6. Ball and Field Test. B. F., Age 7-8; Mental Age 12-4; I Q 160 102
17. Healy and Fernald Construction Puzzle 279

THE MEASUREMENT OF INTELLIGENCE

PART I

PROBLEMS AND RESULTS

THE MEASUREMENT OF INTELLIGENCE

CHAPTER I

THE USES OF INTELLIGENCE TESTS

INTELLIGENCE TESTS OF RETARDED SCHOOL CHILDREN. Numerous studies of the
age-grade progress of school children have afforded convincing evidence
of the magnitude and seriousness of the retardation problem. Statistics
collected in hundreds of cities in the United States show that between a
third and a half of the school children fail to progress through the
grades at the expected rate; that from 10 to 15 per cent are retarded
two years or more; and that from 5 to 8 per cent are retarded at least
three years. More than 10 per cent of the $400,000,000 annually expended
in the United States for school instruction is devoted to re-teaching
children what they have already been taught but have failed to learn.

The first efforts at reform which resulted from these findings were
based on the supposition that the evils which had been discovered could
be remedied by the individualizing of instruction, by improved methods
of promotion, by increased attention to children's health, and by other
reforms in school administration. Although reforms along these lines
have been productive of much good, they have nevertheless been in a
measure disappointing. The trouble was, they were too often based upon
the assumption that under the right conditions all children would be
equally, or almost equally, capable of making satisfactory school
progress. Psychological studies of school children by means of
standardized intelligence tests have shown that this supposition is not
in accord with the facts. It has been found that children do not fall
into two well-defined groups, the "feeble-minded" and the "normal."
Instead, there are many grades of intelligence, ranging from idiocy on
the one hand to genius on the other. Among those classed as normal, vast
individual differences have been found to exist in original mental
endowment, differences which affect profoundly the capacity to profit
from school instruction.

We are beginning to realize that the school must take into account, more
seriously than it has yet done, the existence and significance of these
differences in endowment. Instead of wasting energy in the vain attempt
to hold ment