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
During the first term of six months the _progress ranged from one to
four grades_. No pressure of any kind was brought to bear. The children
were allowed to advance as soon as they acquired the work of each grade.
The younger children reaped the advantage of the experience of
associating with those a trifle older. This privilege perhaps accounted
for the greater rate of progress by the younger pupils. During the first
term the average progress was two and two thirds grades and during the
subsequent terms _two grades were accomplished each term_.
The suggestion, of course, is obvious, that the general application of
psychological tests of intelligence to school children everywhere would
reveal similar exceptional mentalities in many schools and classes, and
that we have at last, in tests of this character, an accurate method of
distinguishing between mere parrot-like ability to memorize and repeat
lessons and actual mental capacity. That there must result, from the
wider application of the scientific method of mental measurement, a
general regrading of school pupils, if not indeed a general
reorganization of existing schemes and systems of education, goes almost
without saying.
The use of intelligence tests for college entrance has shown
satisfactory results in several institutions. In one in particular, the
Carnegie Institute of Technology of Pittsburgh, a group of the freshman
girls in the Margaret Morrison Carnegie School for Girls, was
experimented on with such success that the results have been widely
discussed.
All of the 114 freshmen were high school graduates. The first-year
course, on which the instructors based their estimates of the students,
contains the following subjects; physics, sewing, history, English,
drawing and colour, hygiene, chemistry, foods, accounting, and social
ethics.
Six mental tests were used, designed to answer the following questions:
(1) Can we demonstrate that we can reduce the number of students who are
dropped for poor scholarship or placed on probation for poor scholarship
by the use of our mental tests for admission?
(2) How do our mental test ratings of all the students compare with the
faculty opinion about the general ability of the students?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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