The affectional side of the nature of a mental defective may be of
unusual strength and may find special objects of love among those
still more handicapped than itself. Those visiting intimately in such
School-homes may see a higher-grade imbecile caring for a lower-grade
with patience and devotion; they may see the competitive element in
training, reduced in levels for the accommodation of the slender
stock of mentality, producing on that lower level the same good
results that normal children gain from trying to imitate and to excel.
Small attainments are sources of pride in a class of defectives which
if exhibited among the normal would give bitter experience of
contrast. By making the standard of behavior and of attainment suited
to their little power, the delight of conquest over difficulties need
not be denied to the feeble-minded.
Hence, again, it is far from wise and often far from most loving to
keep the child who can never grow up in the company of those who
follow the usual path from infancy to maturity. This means, of course,
if this idea of the more general use of special homes for the
subnormal is to be carried out, a large increase in provision of such
homes. Such large increase is often opposed by short-sighted economy.
The expense of establishing and maintaining such homes in adequate
number and of scientific and humane provisions is counted over and
taxpayers made alarmed at the sum total. What is lacking usually in
the count is the sum total of the enormous sums society now pays out
for the unregulated and socially dangerous neglect of this class of
unfortunates. Doctor Goddard's "Kallikak Family" and many other
accurate showings of what it costs to leave uncared for one
feeble-minded girl in unbefriended freedom should convince any sane
person that the most wasteful extravagance any community can commit is
such neglect of what Mr. Johnson has called "the divine fragments" of
humanity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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