-
wardness, but to correct it the teacher must
know whether the child has trouble in re-
i8 The Backward Child
membering a series of impressions that come
too fast to allow the formation of associa-
tions, which is automatic memory ; or whether
his difficulty is in the conscious effort to
memorise by forming associations, which is
voluntary memory; or whether with both
these processes working properly, he cannot
seem to hold what he has in mind, which
is retentive memory.
One cannot experiment much in memory
without realising how largely it is interwoven
with and determined by associations. The
whole training of voluntary memory in fact
is primarily to increase and direct associa-
tions. But most of our associations are
unconsciously formed, so that by the time
a child has reached the age of ten, he has
a considerable mass of associative material
and some well-marked tendencies which are
worth studying for the clues they give to
his habits of thought.
Habits of thought, in turn, depend for
their very existence on the process of ab-
straction, or the translating of impressions
PsycKological Basis 19
into ideas, which is so fundamental that we
usually take no account of it. But the
teacher who finds a difficulty with arithmetic
or with reading will go to the root of the
matter if she examines the way in which
the child is turning concrete symbols into
the ideas of word and number which are
expected from him.
These faculties which we have been
enumerating, sensation and perception, at-
tention and memory, association and ab-
straction, are to be regarded as structural
faculties. They are the very foundation of
mental life and the machinery of our every
thought from the recognition of a friend to
the binomial theorem. These too are the
faculties which chiefly concern the teacher
of elementary schools and among which
she is apt to find the child's imderlying
difficulty. But the bare branches of a tree
are not its glory, and the framework of a
man's mind is not the measure of his per-
sonality. Reasoning, expression, and, at
the very top, creative imagination, are the
20 TKe BacK^w^ard CKild
expansion, the outflowering, as it were, of
memory, association, abstraction, and the
rest. And so the faintest signal of activity
in these highly endowed faculties must
catch the teacher's interest and find her
constant encouragement.
The analysis of the faculties, both struc-
tural and expansive, will be discussed chapter
by chapter; and the reader who has been
tracing their inter-relations in the previous
pages will have a clearer idea of the conclu-
sions to be drawn from the child's reactions
if the following mental chart is remembered:
STRUCTURAL FACULTIES
I III
Sensation ( Faculties
ā¢I of Association
Perception i Presentation
II IV
Attention i Faculties
< of Abstraction
Memory ( Representation
PsycHolo^ical Basis 21
EXPANSIVE FACULTIES
I
Judgment and Reasoning
II
Expression and Response
III
Imagination and Invention
CHAPTER III
GIVING THE TESTS
nPHE mind of a child does not lie open to
-ā - the casual observer. No child gives
his intimacy readily, and in particular a
backward child who is probably conscious
of his peculiarities must be very delicately
persuaded into revealing whatever discord
exists among his faculties. The tests used
for this persuasion are a kind of abbrevia-
tion of the activities of a child's life which
is passed among people incapable of under-
standing the signals of disorder. And so
these tests are very simple and every cir-
cumstance of the examination is to be quite
easy and casual, for a child's self-conscious-
ness is quickly awakened and it lies largely
with the examiner whether the examination
shall be an ordeal or a pastime.
22
Giving tKe Tests 23
From a point of view rather different from
the accepted one, it is not the child but the
examiner who makes the effort. The child
does as he pleases, and the examiner with the
closest attention creates a haphazard atmos-
phere, and yet draws precise conclusions.
An examination such as this demands that
a teacher lay aside momentarily the habit
of instruction, because the child's mind must
not be guided or taught while he is doing the
tests any more than his playmates on the
street guide or teach him. It does not
matter whether he does them right, but it
matters altogether how he does them, and
so, even if at first he misunderstands what he
is to do, the examiner must not check him,
but must watch for a possible clue in what
he does do.
It is of advantage in preventing one's
personal manner from crystallising to give
the tests always in different order, much as
they come to hand. Examiners often ad-
minister the Binet tests like so many doses,
with a result of unfair grading. This is bad
24 THe BacKivard CHild
enough, but when the object of an examina-
tion is more than simply to classify, the
effect of an automatic manner is much worse.
An examination, which has for its purpose
to find out in all the subtle windings of a
child's mind where its peculiar trouble lies,
must not be given mechanically or that very
purpose will be frustrated.
Another drawback is the presence in the
room of anyone other than the examiner and
the child. It is impossible to abate a child's
self -consciousness when he knows he is being
watched, but the examiner can pretend to
pay no attention and the child will forget
himself in what he is doing.
Anyone who undertakes to examine
children is asked to discover the reasons for
the most varied complaints, from "hyper-
apperception," as a bewildered teacher said,
to general disobedience. Most common,
perhaps, are lack of attention, slowness in
taking things in, or great difficulty in some
particular subject. A teacher once sent to
the writer a bright-looking girl of eleven
Giving tHe Tests 25
who could not learn to read. She could not
even learn her letters, although she was ready-
enough in other subjects. It developed that
three years previously she had fallen out of a
third-story window, and they thought that
the trouble with letters began then. Still,
since the fall had neither killed her nor made
her an idiot, there was evidently something
to be done, and first of all, to find out why
she could not learn her letters.
