Education: Subnormal Poetry

Modern teachers believe that dull children are worth cultivating, have shown that with proper encouragement a sub-par child may produce remarkable paintings, sculpture, craftsmanship. They have been less successful in teaching such children to read and write.

Leon Ormond, a teacher in the Arts High School of Newark, N. J., has two classes of children with I. Q.s of 80 or less. Their reading is poor, their spelling worse. But Teacher Ormond encouraged them to write verses. Last week he triumphantly reported that near-morons can write. To prove it he published uncorrected samples of their poetry in The Clearing House, an educational magazine. Sample:

I saw the clouds last nihgt in the sky,

Paked close together like people on a street,

Looking about for something yet nothing

At all. Waiting and wating for something

Yet nothing at all. Then all of a suddin

The rain came down, huge bukets

Of water poring thier strenght on all

The world. How like you and I

They are, these clouds in god’s great sky—

Seamingly not knowing what to do and

Then of a suddin making the desision.

Poring out all strengthe that life may be better;

But sometimes distroying the good they have done before.

Mr. Ormond concluded that a dull child may be “every bit as imaginative” as a brighter one, has certain advantages as a poet: 1) because he has read less, his poetry is innocent of cliches; 2) because his reactions are more primitive (“He is more apt to be a jitterbug”), his poetry has rhythm.