If we think of man as an adaptive mechanism, constantly adapting to new and enthed situations, then it is clear that speech is one of the chiefest and most important means that man has of adapting himself. Speech with its modulations, symbolic wonda, and accompanying gestures is developed in response to certain needs in the life of the child. The development of the speech is bound up with the development of the intelligence. Some of the psychologists have claimed that thought is merely subvocal or silent speech. In arguing for the necessity for good speech I do not mean from the elocutionist standpoint, where technical perfection is sought. I mean merely speech that is free from obvious defects and that can be understood. The social value of such speech cannot be overestimated. Defects prevent individuals from taking their place among their fellows, The extent of the disorders of speech is astonishing. In a survey of approximately five thousand children of Madison below the high school, 5.69 per cent were found to be suffering from disorders of speech. Of this number .72 per cent were stutterers. J. E. W. Wallin, Director of the Psycho-Educational Clinic in St. Louis, found that out of 89,057 pupils 2.8 per cent had some disorders of speech. Wallin found .7 per cent stuttered. Conradi investigated six cities and found .87 per cent of stutterers. The average percentage of stuttering from many surveys in this country and abroad is approximately 9 per cent. Miss Pauline Camp, in a personal survey of 9387 children below high school in Grand Rapids, Michigan, found that 2.64 per cent stuttered and that a total of 13 per cent showed speech disorders. It is usually claimed that most of the children who have disorders of speech overcome them. In order to determine the number who reach eighteen years of age retaining their defect, a personal examination was made of 1400 members of the Freshman class at the University of Wisconsin. On this basis the 2240 members of the whole Freshman class were computed to have 409 speech defects. One hundred twenty-five stuttered; 33 had foreign accent acquired outside of America; 29 had oral inactivity; 103 could not pronounce the letter s or 2; 18 spoke abnormally rapidly or slowly; and 101 had severe vocal defects, such as weak, chronically hoarse, husky, or nasal voices. In all, 409, or 18.13 per cent, were found to be unable to meet the necessities of English speech. I should like to add that the examiners were most lenient in their judgment. It will be seen from these figures that speech disorders are not outgrown in any great degree, and in the case of stutterers even though the speech defect disappears, there remains the defect in the emotions, an undue sensitive feeling of inferiority, which interferes with the progress of the individual. these stuttering cases had very slight defect, but they felt that they ha difficulty and maintained that it was a great handicap for them because they knew when they were going to have trouble with a word, and meeting people constant strain on them. DELAYED SPEECH A not inconsiderable number of children come to kinder have not developed speech. Most of these cases are due to ment and each case should have a careful examination to de: A certain number of these cases are due to faulty attitude ol trade who velop el. As was said, speech develops in response to certain needs. In some neurotic children, unless the need for speech is very definite, speech does not develop. ORAL INACTIVITY The second type of speech disorder we have called oral inactivity. It is characterized by a lack of co-ordination of the active elements of articulation, the tongue, soft palate, lips, throat, and jaw. There are several types of this, both from the descriptive viewpoint and from the causative factors. It has been our experience that where the tongue lies more or less inactive on the floor of the mouth, there is likely to be a history of endocrin disorder in the family, of food deficiency of certain of the vitamine-bearing foods, and of temperaments more or less erratic, timid, and egoistic. In those cases where the inactivity is decidedly in the jaw and lips, the trouble is usually purely emotional and the temperament excessively timid and inclined to be seclusive and introspective. LETTER SUBSTITUTIONS The third type of disorder is called letter substitution. This includes lisping, which is usually the substitution of the th and sh for s; and lalling, which is the substitution of l and w for the consonant r. As these two groups do not include all the noticed substitutions, the one name is given to the entire group and it includes such previously unnoted substitutions as t for k, ig for ing, d for 1, etc. An interesting thing in connection with this group is the fact that these cases do not remain constant in all cases. For instance one child substitutes k for 1. and in some positions t for k. Only rarely is the case found in which the letter-sound or combination of letter-sounds cannot be made under some conditions. Only in a case where a single letter was uniformly mismade would we be justified in even suspecting the fault to lie in the organic structure, and only then if similar sounds, using related muscle groups, were mismade in a like manner. To illustrate: the tongue position for the letter s and the letter z are the same; a large number of those who mismake the letter s make the letter with ease, although the only added element is vocalization. What, then, would be gained by the changing of the organic structure of the mouth by the application of braces, or of operative procedure? The difficulty obviously lies (1) in the intelligence necessary for, or the opportunity for, the learning of the position of the letters in the words, or (2) in the emotional inability to adjust to the necessity of accurate speech. In a case of letter substitution in which the child had been reared in a family where such bstitution was constantly present, the lack of opportunity for learning might But it must be borne ind that these people are constantly com nds and that infantile speech is a present in an individ the emotional life. We feel that there is some lack of balance in the motor control of all these cases, but the most important thing is the temperamental lack of ability to make the necessary emotional adjustments to life and the use of speech as a symbol of all the human relationships. In other words, the fear from which the stutterer suffers is not a fear of speech, but a fear of meeting situations in life, and speech is the accepted field for such a symbolization, because poor speech closes the necessary avenue of approach to life and offers an excuse for