Awakening the Slower Mind

232 Pages·1969·10.934 MB·English

by  Violet R. Bruce and F. H. Pedley (Auth.)

AWAKENING THE
SLOWER MIND
VIOLET R. BRUCE
M.Ed., Ph.D.
Principal Lecturer in Dance
City of Leicester College of Education
1 ·· ·
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Copyright © 1969 Violet R. Bruce
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First edition 1969
Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 77-80726
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FOREWORD
DOGTOR BRUCE is a writer of wide educational experience. She
is herself a gifted teacher of children of all ages and abilities; she
was for many years an adviser of teachers and, though her pro-
fessional concern is now with their initial training, she also man-
ages to find time to encourage and help teachers already in
service.
She has always been deeply concerned for the welfare of chil-
dren with difficulties. In the last few years she has visited very
many schools dealing with handicapped pupils, and in this
book she has set out her observations on them and her conclusions
on the way they should be taught.
Those who read her book are likely to be wiser in their under-
standing of children, to know more about the importance of
freeing children from fear, about the dangers of their failure,
about the need for excitement, happiness, and exhilaration in the
school, and about the learning process at its most effective. In
particular, they will appreciate the part that expressive arts can
play in stimulating the happy growth and development of
children.
But, as is often the case, discoveries about what is best for the
slower or handicapped learner illuminates the teaching of more
normal children, and her book should help all teachers who read
it.
SIR ALEC CLEGO
vii
PREFACE
THIS book concerns children who are in our educational system,
the least able of all those whom we classify as educable. They
are those children who are offered, and whose parents or guard-
ians accept, places in special schools for the educationally sub-
normal, those children in special or remedial classes in primary,
secondary modern, comprehensive, or high schools, and those
who are in the lowest streams or are falling markedly behind others
in these schools. I should like to question the description "inedu-
cable" for children who fall short even of the above categories,
but this is not the immediate concern of this book.
It is relevant at all times to question contemporary educational
methods. Those who have greater success in school than the
children I am proposing to discuss do manage to deal in varying
degrees of competence with the courses with which our education
system faces them. The so-called educationally subnormal child
does not. It is certain that for all children there would be enrich-
ment of personal growth if we could enhance the opportunities
for their communication, if we could spend a great deal of the
time now consumed by memorizing and being tested, in artistic
activity, and those experiences which arise from a rich environ-
ment. There is often a measure of deprivation for those children
who spend their years of adolescence in our grammar schools.
Nevertheless, even if one wonders how advantageous a more
expressive education would be for these pupils, they are not in
the plight of the least able children in our community. They
have access to further education and to interesting employment.
They are accepted, respected, and self-respecting.
The first part of the study concerns the situation as I saw it
and the related problems. Each chapter focuses upon a particular
ix
χ PREFACE
aspect, and there is inevitably the problem of overlapping areas.
At risk of repetition and for the sake of clarity, I have written in
this way. The second part indicates the ways in which I believe
teachers could use the expressive arts and allied activity to help
these children to grow in personality and liveliness and to acquire
the interest in and need for language which may lead to a lasting
literacy for them.
What is said in general applies to children in all schools.
A. R. Stone, during the Second World War indicated the educa-
tional value of the arts.* Some progress has been made in our
schools in this direction, but it is to a large extent and increasingly
off-set by competition in educational prowess urged on by par-
ental pressure, and the race among teachers for promotion and
status. The most successful children in school are deprived during
their childhood of some of the most important riches of life,
but the least successful children need help to enable them to
take an adequate place in the community and to ensure such a
place for their children.
Our infant schools still lead the country in educational pro-
gress. They have come to this by understanding the needs of the
youngest children. Perhaps the teachers of the children who fail
could lead the educational field in the deep and exploring atti-
tudes which they bring to the understanding of the developmental
processes for all children with which education must be con-
cerned. Educational services in this country have taken respon-
sibility to a large degree for the upbringing of children, yet very
little attention is paid in school to the education of the emotions.
* A. R. Stone, The Story of a School
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to acknowledge my gratitude to the following people :
To all head teachers, members of teaching staffs, administra-
tive and domestic staffs, whose schools I visited in England
and Scotland, and in the United States of America, and
to all the children who were pupils in these schools.
To those in the factories which I visited who offered their
knowledge and experience.
To youth employment officers who answered my letters so
thoroughly.
To medical officers who discussed with me, read parts of
my script, and answered my questions.
To my typist and friend, Miss Margaret Oates.
To my friend Sir Alec Clegg who has written the Foreword
to this book and who has given me constant encourage-
ment.
To Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc.; New Society, and The
Times for permission to use material.
xi
LODGED
The rain to the wind said,
"You push and I'll pelt."
