BIOLOGY IN HUMAN AFFAIRS 



separated by a few years, present fairly clear differences, 

 but new capacities rarely, if ever, develop suddenly. 

 Generally speaking, mental growth proceeds at a gradually 

 decreasing rate from infancy to maturity. It is greatest in 

 the first year, somewhat less in the second year, still less 

 in the third, and so on, until by the age of fifteen or sixteen 

 the changes from year to year have become relatively 

 small. It is possible that interests and attitudes are subject 

 to more sudden changes than are intellectual abilities, 

 but for the most part they too run an even course. Even 

 the rebirth which adolescence is popularly supposed to 

 bring is largely a myth. Still less is there ground for be- 

 lieving, as Stanley Hall did, that the child in the period 

 from eight to twelve years is especially adept at memorizing 

 and incapable of any genuine reasoning, or that he lacks 

 appreciation of moral values and responds only to authority. 

 Sweeping and untrue or half-true generalizations of this 

 kind have done much harm, especially in justifying 

 radical shifts in educational procedures from grade to 

 grade. Until very recently, for example, kindergarten 

 methods used with five-year-olds differed so completely 

 from the methods used with six-year-olds in the first-grade 

 that one would have supposed children of these two ages 

 could have hardly any traits in common. One of the most 

 important aspects of educational progress in the last 

 quarter century is that concerned with the integration 

 of lower and higher school grades all along the line to 

 conform with the natural development of the child. 

 This growing recognition of law governing mental 

 development has caused the psychologist to turn his 

 attention to the possibilities of prediction. Formerly 

 the parents of a defective child were encouraged to hope 

 that the child would outgrow his backwardness, and that, 

 in general, a child's present abilities and behavior tend- 

 encies have little significance for later development. 



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