Extra-curricular Activities and Scholarship: PAUL P. BOYD. 158 British Montessori Centers; Psychological Tests at Co- Educational Notes and News Discussion and Correspondence: Fellowship in Art: R. M. HUGHES. The Employment of 166 169 173 175 176 Entered as second-class matter January 2, 1915, at the Post Office at Lancaster, Pa., under the Act of March 3, 1879 How much attention are you giving as a citizen to Education in your Are you studying the effect of the public school as an agent of social Does a deficiency in your local school disturb you as much as bad How are you measuring the efficiency of an institution that costs you Are you a good citizen with relation to the schools? Are you in- The Nation and the Schools By John A. H. Keith and William C. Bagley A STUDY of the Smith-Towner bill and of the proposed Federal Department of Edu cation which, is now being considered in Congress. The book presents fully the history of Federal aid to education; the record of the N. E. A. in promoting Federal aid; the educational weaknesses revealed by the war; the justification of the appropriations proposed in the Smith-Towner Bill; the need of a department of Education with a secretary in the President's cabinet. "This book is rich in suggestions that point to practical effort. It contains a great amount of valuable information in compact form.' New York Tribune " The Problem of Americanization By Peter Roberts THE 'HE ideals of American institutions set forth for teachers of immigrants whose problem is frequently complicated by racial, social, and political prejudices against a difficult new language and the strangeness of a new form of government. Volume XIII SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1921 THE MEASUREMENT OF INTELLI GENCE1 CUSTOM dictates that this address shall concern itself with some recent and important application of scientific methods to educational problems. Elimination and retardation, the prevalence of mental deficiency, economy in time and the elimination of useless subject matter from curricula, the development of standard tests and scales, school surveys, have each in turn, in recent years, occupied the center of the stage. There can be little doubt that the outstanding feature of the past year or two has been the interest in intelligence tests and their uses. A questionnaire to colleges and universities sent out by the United States Bureau of Education, which I have just tabulated, shows that of 228 institutions replying 105 are using them systematically either for admitting students, for directing their education, for directing their choice of vocation, for classifying them into sections, or for eliminating failures, or for research and class demonstration purposes. A considerable number of those stating that no use had been made of intelligence tests express great interest in them and an intention to use them systematically or experimentally this year. A similar inquiry if sent to secondary and elementary schools would reveal an interest there quite as keen as in higher institutions. Two statewide surveys have already been made, including among other things a survey of 1 Address of the vice-president and chairman of Section V-Education, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Chicago, 1920. Number 319 intellect, and another is now in progress. The New England Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, a year ago, held a symposium on the Place of Psychological Tests in Schools and Colleges, the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools has a committee at work on the problem, the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education also has a committee with a cooperative program of large magnitude under way. That intelligence tests have "arrived," so far as the school is concerned, I had proof positive several weeks ago when representatives of two prominent book companies came to my office, not, as I expected, to recommend their latest text-books, but to extol the merits of the latest intelligence tests. What better evidence is needed that tests are here as a force to be reckoned with than that book companies are rivalling in their production? Of the making of many intelligence tests there is no end. This interest is not limited to schools and colleges but extends widely to commercial and industrial institutions as well. The extraordinary success of the great experiment in the army in adapting methods of measuring intellect to group examinations on a large scale, and in measuring the intelligence of almost 2,000,000 soldiers, must rank as perhaps the greatest practical achievement of modern psychology. Wherever men, women, or children are to be selected and classified on a basis of general mental ability, be it in school or in industry, the methods of group intelligence examinations are certain to be increasingly employed. It is not to be won dered at, then, that so many large commercial organizations are already using them in the selection of employees, and that a prominent industrial engineer should recently say, "No employer who has ever used scientific tests in the selection of employees will ever go back to the old method of interviews again." A new profession is developing whose standards are even now being set by the American Psychological Association. One could multiply evidence indefinitely to show the widespread interest in intelligence tests and with it evidence of a renewed interest in psychology and education. The great desirability of some method of measuring native mental capacity has long been recognized. Plato was, I believe, the first to suggest a team or battery of tests for native capacity. In the "Republic" he propounds these questions: Did you not maintain that one man had a natural fitness for a particular calling, and another had not, in so far as the first learned a thing easily, the second with difficulty and the one with slight instruction was able to make important discoveries from what he had acquired; while the other after much teaching and practise did not even retain what he had learned; finally, that the one had a body which without fail seconded