They so smote the garden bed
That the flowers actually knelt,
And lay lodged—though not dead.
I know how the flowers felt.
ROBERT FROST.
(From Complete Poems of Robert Frost', copyright 1928 by Holt, Rinehart &
Winston, Inc.; copyright 1956 by Robert Frost. Reprinted by permission of
Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc., Publishers, New York, and Jonathan Cape,
Ltd., London.)
xii
CHAPTER 1
WHO ARE
THE CHILDREN WHO FAIL?
This chapter is intended as a prelude to what follows in this book. It
is not written simply as a study of the problems involved and their causes.
There are works such as Eleven Thousand Seven Year Olds, by
Dr. Keimer Pringle, Ν. R. Butler, and R. Davie; Cruelty to Children,
by Dr. Chesser; Heredity and Environment, by E. G. Conklin;
and many others, some of which are listed in the bibliography. These
deal much more adequately and authoritatively with the identification of
the children who fail in school. This chapter is included, however, because
it will be useful for students and teachers who may not have studied some
aspects of the problem in depth, and it may lead to further reading and
to more detailed knowledge. It provides, moreover, a clear establishment
of the areas with which the rest of the book is concerned.
One aspect stands out clearly as needing clarification for any
person who presumes to investigate problems of education for a
particular group of children. This is the question, "Who are
these children?"
The difficulties facing these children vary very much. Some
special schools are the only existing ones for educationally sub-
normal children in a county and they draw from a large area.
Sometimes children come from neighbouring authorities. Some
authorities have both day and residential schools, so that resi-
dential places can be reserved for children with severe problems
of deprivation, those living far from any special school suitable
for them, and those with other handicaps which increase their
3
4 AWAKENING THE SLOWER MIND
learning difficulties still further. The degree and nature of the
problems contributing to a child's situation vary markedly with
the area served by the school. For instance, the deprivation ap-
parent in a large industrial city differs in nature from that of a
farming area. There is a difference in the degree and kind of
problems encountered in residential and in day schools and fur-
ther variation in those found in special classes in schools for the
"ordinary child".
In order to clarify, I shall discuss these children in areas of
handicap which do, of course, overlap. It is necessary to deal with
some of the prominent areas more fully. This I have done after
establishing the main categories which my observations and
inquiries led me to believe existed.
The number of brain-damaged children varies considerably
from school to school. There are usually a few children in each
residential school with slight hemiplegia or damage involving
the function of the limbs. Severely physically handicapped child-
ren, seen, few in number, seem nevertheless to fit into the environ-
ment quite well. All of these were able to move about the school
without a wheel chair or to have ambulatory supports. There
are a few microcephalic children. Many more are minimally
brain damaged, having difficulties of co-ordination and of
learning, and having a history of birth injury, premature birth,
phenylketonuria, meningitis, or some pre-natal, peri-natal, or
post-natal damage affecting the brain. There are in most schools
one or two epileptic children, sometimes four or five. Usually
these children are having careful medical attention and are
under sedation which keeps their condition in check. Many are
only susceptible to minor seizures. Always there seems to be
great care taken and the situation is accepted calmly. There
appears to be considerable use of sedation to control this and
other conditions, and also to help the staff to deal with some of
the more severe emotional difficulties.
There is occasionally a child with a severe condition, having a
poor prognosis, such as the child with leukaemia or with muscular
dystrophy.
WHO ARE THE CHILDREN WHO FAIL? 5
Sometimes there are mongoloid children, always high-grade
mongols who appeared often to be among the most adjusted
children in the group. They have the physical difficulties asso-
ciated with their disability. Their sight is often poor, they are
usually heavily built and sometimes clumsy in movement, although
some are very rhythmically sensitive. They are backward in
varying degrees, but almost always friendly and happy and on the
whole well accepted by the rest in spite of the fact that they
looked different.
Always there are children with difficulties of sight and hearing.
In most areas very careful investigation is made by post-natal
and child welfare clinics and by school medical officers into
sight and hearing deficiencies, and in general it is now quite
difficult for such a defect to be overlooked for any length of time.
Nevertheless, this does still occur with resulting increased learning
problems.
In every school there are children with speech defects. There
is a strong link between educational subnormality and speech
difficulty.
It is a trend of the present day in this country for people to
become heavier, and the number of obese children is constantly
increasing. In one area, about 2 per cent of the children examined
in schools in a particular year were found to be overweight, the
sexes being evenly represented. These children were few in the
infant schools, but were more in junior schools and there was a
sharp rise at the secondary level, there being more obese children
in secondary modern schools than in grammar schools. The
medical officer reported that 79 per cent of the children who
attended the obesity clinic came from lower income groups.*
There are many such children among those we are considering.
Often they have poor circulations and are lethargic and inco-
ordinate. The most distressing factor is the embarrassment and
lack of confidence experienced by these children. The difficulties
are accentuated in the senior age groups, more obviously in
* Investigations made by the City of Leicester School Medical Services,
1962-64.