Deficiency and Delinquency: An Interpretation of Mental TestingMiner, James Burt
Science
Deficiency and Delinquency: An Interpretation of Mental Testing
Miner, James Burt
Children with mental disabilities; Juvenile delinquents; Mentally ill offenders; Psychological tests
In order to study school retardation we tabulated the school position of
236 boys and 95 girls consecutively found delinquent in the Minneapolis
juvenile court. To make the results more significant we did not include
any cases dismissed at their hearing in court. Comparison with more
serious delinquents is made by means of the group of 100 juvenile
repeaters and 123 from the Glen Lake Farm School. The school position
and actual age of each delinquent was compared with the age and grade
distribution among Minneapolis elementary school children. The latter
was determined by a census made the same year the returns for which
included about 15,000 of each sex (see Table XII).[31] The ages and
grades were recorded for the beginning of September, when the school
year opens, and the census was taken late in the year after all the
children had been registered in school. That different groups can only
be properly compared when the age-grade distributions are made for the
same time in the year is clear when one remembers that the ages are
changing throughout the school year while the grades remain the same for
at least half the year. The census was taken for another purpose so that
it unfortunately does not include the high school pupils. Since the
frequency and amount of retardation increases for older ages which occur
relatively more frequently in the groups of delinquents the comparison
somewhat exaggerates the difference between the groups. This difference
in the relative ages of the groups is allowed for, however, in a later
table on which the discussion will be based. The school positions of the
various groups of delinquents and of ordinary school children are given
in Table XIII and graphically in Figure 2.
TABLE XII.
AGE AND GRADE DISTRIBUTION IN SEPTEMBER OF PUPILS IN THE ELEMENTARY
SCHOOLS OF MINNEAPOLIS
BOYS
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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