SELECT ARMY AVIATORS BY 



TEST, NOT BY EDUCATION 



RoswELL H. Johnson, University oj Pittsburgh 



THE work of an aviator is noto- 

 riously hazardous. In spite of 

 this fact, the Government, in- 

 stead of contenting itself with a 

 minimum requirement for aviation, 

 has in accordance with the following 

 quotations directed that a college educa- 

 tion shall be requisite. 



The office of the Chief Signal Officer, War 

 Department, authorizes the following: 



The following instructions relative to the 

 determining of educational qualifications of 

 applicants for commission in the aviation 

 section of the Signal Officers' Reserve Corps 

 are announced: 



Paragraph 10, Special Regulations No. 50, 

 Aviation Section, Signal Corps, 1917, prescribes 

 in line 7, "The mental examination may be 

 omitted, but the equivalent of a college educa- 

 tion will be required." 



Line 14, paragraph 13, of the same order 

 prescribes, "The applicant will be required to 

 establish the fact that he has the equivalent 

 of a college education." 



The Chief Signal Officer of the Army directs 

 me to inform you that the following will 

 govern in determining whether or not an 

 applicant possesses the required educational 

 qualifications : 



(a) The applicant must have completed a 

 course at a recognized college or technical 

 school or have the equivalent of such an 

 education. In detennining this equivaent 

 consideration will be given to the applicant's 

 intelhgence, business or other training, travel, 

 tutoring, home study, activity, and military 

 training. In all cases the applicant must 

 have completed a course at a high school or 

 preparatory school of good standing. In each 

 case the examining board must use discretion 

 and judgment as to whether the applicant 

 possesses the requisite training and judgment 

 to enable him to perform the duties of a com- 

 missioned officer in the aviation section. 



Roughly, of course, a college educa- 

 tion indicates that an individual must 

 belong to a certain mental grade of 

 intelligence to have survived the pro- 

 cess, but the qualifications necessar}' for 



an aviator are not those necessary to 

 have survived a college education. To 

 consider these qualifications, what can 

 we do better than to examine the men 

 who have been successful motorcycle 

 and automobile racers? We suggest 

 to the Government that psychological 

 tests upon men who have been successful 

 along these lines will give them what 

 they want, coupled with the tests on 

 the sense of equilibrium and control 

 which are being employed. To use a 

 college education fails to make the dis- 

 crimination the Army desires, and it 

 brings into this dangerous profession a 

 number of men who are not needed, 

 or who are needed in other work to a 

 greater degree. It seems axiomatic that 

 the nation should strive to pass through 

 a war with the minimum loss in quality 

 and quantity of its members. This, 

 then, demands a far more careful selec- 

 tion of candidates. 



We believe that the same reasoning 

 applies in the matter of officers in the 

 Infantry and Cavalry. The qualities 

 here called for are better represented in 

 men who have proved successful as 

 foremen, than in those who are college 

 graduates, many of whom will be 

 ludicrous failures in the handling of 

 men, and yet have other qualities far 

 too valuable to waste in service to 

 which they are not well adapted. 

 If mental tests are to be used in the 

 selection of officers, these tests should 

 not be those of general intelligence 

 but rather specially made out for those 

 peculiar qi^.alifications which are de- 

 sirable in an army officer — in other 

 words, what the psychologist calls a 

 differential mental test, rather than a 

 general one. 



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