There Was a Child Who...
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Date
1967
Authors
Smith, Bert Kruger
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Hogg Foundation for Mental Health
Abstract
Department
Description
If the title read, “There was a
child who had special needs,”
teachers would know that it referred
to every child they had ever
taught. “God tempers the wind to
the shorn lamb,” goes the saying.
Sensitive teachers know that each
child is “shorn” in some way.
Often teachers can judge what
lies behind a child’s misbehavior or
his failure to learn. Many are as insightful
as the one who, knowing
that some of her children were troubled,
asked them to write essays
concerning their own lives. The
greatest troublemaker in the class
wrote:
"I am a watermelon. I am lying on the
sidewalk. There is a crack in my side,
and the pink is running out. I cry
'Help! Help!' but nobody hears."