Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Education and Mental Culture. Introd. by P. E. Lindström - 1. Elementary Education. By J. M. Ambrosius - Institution for the Training of the Mentally Defective. By A. Petrén
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institutions for the training of the mentally defective.
373
t.ions moreover, have "manual work" homes departments (arbetshemavdelning)
intended for those pupils that have finished their school course, but for whom the
protection and guidance afforded by the institution are still needful to keep
them from falling off intellectually and morally after leaving school. There
are also a few independent "work homes". The full number received into all
these working homes departments was at the beginning of 1914 440.
The schools are divided into a probationary department and an actual school
department. There is now no fixed limit set to the time during which pupils may
continue in the probationary department which in the larger establishments is
subdivided into two (really into three) classes according to the intellectual
attainments of the children. In the actual school department in which the number
of classes varies between one and six, according to the size of the schools, the
subjects of instruction are the same as at the elementary schools, viz. Pleading,
Writing, Religion, Swedish History and Geography, Nature knowledge,
Arithmetic, Drawing, Singing, Gymnastics, generally 3 hours a day, while the pupils
are instructed kinds of needlework for 2 to 2 1/2 hours a day, usually in the
afternoon, in various such as Crochet, Sewing, Weaving, etc., the boys also in
Woodcarving and Brush-making, Shoemaking etc. One endeavours, however, to
accommodate the teaching as far as practicable, to the individual requirements of
the different pupils, in such wise that pupils who fail in the theoretical side of the
teaching, but are able more or less to avail themselves of the instruction in the
practical subjects, are principally employed on just those subjects. In the larger
institutions a special manual work section of the school (arbetsskoleavdelning) has
been organized for the benefit of these intellectually inferior, but yet teachable
pupils. Moreover, the older pupils are set to work at gardening during the
summer holidays, and, where the institutions have a farm attached to them,
they are permitted and encouraged to take part in the farm work. As
experience has shown that the boys usually take more kindly to this work out-of-doors
and in the farm-buildings, finding it less monotonous than their 6rdinary school
tasks, and as, moreover, this kind of work has been found to promote the
development of abnormal children, these institutions have in several of the läns
been removed from town to country. Indeed as soon as the need was realised
of eking out these schools with manual work departments, their removal to the
country became a sine qua non, in as much as facilities for gardening and
farm-work are required in order to keep the boys employed, and well employed. As
to the girls, thay are put to sundry kinds of domestic work, but especially all
manner of feminine handiwork. Particular importance is attached to weaving:
it was in fact in Sweden that this subject, so well adapted to the mentally
defective, was first introduced as a subjcct of instruction, just as Sweden is
said to have been the first country where manual work in general was applied
to pedagogical purposes. In the institution for the mentally defective that are
also blind, weaving is the chief occupation for both the boys and the girls.
Most of the institutions for the training of the mentally defective are
superintended by women, and all instruction — with the exceptien of cobbling, and
in some of the institutions also wood sloyd, brush-making, and the like, — is
imparted by female teachers: this kind of work in fact, requires a great deal
of patience, a quality that women as a rule possess in a higher degree than
men. In order to supply a wellqualified teaching staff for the work, a training
college for this purpose was founded in 1878. This training college which is
attached to the chool belonging to the "Society for the Care of Mentally
Defective Children" (formerly situated in Stockholm, but now removed outside the
town), has at present accommodation for eight pupils, who pass through a two
years’ training course, both theoretical and practical. In aid of the maintenance
of the training college there is an annual State subsidy of 12 550 kronor.
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