[Experience with special classes for mildly brain-damaged children with behavior disorders]

Within the framework of a large-scale medical and pedagogical experiment conducted at Rostock, two special education classes for second graders were set up at the start of the 1965/66 school year in an attempt to prevent children with cerebral lesions from failing to pass courses already in the lower grades at elementary schools. As a result of this experiment, it was decided to start a school for special education children, and this school now has two parallel classes each for second, third, and fourth graders as well as one additional class in which pupils are prepared for the fifth normal education school grade. Psychological tests made as part of a longitudinal study in which 48 children who had been to this school from 1965, 1966, and 1967 were included and which spread over years including the 1971/72 school years, showed an improvement in motor development with slightly retarded intellectual development and unchanged lack of concentration power. Average attainments in the various subjects improved while pupils were attending special education classes and did not, after reintegration of such children into normal schools (fifth grade), drop below the general level of proficiency.