When she came in she seemed not exactly
frightened, but wondering what it was all
about.
"Maggie," I said, "can you do a picture
puzzle?"
" No, " said Maggie.
"It's quite easy. See, here on this piece
is the head of a cat, so you look aroimd and
find the cat's body and tail."
She did.
"And then you fit those two pieces to-
gether like this."
It was a small easy picture puzzle, showing
a little girl and a baby looking at some farm-
26 XHe DacK-ward CHild
yard animals, a hen and a little chicken, a
rabbit in its hutch, and a cat with a saucer
of milk. Although I had shown her how
to look for the missing parts of an animal,
Maggie did not care to go at it that way,
and I let her alone. She matched the pieces
by shape partly, more by colour, but she never
insisted on making a piece go where it did
not belong. She knew all the animals quite
well, and we fell into conversation about the
country and some ducks she had seen one
summer.
Some children describe vividly what they
saw, and others think more about what they
did. If one asks a child to draw what he is
talking about, it usually happens that the
tongue-tied child knows exactly what he
wants to put on paper, and the child that
is free of speech is quite put out with paper
and pencil.
But Maggie preferred to talk.
"See if you can draw a chicken just like
this," I said, showing her an outline.
She made a fairly good copy as to size and
Giving tHe Tests 27
proportion, and yet it did not look much
like the original. This form sense, which
Maggie apparently had little of, is more
common than the sense of size and propor-
tion which she vshowed. Especially children
who draw with facility ā I am not con-
sidering now a talent for drawing ā have
enough form sense so that their meaning
is plain, although the proportions are
ludicrous.
One must never comment on what a child
does, unless he is frightened and needs en-
couragement. Maggie was evidently enter-
tained, especially as I was scribbling some
drawings at the same time, so we went on
talking. I showed her some pictures ā an
automobile, a bed, a shoe, a horse, a chicken,
all pasted on one sheet of cardboard. I
simply showed them for a moment, and then
asked her what she had seen.
"A nottermobile, " she said, "a bed with a
lady making it, and a little chicken."
*' Nothing else?" I said.
"No," said Maggie.
28 XKe BacK-ward CKild
" See if you can say after me : four ā eight ā
three ā six, " I said quite rapidly.
"Four ā eight ā three ā six," said Maggie.
* ' Seven ā three ā ^nine ā eleven ā twelve, ' ' I
said again.
' ' Seven ā three ā nine ā eleven ā twelve, * '
said Maggie.
' * Four ā six ā two ā ten ā three ā eight /' I
said, avoiding any rhythm in my voice.
' * Four ā six ā two ā eight ā three ā nine, ' '
said Maggie, and I went on with other com-
binations till I was sure that a series of five
was her limit of correctness.
Then I took the silhouettes of seven ani-
mals drawn on separate cards and put them
in a row.
"Look at them," I said, "and when you
know by heart how they come, mix them up
and see if you can put them down the same
way."
She did not look at them long, and when
she tried to put them down again, she could
not get the order right. When she studied
the original longer, she was even farther away
Giving tKe Tests 29
from the right order. I took one card away,
still she missed, and finally with four cards
she did it.
I asked her what was the answer of 5 plus
3 minus 2, and she gave the right answer at
once without counting on her fingers. Harder
sums she did equally well, but I didn't try
her till she failed, for I was concerned only
in discovering her facilities, and I did not
wish any likeness to a lesson.
I opened a book of large print, and asked
her if she knew any of the letters. She was
quite sure of only O. So I told her to take
her pencil and cross out all the O's she
could find. She began, and for some time
did pretty well, but although she apparently
gave the same concentration to the end of the
page, her attention was unsuccessful and she
left out a good many.
I tested her colour sense by having her
sort worsteds that shaded into each other,
and found it to be keen. But her sense of
sound was so dull that when I pronounced
the letter sounds of C-A-T, i, e., K-A-T,
30 XHe BacK^ward CKild
and asked what word it was, Maggie said
"Rat." When I made the sounds of M-
A-T, she said "Got," and so on, through a
number of curious aberrations.
Since Maggie did not know her letters,
some of the tests were naturally impossible,
but even with this incomplete examination
I had enough facts in hand to understand
the trouble.
From Maggie's answers and actions evi-
dence had to be gathered and set down which
would show the real reason why she had not
learned her letters. The first thing observed
was that she tried to match the parts of the
picture puzzle by colour rather than by shape.
This was an indication, at least, of an un-
developed sense of form, for the shape of the
pieces in a picture puzzle is usually a more
obvious guide than the colours, which are
indefinite. This indication was borne out
when she tried to copy the chicken. She got
the size about right and the head and tail were
in about the right relation to each other, and
yet her outline looked like nothing ever seen.
