Effective Education for the Mentally Retarded Child. What to Teach, How to Teach, and Why: By Luma Louis Kolburne. New York: Vantage Press, Inc., 1965. 276 pp.

Kolburne, an educator with a wealth of experience in mental retardation, has written an oversimplified basic guide to principles and practices which beginning teachers may find of some use if they are also instructed in more advanced findings and methodologies. The statement that mental retardation impairs intellectual growth confuses label and cause. Kolburne fails to use the official system of classification of the American Association on Mental Deficiency (1961), and a number of his references are outmoded.

The author's expressions and conceptualizations are often naïve; he explains, for example, that a child with an intelligence quotient of fifty has 'half of normal intelligence'. Some characteristics of the retardate, described as permanent and fixed, would be regarded from a more dynamic point of view as behavioral qualities changing under varying circumstances. Phrases such as 'intractable, nervous boy', 'distractible, emotional, uncooperative girl' are typical of Kolburne's unsophisticated approach to psychopathology. A short chapter on 'mental hygiene and psychotherapy' emphasizes