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In conclusion it may be said that a 'program' without capability of measurement of its effect may really be nothing but an 'activity'. Enough of such unmeasureable 'programs' and we have nothing but a pile of 'activity' jackstraws, not really planned to train or help the patient.

Plainly, too much of 'training' effort in our type of institution is hopeful guesswork rather than scientifically determined."

That a superintendent comes out in a newsletter directed at the volunteers working at his institution and instead of just saying "come in, more and more of you", suggests that we must take stock whether we are fooling ourselves, whether we are simply carrying on activities without really knowing what we are doing, is certainly a very reassuring and very hopeful thing.

May I now address myself to an entirely different problem of semantics and one which perhaps is the most important one facing us at present. The NARC Board of Directors has just passed the following Resolution:

Whereas at the 54th Annual Meeting of the Governors' Conference in Hershey, Pennsylvania, on July 2, 1962, a Resolution was adopted, calling for the development in each State of a comprehensive master plan for coping with mental disability and promoting mental health; And whereas this Resolution lists mental retardation merely as a "condition related to mental illness" alongside of alcoholism, drug addiction and delinquency; And whereas such choice of words harks back to the days when in terms of patient care, food, clothing and personnel institutions for the mentally retarded received less attention and lower budgets as compared with institutions for the mentally ill; And whereas the President of the United States has in several statements pointed to mental retardation as a major national problem which far too long has been neglected; Now therefore the Board of the National Association for Retarded Children assembled at Chicago, Illinois, the 17th day of October, 1962, strongly urges the Governors of the several States to give separate, adequate, and appropriate emphasis to the problem of mental retardation alongside of but not subsidiary to the problem of mental illness.

Unfortunately, there is not time to document for you today in detail this very serious problem. I do have before me here document after document from official sources in the Federal Government and from official communiques of the American Psychiatric Association and from the leading handbook of psychiatry indicating that this underplaying or sidestepping of mental retardation is a problem which has slowly been generating. As a matter of fact, in some States, as for example California, we have reached a point of complete confusion because there it is specifically stipulated that mental illness includes mental retardation, yet in daily practice this is quite forgotten, as are so often the mentally retarded themselves.

What I am worried about at the moment, ladies and gentlemen, is not just a little purity of language, a little semantic "jag". What I am worried about is the following: We are going to have as a result of the President's Panel on Mental Retardation undoubtedly a good bit of new Federal activity. Now I know that some of you may say that you have this all taken care of in your State because your institution is under the Board of Education, or your institutions are in the Department of Public Health, or you have some other, separate, different set up. But this is not a sufficient safeguard because Federal monies will be made available from Washington with rules and regulations emanating from Washington. And if you would like to hear a negatively inspirational talk on the effects of ill prepared restrictive instructions, for instance on the program of community mental health services, I would quickly relinquish this rostrum to Jerry Weingold or to an appropriate person from California who could point up by chapter and verse and, more importantly, by dollars and cents, what deplorable discrimination against the mentally retarded has resulted from this confusion.

Now may I clear up one point. We are not on the warpath with the National Association for Mental Health. To the contrary, we never had a better, more active and more constructive relationship with the National Association for Mental Health, never a more clearly formulated liaison. We are partners with them. We are partners with the Council for Exceptional Children. We are partners with the National Rehabilitation Association. We are partners with the American Academy of Pediatrics and to some extent now even with the American Medical Association. In other words, we are partners with any and all national organizations which impinge on our field and wherever we impinge on their field. But we are at odds with federal and state pronouncements and policies, with textbooks and professional associations to the extent that they express terminology and definitions which do not soundly represent present day knowledge of mental retardation.