Volume 3, Issue 1, page 6

- ?eey :lave rip Worries.
But not even the most security minded
would envy my one of them.

The birthday party ends when Lissa spins
from table to table, picking up cake crumbs
ath the fingers of both hands -- hands which
dart to the crumbs like the pecking bills of
aungry birds -- and speed them, invisibly fast,
into her mouth.
4. BEGINNINGS OF TaAINING
Is it right to train the uneducable(
+ould they not be better off to spend all
their lives in their homes, trained no more
than to be, or in institutions of some sort?
Does it matter at all to the mongoloid, the
noron, the imbecile, whether a follows 3,
whether there is an i or a 3?
These questions are often asked, but never by anyone in close contact, even occasionally, with the uneducable. The questions come
to mind along with the unanswerable "Why?",
which can't explain the mongoloid in the first
place. Why is the mongoloid? Why was this one
born to me, or my friend, or my neighbor? why,
in any event, should I be in any way concerned?
However the mechanics of their conception, gestation, and birth, the Father gave
children into our hands for a number of reasons: that we should care for them, that they
should continue the race, that we should improve children beyond ourselves, that we should
learn about life, love, evolution through our
children, from the least of whom the universe
itself may be learned.

No one who has ever spent even a few minutes with the "trainable but uneducable" can
fail to feel the terrible struggle in that
human body to comprehend the "why" which everyone capable of awareness seeks to comprehend.

The women who teach the uneducable in the
House on Martha Avenue have answered the foregoing in the only way possible: the uneducable
cries out to be trained. He has a place somewhere in human evolution. We don't know what
it is, but for all we know, our failure to
train the uneducable will delay the progress
of the race.

There was a day in other lands when the
known unfinished were not suffered to live.
Sometimes, even today, even here, despairing
parents regret that their mongoloid survives.

Any mistreatment of the mongoloid, the
moron, the imbecile, the idiot is even more
reprehensible than mistreatment of the normal,
for the uneducable lacks the ability. to defend
himself, especially from those in whose immediate care he is. To mistreat or be indifferent to the uneducable child is to mistreat
and be indifferent to the Father.

Any mistreatment of the mongoloid, the
moron, the imbecile, the idiot is even more
reprehensible than mistreatment of the normal,
for the uneducable lacks the ability to defend
himself, especially from those in whose immediate care he is. To mistreat or be indifferent to the uneducable child is to mistreat
and be indifferent to the Father.
"Here is how we train them to speak, to
understand essential words," says the principal. "First, we form a kind of circle. I take
my place, so, here. Now, Billy, bring your
chair here.".

To the visitor, while Billy moves his
chair to the location indicated, the principal
says, "ale take care to move Billy to the same
place every time. Then Lora moves in beside
Billy, Georgie in beside Lora..."
The dozen or so children take their places. Some, perhaps, remember that they have
done this before. Some, perhaps, do what others do before them.
".latch my mouth," says the principal. She
emphasizes "mouth" both by tone, and by pointing at it. The children watch, or seem to,
but attention is never closely fixed, or for
much longer than a blink. If attention is
G T h n ii
fixed, it is a blank sort of fixing on the
part of some.
"Now watch my mouth," says the principal
again. In an :sine to the visitor, she says,
"Music is most important in training
these special ones. We'd be lost without it."
a teacher starts a phonograph. Teacher,
principal, and children sing together:
"When I was one year old..."
Principal and teacher lift the right
forefinger, pointing it upward, holding until
the children -- most of them -- also point their
forefingers, to indicate the age of one year.
"...I was so very small, like this!"
Teachers and children lean forward, down
to the floor, to indicate how small they all
were when they were one year old.
"But when I was ten years old..." the
teacher and principal intone, spreading both
hands, while children spread both hands to
mimic them.
"...I became so very tall, like this!"
Teacher, principal, and children stand,
to indicate height, bigness, at age ten.
"We hope they will grasp, however much
time it may take, the ideas of up and down,"
says the principal. "They may grasp the idea
of 'one', possibly of 'ten'. We have every
reason to hope. They stand, sit, move when
told, which is a gain if they can remember
when they go home. If we repeat enough, often
enough, they will remember -- or form some kind
of habit."
The visitor is taken to the basement,
where the older boys and girls -- chronologically
in their 'teens though their minds have not
aged appreciably -- are being trained. The
teacher precedes Herman downstairs, holding
his belt lest he fall. He's the epileptic who
must have opiates all day, regularly, to stave
off seizures.

Here is another phonograph, and a number
of rubber balls, as large as standard basketballs. The teacher just drops them on the
basement floor. A boy accidentally kicks one
of them into a second room.
"Bring the ball back," says the teacher.

The boy, already holding one ball, darts
after the rolling ball. As he stoops to pick
up the other ball, he finds himself with a
problem. He can't pick up that second ball
with one hand. His hand isn't large enough.
The ball is too large.

The boy scarcely touches the ball on the
floor before he realizes that he can't lift it
without dropping the ball he holds.

What then is the boy supposed to do? What
would a dog do, a horse, a monkey? The dog
would do nothing, nor would the horse. The
monkey would try to pick up the second ball,
and end by dropping both. Then, doubtless, the
monkey would jump up and down in rage, while
the balls rolled away.

The mongoloid boy spent split seconds on
his problem. He turned to a girl who followed
him. He thrust into her hands the ball he
carried. Then he lifted the floored ball with
both hands. The visitor, missing nothing,
looked at the teacher who had missed nothing
to find her face alight with pride.

How incomparably above the wisest animals, in that one problem solution, that mongoloid boy had proved himself to be, and had
proved the other "trainable but uneducable"
boys and girls to be!
To watch the mongoloids, the feeble-minded, at work, and the teachers working with
them is to be filled with hope. Some of these
children, an undetermined percentage of them,
are capable of performing routine, simple operations. Moreover, they try hard. They try
harder than the average normal. They concentrate more. It seems possible that they use
more of their unfinished brain in concentration than does the average normal, too bored
or too brain-lazy to try.
(To be continued in the May Issue.)
'11, ly5ID