"Well, no. I should say that they are on the average ten years old." "What, then, is this twelve-year-old boy doing among them? If he is so bright, why is he lingering among these little ones? My dear sir," the psychologist continued, while the principal stood in abashed silence, "would it not be nearer the mark to call him a backward instead of a bright child? And would it not be well to search for the cause of his backwardness and try to remedy it? Assuredly, this boy should constitute for you a delicate problem that insistently demands solution." This, I say, happened not many years ago. For that matter, incidents quite like it occasionally happen even to-day, testifying to the inability of some teachers to appreciate the presence, let alone the significance, of the laggard in the schoolroom. But in the brief period that has elapsed since Alfred Binet began his epoch-making investigations in the schools of Paris, there has undoubtedly been a genuine and widespread awakening in respect to the tremendously important problem raised by the backward child. Especially is this true of our own land. Nowhere else, perhaps, have more diligent efforts been made to ascertain the extent and causes of backwardness among the school-going population, and nowhere else is greater activity being displayed in the beneficent task of transforming the backward child, as far as possible, into the normal one. Certainly, too, it must regretfully be added that there is abundant reason for this activity. Researches conducted during the past ten years by American school authorities and by independent investigators, have revealed an appalling state of affairs. Doctor Oliver P. Cornman, a district superintendent of the Philadelphia schools, making a statistical survey of five city school systems, found 21.6 per cent. of Boston school children a year or more behind the normal grade for their age; 30 per cent. behind grade in New York; 37.1 per cent. behind grade in Philadelphia; 47.5 per cent. behind grade in Camden, New Jersey; and 49.6 per cent. behind grade in Kansas City. Doctor Leonard P. Ayres, acting in behalf of the Russell Sage Foundation, investigated fifteen New York City public schools, having twenty thousand pupils, and found a degree of retardation ranging from 10.9 per cent. to 36.6 per cent. Scrutiny of the school reports of more than thirty other cities revealed an average retardation of 33.7 per cent. Taking this as a fair average for the whole country, we have a total of between six and seven million American school children who are a year and more behind grade.