The Measurement of Intelligence | Page 8

and crime, which in all
probability amounts to not less than $500,000,000 per year in the
United States alone, it is evident that psychological testing has found
here one of its richest applications. Before offenders can be subjected
to rational treatment a mental diagnosis is necessary, and while
intelligence tests do not constitute a complete psychological diagnosis,
they are, nevertheless, its most indispensable part.
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.
Another illustration is that of a boy of 10½ years who tested at the
"average adult" level. He was doing superior work in the sixth grade,
but according to the testimony of the teacher had "no unusual ability."
It was ascertained from the parents that this boy, at an age when most
children are reading fairy stories, had a passion for standard medical
literature and textbooks in physical science. Yet, after more than a year
of daily contact with this young genius (who is a relative of Meyerbeer,
the composer), the teacher had discovered no symptoms of unusual
ability.[6]
[6] See p. 26 ff. for further illustrations of this kind.

Teachers should be better trained in detecting the signs of superior
ability. Every child who consistently gets high marks in his school
work with apparent ease should be given a mental examination, and if
his intelligence level warrants it he should either be given extra
promotions, or placed in a special class for superior children where
faster progress can be made. The latter is the better plan, because it
obviates the necessity of skipping grades; it permits rapid but
continuous progress.
The usual reluctance of teachers to give extra promotions probably
rests upon three factors: (1) mere inertia; (2) a natural unwillingness to
part with exceptionally satisfactory pupils; and (3) the traditional belief
that precocious children should be held back for fear of dire physical or
mental consequences.
In order to throw light on the question whether exceptionally bright
children are specially likely to be one-sided, nervous, delicate, morally
abnormal, socially unadaptable, or otherwise peculiar, the writer has
secured rather extensive information regarding 31 children whose
mental age was found by intelligence tests to be 25 per cent above the
actual age. This degree