234 president's address — section j. 



for the differences in intelligence within any given age group. 

 The more gifted children, for instance, may make progress best by 

 methods that are relatively ineffective with those of lesser ability. 

 This conclusion is suggested by Valentine's experiment in read- 

 ing, and is definitely stated by Whipple in his monograph on the 

 selection and training of gifted children. 



Mental tests of a non-scholastic character will yield informatioii 

 about the distribution of innate ability if the group examined 

 is homogeneous in opportunity of gaining experience. Similarly 

 scholastic tests will infonn us not only of the actual attainmeints 

 of the group' tested, but also of the variations of innate scholastic 

 ability if the group has been so selected as to Be homogeneous 

 in scholastic opportunity. And it may be that some scholastic 

 tests will, under this condition, prove quite as useful as the non- 

 scholastic for the measurement of general intelligence. " There 

 seems," says Brown, 'to be no serious reason why the ordinary 

 material cf school study should not be employed to a much 

 greater extent than is actually the case, as psychological material 

 from which to deduce important psycho-pedagogical laws."* And 

 Burt has shown that scholastic or quasi-scholastic tests can be 

 administered by competent teachers with a degree of accuracy at 

 least equal to that of a trained experimental psychologist. 



Much work has been done by American investigators in devis- 

 ing and standardizing tests of scholastic ability and in securing 

 grade norms of performance. But the system of classification 

 current in our schools is not the same as the American, and hence 

 we cannot compare the work of our pupils with that of American 

 classes. In anv^ case the scholastic tests need to be standardized 

 for ovir school population. Until this has been done, a scientific 

 survey of the scholastic ability of our school population is hardly 

 possible. The lecturers in education of the Teachers' College, 

 Sydney, have begun an investigation of arithmetical ability in 

 the four fundamental operations, and some of the results of the 

 work of the past two years will be presented to this section at a 

 later meeting. 



English investigators have aimed at establishing age group 

 norms instead of class group norms, and these are of greater 

 scientific interest than the class group norms of the American 

 school populations. It is probable, too, that from these age group 

 norms there can be deduced class group norms which will be of as 

 great practical value as the American grade norms. If ability is 

 distributed normally, and if each school class represents one year 

 of mental growth, it should be possible to state the average attain- 

 ment to be expected from each class group, if that class grouj) 

 is a fair sample of the general school population. Age norms for 

 ability in oral and silent reading have been published by Ballard 



* Brown, " Modern Educational Psychology."— .7o(/r. of Experimental Pe'l.. vol. I., p. 6. 