Giving tKe Tests 3I
The ability that Maggie showed in no-
ticing the pictures on the card and repeating
the numbers in series was negative testi-
mony. But when she could not remember
seven, then six, then five silhouette animals
in order, with plenty of time to study them,
it was evident that her stock of associations
was small and tardily set in motion. As she
looked at the animals no faint stimulus
quickened the association channels to form
a little mise-en-scene about each one. Al-
though she was quite famiHar with all of
them from geography and from visits to the
country, nevertheless each one remained an
tmleavened lump in her mind, and her
voluntary memory, imsupported by associa-
tions, could not hold so many undigested
bits at once.
Her handling of the mental arithmetic
sum was unusual, because she did not try to
help herself with fingers or other mental
crutches, as so many children do who never
quite bridge the gap from the concrete to the
abstract. So it was evidently not abstrac-
32 The BacKward CKild
tion, i. e.y the translation of letters into ideas,
which was keeping Maggie back.
When she was crossing out 0*s Maggie
showed a signal which is often overlooked,
the signal of fatigue. Psychological fatigue
is different from ordinary weariness or bore-
dom, and the noticeable difference is that
in the last two the child's attention per-
ceptibly flags and he wants to stop, whereas
in fatigue he is seemingly paying attention
as hard as ever. This attention is not
effective, however, and he misses and makes
mistakes without knowing it. So it was
with Maggie. This characteristic of fatigue
must be allowed for in any scheme of training,
for it interferes almost against the child's
will with the persistence of homogeneous
attention.
When Maggie tried to compose the letters
C-A-T into a word, she became confused,
and instead of the K sound of C, she produced
almost any sound at random, which at the
time happened to be R. Another time it
was an M or H sound without consistency.
Giving tKe Tests 33
So it was evident that her sound discrimina-
tion was very dull. I accounted for her
learning to talk correctly on the ground that
words had vivid associations in ideas which
letters lack, and also on the ground of uncon-
scious imitation. And that this dull sense
of sound was a mental quality was further
established by a test which showed her
physical sense of hearing to be normal.
Putting these observations together, it
appeared that the chief facts for the diagnosis
were poor sense of form, poor sense of sound,
limited associations. And applying these
facts to her difficulty with letters it was clear
that since sounds as such made very little
impression on her, isolated letters like K-
P-M would be hard to differentiate. And,
in addition, when these vague sounds were
not reinforced by individual associations
they would pass from Maggie's mind like
stones from the surface of a pool. Now the
average child in learning his letters connects
the shape of a letter with its sound, and the
two ideas mutually re-enforce each other.
34 The BacKward Child
But in Maggie's case a dim and confused
impression of the form of a letter added to
an already vague and confused impression
of its sound left her without any terra firma
on which to base an idea.
In considering this diagnosis, and how best
to train her, it was evident that the training
must multiply her associations and sharpen
her impressions of sound. In talking with
her I had found that, in spite of this dulness
of sense of sound, she was mentally more ear-
minded than visual-minded. She remem-
bered more the sounds of things, especially
musical sounds, than how they looked.
Here was a suggestion. I had the twenty-
six letters of the alphabet printed plainly
on the white keys of a piano, beginning at
the C below middle C and calHng it A, and
so on through the alphabet, H on middle
C, O an octave above, and V on high C.
Maggie thereupon learned to play "My
Country 'Tis of Thee" and "The Wearing
of the Green" with one finger, so pitched
that they covered the alphabet. She called
Oiving tKe Tests 35
the notes as she struck them according to
the letter printed on the key. At first, of
course, she began by simply learning by
rote.
"H-H-I-G-H-I" she would chant, be-
ginning "My Country 'Tis of Thee" on
middle C. But it took a good while simply
to learn the tune consecutively on the piano,
and as she chanted and stumbled and began
over, two purposes were accomplished. She
learned the different sounds of the letters,
because each one was intensified by constant
association with the more vivid sound of the
musical note, and with this revivifying of
the letters she learned the sequence of the
alphabet. Then, since she always had to
look for the note she was to strike next, and
since each note was plainly inked with a
letter, she came to identify the name or
sound of the letter which she was say-
ing with the shape she was looking
for.
To deepen further these association paths,
she made A's and B's and so on, saying the
36 TKe BacK'^vard CKild
name of the letter three times as she was
making it; and the well-known device of
cutting letters out of different coloured papers
utilised her colour sense and served the same
purpose. At first she was only expected to
learn one letter a day; she would begin with
the cutting out and the repetition as she
wrote, and the piano came last as a sort of
game, because it seemed best to let the more
indirect associations be formed unconsciously.
The time given to training Maggie was
twenty-five minutes a day for seven weeks,
and at the end of that time she knew her
letters well enough to begin combinations
into words.
I have cited Maggie as an example of a
child whose difficulty should be attacked
directly, and for the purpose of showing
without too much detail how the examination
is given. But one is not always so fortunate
as to have a clear-cut and specific complaint.
By far the greater number of backward
children are just generally dull, according to
their teachers, but nevertheless present even
Giving tHe Tests 37
greater interest and difficulty of analysis.
Accordingly the following chapters are a
more detailed description of the examination