Measure Your Mind: The Mentimeter and How to Use ItTrabue, Marion Rex
Science
Measure Your Mind: The Mentimeter and How to Use It
Trabue, Marion Rex
Educational tests and measurements; Intelligence tests; Psychological tests
It requires no special argument to point out how a general application
of tests that disclose actual mental capacities might profoundly affect
our judgment of men of all classes and walks of life. Were it possible
to ticket and catalogue the whole human race in accordance with the
capacity of each individual as disclosed under properly devised
psychological tests, we would no longer permit the superficial absence
of polish and taste to blind us to the inherent powers and capacities of
the self-made man, nor, on the other hand, would we be so ready to
assume that the well-dressed, fluent talker, no matter how prepossessing
in appearance and manner, was necessarily able and worthy of confidence.
Likewise, once such a classification became universal, it is conceivable
that many business men and others who are prone to criticize the
universities and their products would be more tolerant of the recent
graduate, whose mental capacity is in no wise reflected by the
particular variety of contents with which his mind has been filled in
college.
Besides the application of scientific mental tests as already indicated,
in business and industry and in education, by the employer or the
teacher, there is another and important use to which standardized tests,
based upon determined capacities of groups and individuals of known
ability, may be put. This is the use of such tests by the individual
upon himself for the purpose of determining his own mental capacity in a
particular direction or of a particular kind as compared with the mental
capacity of others. The man or woman bent on self-improvement or
advancement may thus, within certain limits, assess by the application
of standardized tests his or her own mental quality and capacity.
Again it is unnecessary to point out the advantage to the young man or
young woman endeavouring to decide upon a career or to determine what
particular course of study to pursue or line of business to enter, in
being enabled to obtain an accurate gauge of his or her own qualities,
powers, and limitations. Taste and inclination are no safe guides to
life unless there is coupled with them inherent capacity for the
competent exercise of the faculties which make the gratification of
one’s individual tastes and inclinations possible. Thus it may be that
the individual’s inclinations and tastes run strongly toward music,
toward art in any of its various forms, but that physical and mental
inhibitions, the presence or absence of which may be readily determined,
make it impossible for the possessor of such tastes to hope to be able
to perform creditably the acts which a successful artist or musician
must perform.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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