To be sure, this does not mean that all these children are intellectually deficient, for the term "retarded" is by no means synonymous with "dullards." Irregular attendance owing to illness or truancy accounts for not a little retardation. The education of a good many children is deliberately postponed by their parents, and as a result they are necessarily behind grade for some time after they enter school. In the case of many others, especially in cities like New York and Boston, where there is a large foreign-born population, ignorance of the English language is a sufficient cause for temporary retardation. Thus, I have received a letter from Doctor William H. Maxwell, superintendent of schools, New York City, in which he points out that many New York school children are recently arrived immigrants, coming from a foreign country, considerably above the age at which school-going usually begins. The personal inefficiency of teachers is also a factor to be reckoned with. Many a child becomes a "repeater" simply because he has had a poor teacher. Nevertheless, when every possible allowance is made, the results of the investigations by Doctor Ayres, Superintendent Cornman, and their co-workers sum up to a deplorable showing. It is a showing, however, with one distinctly redeeming feature. Readers of my previous book, "Psychology and Parenthood," will remember it was there pointed out that the proportion of juvenile delinquents who are "born bad," and for whom no remedial measures will avail, is exceedingly small. There is reason for saying precisely the same thing with regard to the retarded child. He may be dull, stupid, to all appearance hopelessly defective, but the researches of the past decade, the fruits of the mind-developing experiments that have gone apace with the discovery of the extent to which backwardness prevails, leave no doubt that in most cases the child who is a true dullard may be brought almost, if not fully, to normal intellectual activity, provided he is taken in hand at an early day. In fact, even the most pessimistically inclined investigators admit that, at an outside estimate, not more than 2 per cent. of backward children are backward because of incurable defects of the brain. Many present-day authorities put the figure as low as 1 per cent., and my own belief is that even this is too high a proportion.