Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 78.djvu/295

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THE CONSULTING PSYCHOLOGIST
285

(2) education, (3) technical arts, crafts and professions, and (4) eugenics. This classification is not all-inclusive nor are the divisions mutually exclusive, but some such divisions may be helpful in blazing the trail.

The first division embraces all institutions for those who deviate from the normal condition of mind; such as insane asylums, schools for the sensory defective, institutions for moral delinquents, homes for the feeble-minded, epileptic colonies, the provision for the abnormally retarded and mentally defective in the public schools, and special schools, clinics, foundations, laboratories or retreats for the study and treatment of mental deviation. As the physician is at present more in demand for the curing of disease than for preventive measures, so the psychologist's first mission will be to the mentally suffering. The alienist will share his duties with the consulting psychologist; the superintendent of the charitable institutions will be guided by his advice to a large extent in organization and management of institutions; the segregation of mentally defective pupils in the public schools will be under his supervision; and, in the special institutions for the investigation of mental troubles the psychologist will, of course, be the central figure.

The second division embraces the vast field of applied psychology in the organization and administration of the education of normal individuals. This does not refer to the work of the professor of educational psychology, nor to the psychologically trained superintendents, principals or teachers, but to the experts who are available for consultation work only. The consulting psychologist will be found in the research laboratory of educational psychology, in the research laboratory of other educational agencies, in the office of the city board of education (or in the superintendent's office), in the office of the state superintendent of public instruction, and in the national bureau of education. We have recently heard the assertion that the railroads of a certain section of the country could save a million dollars a day by scientific management; but it would be less hazardous to say that the patrons of the public school system of the country could save a million dollars a day by the introduction of psychologically scientific management of instruction. The principle is the same, and the one measure is as tangible as the other; neither has been solved and neither is the task of a day; both are progressive measures. The first thing essential is that the administration shall have faith in the aim and effort of the expert; and second, that the expert shall be willing and able to make good. Both are in sight. If the money now paid to authors of children's first books in reading were paid to a group of experts for a dozen years some fundamental principles of mental economy in learning to read might be worked out so as to be of permanent guiding value to authors and teachers of primary