and when it becomes injurious or pathological. This is well vetmet vy ence of the soldiers in the stress of continued warfare, Coningtry remA BY SE there came a time when the only thing one thought much when, ad que sy me. a supreme fear lest one might fail to do one's duty. But it

sublimated fear should be controlled by certain inhibiting stone. Inser the impulse to activity is as fundamental as fear itself. On this was add build the best protection against fear. Co-ordinated achty, goy.. the universal preventive,

The familiar psychology of association gives the proper you down, hygiene. If we make it our servant instead of our master, ie, faktakan masu inhibiting, distracting, and disintegrating emotions and

is the message of mental hygiene. In the mere contr

the significance of mental hygiene is shown in large letten Tramp

ing such inhibitions I need hardly emphasize to this sur la un ya have devised mental tests, standard scales, and the lies, na omenan sar measuring human intelligence, but we find alarmingly izse, zatque o u We do well, however, to make the most of what mental midly we samen

be done only by removing the inhibitions that letter ch think the ratasty

man and the great alike. The biologist Bateson even suggese between the ordinary man and the genius is not so muss

powers the former does not, but rather that the geass by Mats

from the inhibitions by which the ordinary man te has nippt.

I have used the case of fear as an illustration of tax recon akan $ character. In closing, then, if you will not scrubilaze 4, Gey, & you is const that you must not look a gift horse in the mouth, I will que in 'r'ase Eve in the garden of Eden were not afraid. They hyys, antes & de trag reacted normally to their environment, they were deti od masing it startg and completely self confident. Satan gave them the wife of winter them that if they ever thought of the hippopotame of lay with Thereafter, having the faculty of association, they south wet batay Content, th hippopotamus. Thus fear, like death, came why the with won lod as pe and, unless eliminated by proper mental training, it was was the warran rolled away as a scroll.

B. HOW MENTAL HYGIENE MAY HELD IN THE WALAKES O
SCHOOL PROBLEMS

Eleanor H. Johnson, Formerly Social Worker, Bureau of Ungraded Classes, Dregurman of

Education, New York Cu

education. But this is not the only meaning of mental hygiene; it is certainly not the meaning we want to emphasize when we connect the term with education.

Mental hygiene in the public schools should mean dealing with public-school children in such a way that their mental health shall be conserved, their complete normality of behavior shall be assured. This cannot be done in all cases for obvious reasons. The next step for mental hygiene, then, is to recognize these cases, to select those individuals whose behavior already diverges from the normal, and devise the best methods for their education and training. This broad definition of mental hygiene makes necessary the combined efforts of teacher, social worker, psychologist, and doctor in order that each child may reach the best development possible to him as an individual. Nothing can be done of permanent effect without the teacher, that is, without the action of the school organization. The social worker may visit homes and interview parents indefinitely, even making adjustments within the home, but if the knowledge which she gains of a child and his problems is not carried over into the school's estimate and educational treatment of him the work, so far as his individual adjustment goes, is nearly useless. The psychologist may fill pages with I. Q's and carefully evolved psychological descriptions of the scholar's educational capacities, but unless the teacher knows what it is all about and classwork can be affected by this knowledge, the psychologist might as well not spend the time. Unless the school understands in its own terms how the psychiatrist's discovery of complexes and hidden sources of emotional difficulties and abnormalities applies to a child's inability to attend to his work or conform to the necessary school regulations, the value of his study is reduced certainly one-half, if not more.

Please indulge me while I build castles in the air for a few minutes and picture the first days in a school where all social and health forces are working together through the school to bring about the best education for all the children. We must take for granted on the side of the school that the words curriculum and system have lost their awfulness and the supreme importance and interest attaching to them have been transferred to the children for whose benefit they were supposably-devised. But we still have large numbers and inadequate equipment and grades, for this is not the millennium, but only a partially constructed castle.

On a certain day in early September about fifty boys, most of them between and seven years old (this is a boys' school of about one thousand attendance) ma seen crowding through the wide, open doors of a large building with open spaces the sides, accompanied by a parent or older brother or sister. hall by a kindly and vigorous janitor who marshals them int people are writing at two tables and a pleasant-faced nurs boy's name, date of birth, and address is taken at one t to the nurse who takes groups of four to another room v and chairs with numbers on them. Off come the clothes, number, and most of them experience for the first time the joys Back to the chairs where towels are hanging and they help rus nurse giving directions. Then, each wrapped in his towel, the opening from this where the school doctor looks them over and he rapid notes. (I am not an expert on medical inst doctor should be reversed. I am sure they sh

While this has been going on the mother, or whoever came with the boy, has been interviewed at the second table in the big room and a few simple facts about the family have been ascertained, to be checked up and added to later when the home visits are made. All are then told to return in the afternoon. When they come back they go into a big schoolroom bright with plants and pictures, and furnished with small chairs and several long tables and with carpenter's benches and looms for weaving against the wall. Let us suppose that one of these boys is Rocco, a big-eyed Italian of six and a half, who came to this country when a baby. For the first time he has taken a real bath; for the first time he has been inside any house but the grimy tenement where he lives, the only slightly less grimy shops nearby, and the church whose real connection with the life around him his child mind has not yet grasped. Here are all the boys he has played with on the block. There is that sheeny, Max, who stole his balloon yesterday; this seems a chance to get even and Rocco makes for him. But fighting does not have quite its usual zest in this room whose beauty Rocco feels dimly, and while he is half-heartedly lifting his foot for a kick he is arrested by the sound of a bell and a pleasant but quite definite voice. "Boys,” it says, "I want you all to get chairs and sit down beside the tables. Don't hurry or push and you will find there is room enough for everybody." Of course many of them do hurry and push but the owner of the voice seems to be everywhere at once, helping and directing, and in a surprisingly short time they are seated, wondering what is to come next. "Now we are going to play some games with pencils. You will be told what to do and when to stop and the game is to see who gets the most right. If you do not begin when I tell you and stop when I tell you then the most important things will be wrong." And then Rocco draws a square and a triangle and does other things or mostly doesn't -and tries hard to follow the directions, forgetting the other boys in his eagerness to win the game. Then they march and put their chairs back in place at the same moment-or try to and Rocco learns that there is fun in all doing something together. The people in his house usually all do things separately.

