November 17, 19 10] 



NATURE 



89 



:.sultants of the varied treatments. In the process of 

 dismemberment it must often happen that the true 

 :ndividualit>- of a soil is lost, so that schemes of labora- 

 tory classification sometimes arbitrarily separate agri- 



ultural similars and unite agricultural discordants. This 



vas recognised in several of the discussions, and the 

 -rudents of the soil are now fully aRve to the complexity 



f the problems needing investigation. In the opportunity 

 afforded for comparing and criticising the diverse methods 



>f research the congress was eminently successful ; and on 

 : he social, side it was wholly pleasurable. 



EDUCATION AT THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 



'T^HE presidential address this year was devoted to the 

 ^ topic of university education. Readers of N.atcre 

 lave already had an opportunity- of reading Principal 

 Miers's suggestive discussion of the relations of teachers 

 nd pupils at school, and of the change of method which 

 hould differentiate university from school education, 

 hicidenrally, the address raised the very practical question 

 f the present overlapping of the two, and led to the 

 ippointment of a research committee, with the president 

 as chairman, to investigate the subject and to report at 

 Portsmouth next year. 

 The presentation of the reports of the Section L re- 

 ■arch committee on mental and physical factors involved 

 n education, and of the committee of Section H on the 

 -tablishment of a system of measuring mental characters, 

 vas made the occasion for a joint session of the two 

 ~ ctions for the discussion of research in education. In 

 he refHDrt of the committee of Section L the gradual 

 uegration of a science of education, drawing its data, as 

 Prof. Schuyten wrote, from hygiene, anthropology, physi- 

 logy, normal and abnormal psychology, pedagogy", and 

 ociolog}', and yet with a common centre of reference and 

 .n inner coherence which set it apart from each of these 

 lated sciences, was indicated. The work in psycho- 

 )-dagogy now carried on in this country was briefly re- 

 . iewed, and it was shown that, in spite of the lack of 

 jnds which was everywhere reported, researches were on 

 lot in at least ten university centres. Prof. Green in his 

 ntroductory remarks showed how poorly off we are in 

 lis respect in comparison with such countries as Belgium, 

 France, Germany-, the United States, and even with 

 Russia, where the War Office, in discharging its responsi- 

 ■lity for the education of the children of officers, main- 

 ■'lins a professor and a laboratory for research work 

 ione. He also urged the imj>ortance of training for re- 

 archers in this as in all other branches of specialised 

 -search, a point which was subsequently taken up by 

 Dr. C. S. Myers and other speakers. Prof. Findlay ex- 

 plained how the university departments were in this matter 

 ="nt from pillar to post. Treasury grants being refused on 

 ne ground that the Board of Education always looked 

 ^^11 after their own, while the Board, on the other hand, 

 •1 set terms disavowed all responsibility for research work. 

 I he position, as the president said, is " disgraceful." 



A typical illustration of more purely pedagogical research 

 > as contributed by Dr. T. P. Nunn in his sketch of the 

 i.ethods of algebra teaching worked out in the demonstra- 

 on schools attached to the London Day Training College. 

 I he old theorv of algebra, associated with the name of 

 Euler, in which the symbols are regarded merely as 

 numbers — " a large number of numbers " — has given place 

 » the view of Chrystal and others, to whom algebra is a 

 stematic science capable of development from its own 

 axioms. The difficulty of adopting this view for school 

 purposes is precisely the difficulty which faces the new 

 school of geography teachers, namely, that the rational- 

 -ing motive, the desire to build up a system for its own 

 ake, does not develop in the English schoolbov much 

 fore his sixteenth or seventeenth year. Dr. Nunn has 

 herefore based his method on the utilitarian motive, and 

 aims at every stage to exhibit the value of the results for 

 application. At the same time he seeks to complv with 

 the schoolmaster's demand that the subject shall have 

 ■ training value." Thus algebra for school purposes be- 

 omes an instrument the capabilities of which are through- 

 out expired, and so extended, a kind of linguistic for 

 the (expression of thought operations. A large audience 

 XO. 2142, VOL. 85] 



foltowed with keen interest Dr. Xunn's application of the 

 theory in such crucial instances as the factorisation of 

 a- — b', and the explanation of the product of two nega- 

 tives. The processes under his hand revealed the 

 behaviour of realities, and no longer, as of old, came out 

 of the void. 



