president's address — SECTION J. 231 



The age class table is one method of measuring the ability ot" 

 the school population and of studying its distribution. It is a 

 method easy of application, but can only yield a rather rough 

 estimate, since the position of a pupil in school depends on other 

 conditions than his natural ability, and since scholastic ability does 

 not completely correspond with general ability. More refined 

 methods of testing the general innate ability of school pupils are 

 provided by th© various forms of intelligence: tests which have 

 been developed in recent years. These tests may be either scholastic 

 or non-scholastic in character, though the distinction is at times a 

 difficult one to draw with precision. Further, they may be either 

 group or individual tests. Clearly, if we are to' carry out a mental 

 survey on a large scale it will be necessary to employ group tests, 

 as was done, for instance, in the American army. Individual 

 tests will only be possible for the testing of special cases. 



Among the non-scholastic tests of intelligence, tho.se first devised 

 by Binet, and their later modifications, are probably the best known 

 and the most frequently employed. The Binet scale suffers, how- 

 ever, from two disadvantages in addition to that of being an 

 individual method of testing intelligence. First, while very useful 

 for securing the aim its inventor had in mind, viz., the diagnosis 

 of subnormal mental ability, it is much less useful as a method of 

 diagnosing those pupils whose mental ability is markedly above 

 the average. We are only beginning to' become aware of our 

 neglect of the upper 10 per cent, of our school population, though 

 recently more attentioii has been given, especially in the United 

 States of America, to the questioii of the training suited to the 

 more gifted pupils. But if the subnormal, the backward, and 

 mentally defective pupils require special treatment, it is worth 

 considering whether the superncmial, the advanced and the gifted 

 pupils do not at least equally require special consideration. The 

 mass methods of instruction which have characterized our school 

 policy for some time past will probably need considerable modifica- 

 tion as a result of the evidence now becoming available as to the 

 range of innate ability and its distribution. It may be better, 

 where numbers are sufficiently large, not to have our class groups 

 soi heterogeneous in natural ability as thev appear to be at present, 

 and it may become necessar}^ to recognise that differences in teach- 

 ing procedure are called for with pupils or groups of different 

 mental types. 



In the second place, the Binet scale is so constructed that a 

 different set of tests is prescribed for the diagnosis of each mental 

 level expressed in years of age. We cannot, then, directly com- 

 pare the mental ability of, say, a normal six-year-old child with 

 that of a normal ten-year-old. Wei merely know that the six- 

 year-old cannot pass so many tests as the ten-year-old, but quanti- 

 tative comparison is impossiT^le. The Yerkes Bridges modification 

 of the Binet scale, however, attempts to overcome this difficulty 