are liv

:

The results of the afternoon's work are entered on a card, just as the morning's and mental hygiene has begun its work, not only in the rough classification It of the physical examination and group test, but also in Rocco's d cleanliness and in the first items on his environment card. able to come, she has been sickly a long time-some culosis; his father has a corner fruit stand; there -if there had been an older boy the history of them speaks much English. They me with the boy. When, therefore, es are added to Rocco's. "Pay ing he has time for-specially nutrition group." During is visited and the teacher the added information few pertinent facts co-operative; he Jabulary is much knesses both

the

physical and intellectual, have been considered from the first and his good points noted and developed. Even his antipathy for Max has been perceived and efforts made to counteract that.

This is not visionary. Good teachers now and there are many of them-take as much time and trouble as this, and more, but they have no help. No individual facts are put at their disposal. The principal or the district superintendent comes and tests the class and says, "You are behind in spelling or in number-work, give more drill," and then passes on. Physical examinations are given at irregular intervals and the teacher often does not get the benefit of the resulting knowledge. The family may be visited by various relief and health agencies but the school knows nothing about their estimates of its assets and liabilities. In this new school which I have been picturing the visiting teacher, social worker, or whatever she may be named, brings constantly to the school and to the teachers most interested, additional information about the boys as she acquires it from their homes, their chosen places of recreation, from clinics or relief agencies. The psychologist is constantly making individual or group studies and helping the principal to break up or to modify old classifications and the teacher to understand the vagaries of her arithmetic class. Different medical specialists are consulted and various conduct difficulties traced to their source. No additional staff except a visitor for each school is needed to bring all this about. The others must be available for the school, and the information they give must be stored in the school so that it may be translated into terms of school procedure by an enlightened principal. And the principals do not need to be particularly different or any abler than they are today. Many of them need a different ideal, and that this ideal may be defined and held before them the men and women at the heads of educational systems and training schools must see a vision.

And now let us leave the world of fancy and paint a picture of this school as it is today and show what can be done in spite of the tremendous handicaps of inadequate equipment, the wrongly directed activities of present-day education, and an unconnected social service.

This school is on the lower West Side of New York City in a region which has been noted for rowdyism and for a sordid poverty, the result often of shiftlessness and alcoholism. The building has recently been investigated by representatives of certain civic organizations which have been looking into the sanitary conditions of our schools, and this is what they say: "Public School No. 11, 314 West 17th St.-E 90 years ago this building is still in service. It has had no repairs for three yea is badly in need of them. It is dingy and dark, needing paint and general cle The sanitary equipment is old and in shocking condition. The lighting is only and the ventilation poor. The two restrooms for the teachers are very poorly equi and quite unfit for their purpose."

Needless to say it has no large, light rooms for its offices and no shower ba It also has no gymnasiums, no assembly room, and a most inadequate playground, ha worthy of the name. There are no welfare agencies and no facilities for health recreation in its neighborhood.

On taking over the school a new principal found the retardation so striking tha he asked for help in solving the problems it presented-the sort of help which should be easily available for every principal who wishes to study the make-up of his school, in other words to ascertain individual differences. The study was made from the point

of view of mental status, educational condition, and conduct difficulties. The school was found to be somewhat below the average in mental status, that is, the median of intelligence instead of being 100 as in the average school, was about 92. There was much overlapping of grades, a condition which has been found in many schools as shown by recent educational tests. About ninety boys, or almost 10 per cent of the average attendance of 997, were named by teachers and principal as giving special trouble in the classroom, and there were in addition to these about one hundred truants whose school conduct was pretty good but who were fairly apt to get into difficulties outside the school. To meet these conditions as they were presented by the group tests and the teachers' estimates, a certain amount of home-visiting was done and boys were referred to clinics and various welfare agencies; many individual intelligence tests were given on medical advice obtained, and on the basis of all the information collected the school was re-graded and a number of special classes formed for those boys who could not do the regular schoolwork in the way required by the curriculum. All this was possible without any special permission except for the organization of the classes, and that was obtained without much difficulty.

After the classes were organized those boys whose intelligence quotients showed special dullness and those who had had previous difficulty in passing from grade to grade were given simplified work and some shop-work, and were taught by teachers of special subjects, just as the higher grades were. In other words, instead of being marked out as boys who failed constantly and who were unable to compete with the better boys of the school, they progressed from grade to grade, they took honors, they were a definite and important part of the school. The significance of this for a better mental hygiene does not need to be pointed out.

At the same time the teachers almost automatically became more interested in the different boys who made up their class groups. There were constant calls for conferences about some particularly difficult case, and for individual tests so that they might know beyond doubt whether John really could not remember, or was inattentive for some undiscovered reason, or whether the teacher herself could present the subject in a different way. The attitude of the whole school seemed to change regarding promotions and the handling of the curriculum. I do not mean it was hopeless in particular cases, but understanding. If Jo could not learn fractions, then he could not-the teacher no longer agonized about the percentage she was going to promote and no longer blamed Jo for something she now knew was not his fault, but gave him something he could assimilate.

There have been certain tangible results of this new attitude toward the class and the pupil. To show this we must give some school statistics.

To show how much this population changed during the year:

Discharged during year (exclusive of graduates)..

Admitted during year....