Henry Street Settlement (New York, N.Y.); Poor -- New York (State) -- New York
The Board of Education permitted her to form the first class for ungraded
pupils, in School Number 1, in 1900, and the settlement gladly helped
develop her theory of separate classes and special instruction for the
defectives, not alone for their sakes, but to relieve the normal classes
which their presence retarded. We provided equipment not yet on the
School Board’s requisition list, obtained permission for her to attend
children’s clinics, secured treatment for the children, and, finally, and
not least important, made every effort to interest members of the School
Board and the public generally in this class of children.
[Illustration]
The plan included the provision of a luncheon. For this we purchased
tables, paper napkins, and dishes. The children brought from home bread
and butter, and a penny for a glass of milk, and an alert principal made
practical the cooking lessons given to the older girls in the school by
having them prepare the main dish of the pupils’ luncheon—incidentally
the first to be provided in the grade schools. Occasionally the approval
of the families would be expressed in extra donations, and in the
beginning this sometimes took the form of a bottle of beer. Every day
one pupil was permitted to invite an adult member of his family to the
luncheon, which led naturally to an exchange of visits between members of
the family and the teacher.
Among the pupils in this first class was Tony, a Neapolitan, impossible
in the grade class because of emotional outbursts called “bad temper,”
and an incorrigible truant. When defects of vision were corrected the
outbursts became less frequent, and manual work disclosed a latent power
of application and stimulated a willingness to attend school. Tony is now
a bricklayer, a member of the union in good standing, and last spring he
and his father bought a house in Brooklyn.
[Illustration]
Another was Katie. Spinal meningitis when she was very young had left
her with imperfect mental powers. Careful examination disclosed impaired
control, particularly of the groups of smaller muscles. She has never
learned to read, but has developed skill in clay-modeling, and sews and
embroiders very well. She makes her clothes and is a cheerful helper
to her mother in the work about the house. Last Christmas she sent to
the school warm undergarments which she had made, to be given to the
children who needed them. Her intelligent father feels that but for the
discriminating instruction in the ungraded class her powers would have
progressively deteriorated and Katie “would be in darkness.”
The teacher who thus first fixed our attention upon these defective
children has long been a member of the settlement family. She has carried
us with her in her zeal for them, and we have come to see that it is
because the public conscience has been sluggish that means and methods
have not been more speedily devised toward an intelligent solution of
this serious social problem.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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