The comparison of the Binet and school tests for our group of serious
delinquents suggests another important comparison. Many delinquents are
found to be apparently wrongly placed in school relative to their
intellectual development. They form a group for which not isolation but
training is needed, a group notably larger than that which should be
sent to institutions for the feeble-minded. This bad adjustment of
juvenile delinquents to their school work is not the same problem as
backwardness in school. It means attendance in school classes unsuited
to the child's mental ability. In a paper before the Minnesota Annual
Conference of Charities and Corrections in 1910, I briefly forecasted
this problem (_152_). It is now clearly indicated by the records of the
group of delinquents at the Glen Lake Farm Training School. This
comparison is made in Table XVI.
TABLE XVI.
SCHOOL POSITIONS OF DELINQUENTS AT GLEN LAKE RELATIVE TO THEIR
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
────────────────────┬─────────────┬───────────────────────────┬──────
School position │ Alike[32] │ Better │Total
worse │ │ │
──────┬──────┬──────┼──────┬──────┼──────┬──────┬──────┬──────┼──────
3 yr. │2 yr. │1 yr. │ │ │1 yr. │2 yr. │3 yr. │4 yr. │
──────┼──────┼──────┼──────┼──────┼──────┼──────┼──────┼──────┼──────
1 │ 8 │ 21 │ 21 │ 29 │ 16 │ 4 │ 2 │ 2 │ 104
──────┴──────┴──────┴──────┴──────┴──────┴──────┴──────┴──────┴──────
In order to be thoroughly conservative in estimating this problem of
maladjustment to school work, let us not only allow for two mental ages
to be satisfactory for each grade, as indicated in the table, but in
addition omit all cases which might be credited with an intellectual
development above XII. This eliminates the objection to considering
higher age tests, for nobody questions that tests XII or above indicate
at least a 12-year-old intellect. After these extremely liberal
allowances we still find 54 of the 104 boys in the detention home
testing less than XIII who were in school grades the work of which was
presumably not suited to their intellectual level. Seventeen of the boys
(16%) were at least two years out of adjustment to their school work. If
we disregard those who were trying to carry work too difficult for their
capacity because placed a year or more ahead of their ability, we find
30 out of adjustment because at least one grade behind the class suited
to their intellects. Over a quarter of our detention-home group was thus
placed in school a year or more below grades attended by the pupils of
corresponding intellectual development. It may be said that some of
those behind their proper intellectual position in school may have been
kept back because of instability, laziness, or other volitional
characteristics which might fail to show in tests of intellectual
performance. This is probably rare, and, when found, it often means
merely that the pupil requires more attention to secure results.
That our delinquents are not unique in their maladjustment to school as
judged by their tested abilities, is indicated by the report of Ordahl
on the school position of the special group of 341 delinquents in the
state school at St. Charles, California. The median of their school
positions, counting seven years as satisfactory for the first grade,
fell a grade and a half below that which their tested mental development
seemed to justify. He notes that “mentality is not alone responsible”
for their low grades in school. Moreover, he believes that it shows the
necessity for a more objective pedagogical method in dealing with them
(_41_, p. 81).
Only a prolonged trial of special instruction for those presumably
behind their proper grade would finally determine how large is this evil
of maladjustment. Such an experiment could be satisfactorily carried out
only with the co-operation of the board of education. It would mean the
employment for some years of expert teachers to train those delinquents
found behind their intellectual level in school. Until that time we
shall have to take the estimate from psychological tests which indicated
that, in our group of serious juvenile delinquents, presumably 29% of
those compared had been held back by the school machinery. Since the
retardation of these pupils may be attributed to a late start in school
life or prolonged absence, the inadequacy of the schools so far as these
pupils are concerned may be supposed to lie in their failure to promote
pupils quickly up to the school position of their equals. On account of
the expense of special teachers such pupils presumably could not be
given a chance to make up the school subjects which they had missed and
could not be advanced to the grades requiring this knowledge. Whenever
this is the case or under any circumstances which keep the pupil behind
the school class of his intellectual equals, we have a fundamental cause
of distaste for school work. No wonder that such pupils dislike school,
become disgruntled and stubborn, run away and rebel at the treatment
they receive under the traditional school system. One can hardly blame a
self-respecting boy, forced to remain behind his peers, for breaking
away from the lock step, playing truant and seeking his education in the
streets.
The trouble is not with the school authorities alone. They are doing
about as well as can be expected with the funds which the people have
been willing to provide. The public must be educated up to the
recognition of the fact that every child in the school should be allowed
to progress as rapidly as his abilities permit. The public schools of
Mannheim, Germany, are the great illustration of what can be done to
bring the school instruction close to the varying degrees of capacity
among the pupils. In the Mannheim schools children may carry from four
to eight years of the regular curriculum in eight years, and the
brighter pupils may also take additional subjects. The Industrial School
in Cleveland has demonstrated that some 14-year-old boys two years
backward in school may, with special help, be successfully prepared for
high school with about as much likelihood that they will continue the
high school course as the ordinary boys (_107_).