failure which would otherwise be lacking. A case which illustrates this is that of a young man of good intelligence and excellent personality who gives the following history. He was the youngest of a family of six children. On the death of the father the oldest brother came to the head of the family and was constantly pointed out by the mother for his successes and perfections. In this family the standard for scholarship, for personal relationships, for order, and for social success was very high. The patient was somewhat different from the others in temperament and ability, but was held to the same standards. He was late in talking; the fifth year when he began to talk, he also began to stutter badly. This stutter was his all-powerful excuse for his failure in family standing. Away from the family, and the comparison with its other members, he has only a little trouble with his speech until some difficult situation arises, and then the condition becomes bad again. In this way he has lived the life of a refined nomad, wandering from situation to situation and from school to school. It is maintained by some workers in the field that the mental condition and the emotional conditions are the result of, and not the cause of, stuttering. It would be true, of course, that the difficulty would carry with it a large amount of unpleasant emotional tone, but it is a significant fact that the families of these people show the same temperaments, the same social disabilities, to a somewhat greater extent than do the families of non-handicapped children. When you consider that in this country two hundred thousand children of school age stutter or stammer and that, including delayed speech, oral inactivity, letter substitution, and the most severe vocal defects, there are probably half a million, something of the enormity of the lost opportunity and wasted material becomes apparent. That this enormous problem can be handled successfully in a way that considers its functional and especially its emotional element, has been demonstrated in such cities as Grand Rapids, where the approach to the cases is made almost wholly with a view to adjusting the individual to his environment. Teachers and social workers undertaking this work should know more than the anatomy and physiology of the articulative organs. They should be familiar with the mechanism of hysteria, of the faulty balance and the emotionalism of the neurotic, of the earliest beginnings of aboulia, of negativism, of introversion, as well as the lesser train of timidities, and insecurities, and evera:tachments. Speech correction offers the best method of approach to mental hygiene in the schools. As yet our boards are too hard-pressed for money and time to take over the problem as one of a typical behavior. They do see more and more the pressing problem of “auity speech, and the organizations for the correctio well include the incidental care of other children in whom beh.. not average and in this way the entering wedge for the introduc in the schools of the country be made. The teachers who do the speech corrective work should have, besides a knowledge of the physiology of the organs of speech, a knowledge of speech drill, and a thorough training in behavioristic psychology and the psychology of the emotions. They should know the part speech plays in the development of the emotions and how poorly controlled emotions may develop wrong types of speech. Moreover, they must be trained to understand some of the mental mechanisms that control behavior, such as feelings of inferiority and its compensations in over-boldness and over-talkativeness, and be able to analyze and treat these conditions. Teachers so trained can do mental hygiene work of the highest type for they deal with the child who has great possibilities and who, if given help at the right time, may become a conspicuous success. DIVISION IX-ORGANIZATION OF SOCIAL FO THE BOARD MEMBER-WHAT IS HE? WHAT ARE HIS RESP Financial and Other Purposes, etc., Buffalo P $9 h pr in th fo Can anything new be said at this time on a subject so old and so much in as the one assigned to me-"The Board Member"? I venture to translate its s into briefer form-"Who is he? What is he? What ought he to be?" The le is as old as human nature and human history. It must have been a live questi t since men left their primitive condition of solitary existence and began to get to fo in groups for co-operative action. At once the questions must have arisen-Hea shall be the groups and how shall they be selected? What shall be their fun a and how shall they be made to function properly, or even to function at all? shall be their relations to the individual or few individuals who necessarily leaders, must have authority as executives, and must perform duties as administr And finally-the everlasting question-how shall good intentions be translate deeds and kept up to standards of steadfast action? Two new facts have grown up in recent years bearing on the problems here sented, which differentiate our case today, as officers and directors, from that ef years ago. One is that our chambers of commerce and other such bodies, in orga for the protection of their members and undertaking the investigation of appe funds from charitable and social welfare societies, have generally laid down a r substance, that "the charity seeking endorsement must have responsible and s factory local management," often adding the requirement that its administrative mittee must meet at least with reasonable frequency, say four times a year. substantially quoted from the requirements of the Buffalo Chamber of Comme A similar rule, sometimes more rigid, is made by financial federations in our cities—in Buffalo again, our federation requires that "Associates must meet the of economy and good management, and have a proper accounting system." makes it necessary to have boards of managers, which must at least create the app ance of efficiency. 1 or to spe cab But, on the other hand, our financial federations in taking on themselves burden of raising money for charitable and welfare societies, have deprived their bo of directors and governing committees of what was formerly their main functi They no longer have to struggle with deficits as an ordinary condition, their time at meetings in solving problems of finance-how the money required raised, and how little the executive officers can get along with. These problems are supposed to be settled once a year, when a budget carefully prepared and based statistics of the past, and a businesslike analysis of future needs, is presented to proper committee of the financial federation; and the money is then raised by a syste 406 |