Laziness May Be Result of Mental Upset

Teachers and principals must realize that so called laziness and stupidity in school children are often "manifestations of fundamental mal-adjustments of the total child," Dr. Thaddeus P. Kursh, clinical director of the children's unit of the Metropolitan State Hospital, claimed Saturday.

He spoke in the Littauer Auditorium at the opening of the fifty-eighth conference of the Harvard Teachers Association, sponsored by the Graduate School of Education and the H.T.A.

Dr. Kursh spoke as a member of a panel discussing the role of specialists in learning problems. The panel, made up of a psychiatrist, a psychologist, a physician, an opthamologist, a reading counsellor, a principal, and a teacher, represented the first time such a group had appeared before a body of lay teachers.

Minor diseases of a mother during pregnancy, difficult birth, and an unsatisfactory first two days of life may lower a child's intelligence, said Dr. Theodore Ingalls, assistant professor of Epidemiology at the School of Public Health.

The conference will continue on Wednesday when the annual Inglis lecture is delivered.