The measurement of intelligence : $b an explanation of and a complete guide for the use of the Standard revision and extension of the Binet-Simon intelligence scaleTerman, Lewis M. (Lewis Madison)
Science
The measurement of intelligence : $b an explanation of and a complete guide for the use of the Standard revision and extension of the Binet-Simon intelligence scale
INTELLIGENCE TESTS OF SUPERIOR CHILDREN. The number of children with
very superior ability is approximately as great as the number of
feeble-minded. The future welfare of the country hinges, in no small
degree, upon the right education of these superior children. Whether
civilization moves on and up depends most on the advances made by
creative thinkers and leaders in science, politics, art, morality, and
religion. Moderate ability can follow, or imitate, but genius must show
the way.
Through the leveling influences of the educational lockstep such
children at present are often lost in the masses. It is a rare child who
is able to break this lockstep by extra promotions. Taking the country
over, the ratio of "accelerates" to "retardates" in the school is
approximately 1 to 10. Through the handicapping influences of poverty,
social neglect, physical defects, or educational maladjustments, many
potential leaders in science, art, government, and industry are denied
the opportunity of a normal development. The use we have made of
exceptional ability reminds one of the primitive methods of surface
mining. It is necessary to explore the nation's hidden resources of
intelligence. The common saying that "genius will out" is one of those
dangerous half-truths with which too many people rest content.
Psychological tests show that children of superior ability are very
likely to be misunderstood in school. The writer has tested more than a
hundred children who were as much above average intelligence as moron
defectives are below. The large majority of these were found located
below the school grade warranted by their intellectual level. One third
had failed to reap any advantage whatever, in terms of promotion, from
their very superior intelligence. Even genius languishes when kept
over-long at tasks that are too easy.
Our data show that teachers sometimes fail entirely to recognize
exceptional superiority in a pupil, and that the degree of such
superiority is rarely estimated with anything like the accuracy which is
possible to the psychologist after a one-hour examination. _B. F._, for
example, was a little over 7½ years old when tested. He was in the
third grade, and was therefore thought by his teacher to be accelerated
in school. This boy's intelligence, however, was found to be above the
12-year level. There is no doubt that his mental ability would have
enabled him, with a few months of individual instruction, to carry fifth
or even sixth-grade work as easily as third, and without injury to body
or mind. Nevertheless, the teacher and both the parents of this child
had found nothing remarkable about him. In reality he belongs to a grade
of genius not found oftener than once in several thousand cases.
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