It is self-evident that a boy with ability to carry a higher grade of
work cannot ordinarily be allowed to skip one or two classes without
special instruction and be expected to succeed with studies which
require preliminaries that he has had no opportunity to learn. The
necessary knowledge and sufficient skill in particular habits of thought
needed could probably be acquired in a brief time under the right sort
of special instruction. It is not sufficient that special classes for
pupils mentally backward should be provided in the schools. They will
not take care of this problem, which has to do mainly with pupils
intellectually capable of carrying the work of a higher grade than that
in which they are placed. These children can now be found by means of
mental tests and they should be assisted in making up the intermediate
work by collecting them into redemption groups, so to speak, where they
can have individual instruction. In the public schools of Faribault,
Minnesota, the plan of thus picking out older minds in a class and
promoting them one or two grades with very little extra instruction has
been successfully tried in an experimental way.
If all of the children in a school system who are thus seriously out of
intellectual adjustment cannot be cared for, it is plain that the
children in danger of delinquency might well receive the first
attention, since the lack of adjustment with these may cause the most
serious social consequences. That the problem is more acute among the
serious offenders in juvenile court than among school children generally
is indicated by a comparison with Goddard's figures for school children
generally in a typical community tested with the same scale. If we
select from his tables only that group of mental ages which could
actually be in a class ahead or behind their mental development, we find
that only 20% of this group would be outside the standard of 6 and 7
years in the first grade, etc., as compared with 52% of our detention
home group on the same basis. On the other hand Terman's records with
the Stanford scale (_193_) indicate 44% of ordinary children similarly
maladjusted to school. This condition should probably be regarded,
therefore, as a supplementary stimulus for delinquency rather than a
fundamental cause comparable with mental retardation.
While this lack of adjustment is undoubtedly the most pressing
_training_ problem connected with juvenile delinquency, we must not
expect that when it is solved we shall have eliminated the problem of
mental backwardness of delinquents as a class. The most that we could
expect from perfect adjustment of the school work to mental ability
would be that the average amount of school retardation for the group
would be materially reduced. How much retardation in school relative to
the life-ages would still remain, cannot be determined on account of the
uncertainty of the tests for older ages and the factor of volition. For
the mentally deficient pupils still remaining behind the regular pupils
it is necessary to provide other special classes. In these classes or
schools the feeble-minded children would remain for their entire school
course.
That the correction of the lack of adjustment is a much more agreeable
and hopeful task than the care for deficients is shown by the facts
regarding the detention home group in Table IX. There is at least the
possibility that 10 of the school laggards in this group of serious
delinquents might be brought up to a satisfactory grade. Discount this
prospect as you may, it is still to be compared with the fact that no
actually feeble-minded boy can ever, by special instruction, be brought
up to a satisfactory school grade. Moreover, we might expect that 30 of
the 84 laggards might, by special help, catch up one or more grades.
That the correction of lack of school adjustment is a bigger problem in
connection with juvenile delinquency than the detection and isolation of
the mentally unfit can only be said in relation to the numbers affected.
Taking the lowest estimate of those in the detention home group out of
adjustment with their school environment it was at least 30, while only
9 of that group fell below the borderline of passable intellects and
only 2 were surely feeble-minded. If one guessed as we have on the basis
of school position that a maximum 6% of the ordinary juvenile
delinquents in Minneapolis might be feeble-minded, who would venture to
guess that ill-adjustment of school to mental ability affects so small a
proportion? On the other hand one feeble-minded person, through the
transmission of his deficiency, may, perhaps, do more damage to society
than many intelligent delinquents. Who shall say? Certainly both the
isolation of the feeble-minded and the adjustment of school training are
vitally important problems in the care of juvenile delinquents today.
Nobody can say that one is more important than the other except from a
special point of view. From the eugenics standpoint feeble-mindedness is
more important; from the point of view of the numbers affected and the
skill required for training the child, there can be little question but
that the correction of bad adjustment to school environment is the
bigger problem. When one considers how much of the child's time is spent
out of school, at home, with playfellows, or at work we cannot be sure
that other external influences might not ultimately be found to be more
important in connection with juvenile delinquency than either the school
life or mental incapacity. The further consideration of the causes of
delinquency we shall now make the subject of a broader inquiry.
-----
Footnote 32:
Mental ages VI and VII regarded as satisfactory for the first grade,
etc.