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
The fact that so few women have attained eminence may be due to wholly
extraneous factors, the most important of which are the following: (1)
The occupations in which it is possible to achieve eminence are for the
most part only now beginning to open their doors to women. Women's
career has been largely that of home-making, an occupation in which
eminence, in the strict sense of the word, is impossible. (2) Even of
the small number of women who embark upon a professional career, a
majority marry and thereafter devote a fairly large proportion of their
energy to bearing and rearing children. (3) Both the training given to
girls and the general atmosphere in which they grow up are unfavorable
to the inculcation of the professional point of view, and as a result
women are not spurred on by deep-seated motives to constant and
strenuous intellectual endeavor as men are. (4) It is also possible that
the emotional traits of women are such as to favor the development of
the sentiments at the expense of innate intellectual endowment.
INTELLIGENCE OF THE DIFFERENT SOCIAL CLASSES. Of the 1000 children, 492
were classified by their teachers according to social class into the
following five groups: _very inferior_, _inferior_, _average_,
_superior_, and _very superior_. A comparative study was then made of
the distribution of I Q's for these different groups.[25]
[25] The results of this comparison have been set forth in detail in the
monograph of source material and some of the conclusions have been set
forth on p. 115 _ff._ of the present volume.
The data may be summarized as follows:--
1. The median I Q for children of the superior social class is
about 7 points above, and that of the inferior social class
about 7 points below, the median I Q of the average social
group. This means that by the age of 14 inferior class children
are about one year below, and superior class children one year
above, the median mental age for all classes taken together.
2. That the children of the superior social classes make a
better showing in the tests is probably due, for the most part,
to a superiority in original endowment. This conclusion is
supported by five supplementary lines of evidence: (a) the
teachers' rankings of the children according to intelligence;
(b) the age-grade progress of the children; (c) the quality
of the school work; (d) the comparison of older and younger
children as regards the influence of social environment; and
(e) the study of individual cases of bright and dull children
in the same family.
3. In order to facilitate comparison, it is advisable to express
the intelligence of children of all social classes in terms of
the same objective scale of intelligence. This scale should be
based on the median for all classes taken together.
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