Intelligence and Amount of Vision

T EACH E RS employed in schools for the blind soon discover that every grade includes pupils of such varying abilities and conditions that few statements about a grade as a whole are true of all the individuals in the grade. Differences in the cause of blindness and in accompanying physical defects; differences in the age at which vision is lost and in the time at which instruction without the use of the eyes is begun; variations in pre-school education for those losing vision in babyhood and variations in speed of adjustment for loss of vision through accident or disease; differences in the amount of vision remaining and the differences in attitudes and behavior consequent upon this-all combine to make a school grade a very complex unit; while a whole school for the blind includes so many types of pupils that, in proportion to its size, it is perhaps one of our most heterogeneous groups of children. Various attempts have been made to shed light upon the status of the blind school population through special studies of selected groups. In The. Teachers Forum for May, 1934, the writer presented the available evidence concerning the effect upon school success of such factors as the cause of blindness, the age at incidence, the age at entrance to a school for the blind, and the sex of the pupils; on the effect of the degree of blindness he could only quote the general impression of teachers, and Pechstein's' conclusions from a study of grades in one school, that pupils with no useful vision tend