Exact knowledge of just what differences do exist between people and the
causes of these differences is important for two reasons. First, in
order that the most efficient measures may be taken for the education of
the individual, and second, in order that the race as a whole may be
made better. Education can only become efficient and economical when we
know which differences between people and which achievements of a given
person are due to training, and which are due more largely to original
equipment or maturity. It is a waste of time on the one hand for
education to concern itself with trying to make all children good
spellers--if spelling is a natural gift; and on the other hand, it is
lack of efficiency for schools to be largely neglecting the moral
development of the children, if morality is dependent primarily on
education. Exact knowledge, not opinions, along all these lines is
necessary if progress is to be made.
The principal causes for individual differences are sex, remote
ancestry, near ancestry, maturity, and training. The question to be
answered in the discussion of each of these causes is how important a
factor is it in the production of differences and just what differences
is it responsible for. That men differ from women has always been an
accepted fact, but exact knowledge of how much and how they differ has,
until recent years, been lacking. Recently quantitative measurement has
been made by a number of investigators. In making these investigations
two serious difficulties have to be met. First, that the tests measure
only the differences brought about by differences in sex, and not by any
other cause, such as family or training. This difficulty has been met by
taking people of all ages, from all sorts of families, with all kinds of
training, the constant factor being the difference in sex. The second
difficulty is that of finding groups in which the selection agencies
have been the same and equally operative. It would be obviously unfair
to compare college men and women, and expect to get a fair result as to
sex differences, because college women are a more highly selected group
intellectually than the college men. It is the conventional and social
demands that are primarily responsible for sending boys to college,
while the intellectual impulse is responsible to a greater extent for
sending girls. Examination of children in the elementary schools, then,
gives a fairer result than of the older men and women. The general
results of all the studies made point to the fact that the differences
between the sexes are small. Sex is the cause of only a small fraction
of the differences between individuals. The total difference of men from
men and women from women is almost as great as the difference between
men and women, for the distribution curve of woman's ability in any
trait overlaps the men's curve to at least half its range. In detail the
exact measurements of intellectual abilities show a slight superiority
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