It was really the war, or rather the carnage at the very end, that put George Glover on the road to teaching sub-normal children.
Originally, he had intended studying physics, but the bomb at Hiroshima ended that dream. He suddenlty realised that he wanted to help people less fortunate than himself. "After VJ Day," he said "it was a desire to put something back into this big pot. We had taken somuch out."
so when he was discharged with the rank of Major, he opted to go to teacher training college, where he specialised in the problems of backward children and the educationally sub-normal. He studied psychology, and eventually became an Associate Member of the British Psychological Society.
Teachers of his calibre were at a premium and he had no difficulty getting a post Salford where he lived. Soon his remarkable ability to get through to educationally sub-normal children was being noticed and within a few years he was given a headmastership. Many of his methods were unorthodox and shocked the purists, but he got results. Something that was to become evident in his dealings with Ann.
The first time he saw her, it was obvious to him that she was severly disturbed. But even then he could detct the difference between her condition and that of the maladjusted children he had been dealing with. On the whole they were always seeking attention, yet disobedient. They were extremely dull. One learned to detect that type of chilld by sight. Ann was something different. She had a strangelook in her eyes. It was wild, not vacant.
While he was talking to Jack and Ivy he was noting all the time the things that she did. For example: she was taking a great deal of interest in his desk. She examined its legs, and underneath it. She played with a vase of flowers on top.
George Glover realised at that moment that to have refused to take the child into his school and deny her the chance her parents craved would have beeen the worst thing he could have done. He said many years later that it would also have been the worst mistake of his career.
As he looked at the chld that day he was sure that he knew what was wrong with her, but he didn't voice an opinion. He wouldn't, until he was certain. But the way she acted and reacted to things was distinctive. He had seen it before in another child. Of that he was sure.
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