EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY 



well when the same child has reached the mental age 

 of six and a half or seven years. It is not intended to convey 

 the idea that nearly all school instruction is given pre- 

 maturely. For the average child it is, in the main, fairly 

 well timed; it is the exceptionally dull and the exception- 

 ally bright who suffer. By the lock-step system the dull 

 are promoted beyond their ability to master the subject 

 matter, while the bright are under-promoted. The child 

 of 75 I.Q. cannot master first grade work until he has 

 reached the age of eight or nine years. The child of 125 

 I.Q. can do so at the age of five; yet by custom, and in 

 many states by legal requirement, both are expected to 

 enter upon first grade work at the age of six. In spite of 

 unpsychological legal enactments, great progress has been 

 made in recent years in adjusting the difficulty of school 

 work to the child's maturation level, and further progress 

 in this direction may be expected. 



The question has often been raised whether there is any 

 definite relationship between childhood brightness or 

 dullness and the age when ability ceases to improve. It 

 has been found that mentally defective children usually 

 reach their maximum mental development a little earlier 

 than do average children, idiots earliest of all, and next 

 the imbeciles. However, above the level of defectives it 

 is doubtful whether much correlation exists between 

 grade of mentality and age of reaching maturity, although 

 there is some evidence to suggest that the intellectually 

 gifted tend to continue their mental growth somewhat 

 later than average children do. 



The Psychology of Learning. Learning has been one of 

 the favorite fields of psychological investigation since 

 the pioneer work by Ebbinghaus in the eighties of the 

 last century. The greater part of this work has been devoted 

 to investigations of memorizing and relatively little to 

 learning to solve problems. The laws of use and disuse 



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