Children with mental disabilities -- Education; Children with mental disabilities -- Psychological testing
13. Why should one judge a person by his acts rather than by his
words?
These questions present various difficulties, both in thought and in
vocabulary. We have tried them upon a great number of school children,
and they correspond pretty exactly to the level of children at the
ages indicated.
The answers of the children may be good, passable, mediocre, or
negative (the child makes no reply), or even absurd or unintelligible.
In marking the replies one does not take account of a wrong word or an
awkward phrase, but considers the meaning and whether the child has
really understood. It may seem that marking these replies would be
rather delicate and arbitrary, but in practice the difficulty is not
great. Here are some examples:
(10) The reply, "Ask some capable person, a master, a parent," is a
good reply. "Ask it," "Listen for it," are passable replies.
(7) The reply, "Pay and apologize," is good. "Pay for it," is
passable.
(8) The reply, "Forgive him," is better than the reply, "Don't tell
tales."
(1) The reply, "Hurry up," is better than, "Ring the bell," "Hurry
to-morrow," "One is kept in."
(3) The reply, "One remains ignorant," is better than, "One is
punished."
(4) The reply, "Take a rest, then walk," is better, being more
explicit, than simply, "Walk."
We mark the good replies 3, the passable 2, the mediocre 1, the absurd
and silence 0. Silence sometimes makes one hesitate. It may result
from timidity, or even from prolonged reflection. It is necessary,
without changing the form of the question, to encourage the child and
to press him to reply. With a little practice one can easily see who
is trying to find an answer and who does not understand.
We have stated that normal children of eleven years of age replied to
the questions 10 to 13. It must be understood that by this we mean
that the majority replied. There are no tests which can characterise
all the subjects without exception of a given group. There are always
failures. By way of example, we shall quote the observations we made
in an elementary school with our questions 10 to 13, which we put to
all the children of eleven, who were distributed, according to their
ability, in the different classes. There were thirty-six of these
pupils. The maximum of marks obtainable was 12, since there were four
questions, and a good reply was worth 3. We then obtained the
following averages:
Tests of Intelligence put to Normal Children of Eleven Years of Age.
Average Marks.
Senior, first year 11
Intermediate, second year 6
Intermediate, first year 4.7
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