As an illustration of research upon mental processes 

 Dr. Spearman gave an account of an inquiry into in- 

 dividual variations of memory among some 400 subjects. 

 His results showed that the correlation coefficient between 

 different ways of memorising was always positive, or. in 

 other words, that the powers of memory sfiowed some 

 tendency to correspond, however the material upon whicfr 

 they were exercised might vary, while the more like two 

 performances were the greater was the degree of corre- 

 spondence. The common view that people of quick 

 memory forget more rapidly than those to whom memor- 

 ising is a slow process was shown to be erroneous, the 

 correlation coefficient between the two remaining the same 

 after a lapse of time. It was also shown that the differ- 

 ence between the two types could he largely traced to the 

 method of recall, the quick memory being predominantly" 

 auditory and motor, the retentive memory visual and ideal. 

 Finally, a high correlation was established between 

 memory and teachers' estimates of general intelligence, iir 

 spite of the fact that the data upon which the latter were 

 based were often obscure and variable. 



The remainder of the sitting was occupied by a series 

 of papers and discussions on the measurement of intelli- 

 gence, in which accounts were given of practically all the 

 researches on this subject hitherto conducted in this 

 country. Dr. Otto Lipmann discussed the methods of 

 Binet and Simon (Annee Psychologiqtie, 1908, xiv., 

 pp. i-94> and of Bobertag (Zeitschrift fiir ange-wandte 

 Psychoiogie, iv.). His paper has been printed in full in 

 The School World (October), so that here it will suffice 

 to say that in his opinion their methods do not promise 

 any certain test of a high degree of intelligence. We 

 associate intelligence of this character with depth and" 

 power of self-criticism ; but these things must be neglected 

 in experimental tests, JFor results which would demonstrate 

 the absence of these may be due to bodily condition or 

 temporary inattention. On the other hand, the tests of 

 Binet and Shnon will establish with certainty whether a 

 child is of sufficiently normal intelligence to be equal to 

 the public-school course. The importance of this achieve- 

 ment will be seen when it is remembered that under 

 English law a scfvool medical officer may at any moment 

 find it necessary to satisfy a l)ench of magistrates that a 

 particular child ought to be sent to a special school for 

 mentally defective children. 



Mr. Cyril Burt described a series of experiments per- 

 formed with a group of elementary-school children at 

 Oxford, the result of which was to cast doubt uoon the 

 view that there is an intimate correspondence between 

 power of sensory discrimination and general intelligence. 

 A series of experiments with girls of secondary-school aue 

 at Liverpool tended to show that, by comparison with 

 simple sensory and motor tests, tasks involving higher and 

 more complex processes are less liable to be vitiated by- 

 absence of special training in the experimenter, and also 

 have a more intimate relation with intelligence. Mr. 

 William Brown discussed the mathematical technique of 

 the evaluation of the results of intelligence tests, and" 

 maintained that the method of multiple correlation should 

 always be employed. 



Mr. J. G. Gray- asserted the value of f>erseveration as 

 an index of the quality- of intelligence, explaining per- 

 severation as dependent upon an elemental brain property- 

 which determines the persistence of mental impressions. 

 He described a modification of Wiersma's colour disc 

 devised by himself in order that the luminosity of the two 

 colours the fusion of which at a certain rotation speed" 

 gives the index of perseveration might be regulated by the 

 experimenter. 



Mr. H. S. Lawson described a series of tests, based" 

 upon Binet 's, to which the candidates for scholarships at 

 a Midland secondary school were submitted. The order 

 thus established was correlated with the official scholar- 

 ship order in two successive years, the coefficients being^ 

 0-217 ^"<i 0-48^. The tests had also been used to checlc 

 the official order of merit obtained from a term's marks 



