Hegge started his work on overcoming reading difficulties for the retarded in 1927 and continued it at WCTS in the background of, and concurrent to his main duty there, namely overcoming learning difficulties for the retarded in general. He drew graduate students from University of Michigan to help out as reading instructors for his research program, and delivered specialized reading instruction to 80 children at WCTS from 1929 to 1937, carefully documenting the outcomes. Dr. Hegge “attempted to make the study of teaching retarded persons more scientific, basing it on experimental studies of memory,” according to G.E. Müller.

          One of the significant residues of his work remains in the Hegge-Kirk-Kirk Remedial Reading Drills and Samuel A. Kirk's book, Teaching Reading to Slow-Learning Children (1940). Under his auspices, Cruikshank, Boyd McCandless, and Sidney Bijou also started research programs that were important to the early development of American Special Education. Hegge thus served as a godparent to this important component of applied psychology. ⁷⁶

          Samuel Kirk was one of the graduate assistants Hegge drew from University of Michigan for these studies, and that was his introduction to both the WCTS and to clinical work. Kirk would later become a prominent scientist in his own right. In 1935 Kirk and Dr. Newell Kephart began an experiment at WCTS called the “Homestead Cottage”—then a completely new ⁷⁷  and groundbreaking approach to maintaining discipline in the public institutional setting. ⁷⁸  Boys were allowed to govern their own cottage, without direct interference from adults. Setting up their own system of punishments and rewards, Homestead boys were allowed greater privileges than those of the general population. Boys had to show progress in the institution, and even submit an “application” in order to be admitted. Performing well while in Homestead could eventually lead to release from the institution. The Homestead was a great success and was kept in operation for decades. ⁷⁹

Superintendent's Home

          Superintendent Haskell liked to entertain experts from all over America and abroad. Such guests stayed at Dr. Haskell’s “mansion at the WCTS, which was provided to him at county taxpayer expense. From the many news articles that have mentioned conferences being held, and experts staying at the eight-bedroom “Haskell Hotel,” it would seem that there was a never-ending stream of interested parties making the trip out to see and learn about the operations at the school all through its first 25 years. In 1930, a noted Dr. S.R.S. Rao, one of India's leading medical doctors at the Madras General Hospital, came to spend a week at the WCTS, as guest of Dr. Haskell. At a banquet of the Northville Fathers and Sons, the superintendent stated,

          "Leading medical men from all parts of the United States and from other parts of the world are frequent visitors out to Maybury Sanatorium and the training school. Recently we have entertained visitors from Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Switzerland, the Royal Courts of Birmingham, and even South Africa, who have come here to see these Northville institutions and to study our systems in the treatment of diseases."" ⁸⁰

          Dr. Rao himself spoke at the dinner, and Haskell wondered aloud if “we who live in Northville know of the fame of the community throughout the world.”

          Partnerships were developed with Wayne University and University of Michigan, where psychology students could receive lab credit for internships at WCTS. Speech correction advances were also made by University of Michigan’s Department of Biolinguistics; in 1936 a WCTS intern designed an apparatus “to measure and develop sucking musculature…fundamental to speech activity and which, theoretically is weak among speech defectives.” It received favorable comment from others in the field. ⁸¹  Dr. Haskell stated in his 1937 Annual Report that arrangements were being made to make WCTS one of Wayne’s “affiliated non-degree-granting institutions.” Haskell himself held a course in institutional administration for University of Michigan, and mentioned that WCTS had contact with Detroit’s Marygrove College, Eastern Michigan, and Michigan State University as well. ⁸²  All these affiliations served to further cement the WCTS’s reputation as the premier training ground for future researchers in the expanding field of studying mental deficiency.