his mental powers, and the body of the other thwarted him? Are there any other tests than these by which you tried to distinguish between the person who had a natural fitness for certain pursuits and one who had not? Capacity to learn, originality and productiveness in thinking, and bodily control as tests of intelligence have a modern sound. While in current literature Galton is often credited with first suggesting the possibility of measuring human intelligence by means of mental tests, using the methods of the mining engineer of sinking shafts at critical points, taking samples and assaying them, the idea thus appeared much earlier and has reappeared again and again. Plutarch conceived the inequalities in intellect as impressive for he says "that he does not find so great a difference between beast and beast as he does between man and man" in the "internal qualities and perfections of the soul." Montaigne is still more impressed, for to him "there are as many and innumerable degrees of minds as there are cubits between this and heaven." With the development of educational theory came the Leibnizian belief "Die Erziehung überwindet alles" and the doctrine of Helvetius and the French Encyclopedists "L'education peut tout" and the supposedly democratic notion that all intelligences are equal and that differences are matters of education and training. With it came an almost superstitious reverence for education and its power to mould individuals to the needs of society. Aristotle's thesis "it is manifest that education should be one and the same for all" prevailed and may be said still to prevail. The Platonic ideal of testing individuals and assigning them to the work for which they have natural fitness was replaced by an ideal "educational ladder with one end in the gutter and the other in the university." Educational theory thus conspired to suppress an interest in individual differences. It was revived again with the introduction of experimental methods in psychology by Galton, Kraepelin, Cattell, and others, and ultimately resulted in the Binet-Simon scale which is one of the really great achievements of psychology. Even it is not new in principle or method. An old legal formula (quoted by Davenport) reads as follows: He that shall be said to be a sot and an idiot from his birth is such a person who can not count or number twenty pence, nor tell who was his father or mother, nor how old he is, so it may appear he hath no understanding or reason what shall be for his profit or what for his loss, but, if he have sufficient understanding to know and understand his letters, and to learn by teaching or information, then it seems he is not an idiot.. This ancient method of giving to the mind "stunts" to perform or problems to solve, each of which is as free as possible from special training or schooling, and each of which requires the exercise of intelligence, is, when refined, extended and standardized, what gave to the world ten years ago a practical measuring scale for intelligence. The Binet Scale was devised to identify and grade feebleminded and backward children and it has found its chief application there. While its use was extended to the classification of normal children to some extent, the time required for individual examinations limited greatly its sphere of practical usefulness in schools. The necessities of war mobilized the best psychological experience of the country and produced a group test which accomplished its purpose so sucessfully that the possibility of scientific selection of personnel by such methods was thoroughly established. The possibility of adapting these methods to the examination and classification of school children was quickly seen, and the result is that at the last count there were in the field no less than nineteen different group scales devised to test children just entering school and ranging up to tests for college freshmen. Several hundred thousand children have, during the past two years, been given one or the other of these tests either for pur poses of classification or for experimental purposes with a view to classification. While it is perhaps too early to appraise accurately the value of these experiments, it is already evident that intelligence tests have a great significance for educational theory and practise. What information does an intelligence test give that is worth while for the educator? A properly constructed and administered test purports to give two facts concerning the intellects of children that are of fundamental importance; one is mental age, the other is the intelligence quotient. Mental age is the measure of the level of intelligence attained; the intelligence quotient is the index of mental alertness or brightness. The one is the essential fact in the accurate grading of children in school, the other is the basis for prediction of progress both in school and to some extent out of it. Two new concepts have thus been added added to our educational vocabulary. These two facts about children, if they are capable of accurate determination, are so vitally significant and make such a radical change in our conceptions of the functions and methods of the school that it requires no great vision to foresee that before long every child will be given an intelligence test every two or three years, and that every teacher will need to be familiar with giving it and interpreting it. This does not mean that a perfected instrument for measuring mental age and intelligence quotients is at hand. There is a distressing array of problems yet unsolved. We have made more progress in the determination of intelligence as a capacity than in the analysis of the nature of intelligence as a mental phenomenon. The definition of intelligence was characterized by Binet as a frightfully complicated problem. It still is. During the past year one psychologist holds that education is primarily concerned with the development or training of intelligence while another holds that intelligence is a capacity that can not be trained. Another finds intelligence indicated by the capacity to learn, while others find capacity to learn |