APPRECIATION OF INTELLIGEiNCE 5 



The whole of Mr. Yule's criticism turns on the weight 

 to be given to the teachers' estimates of the intelligence of 

 the school children. The scale of intelligence used divided 

 the children into five categories : * brilliant ', ' above the 

 average ', ' average ', ' under the average ', and ' very dull and 

 backward '. Now this is of course a purely verbal classifica- 

 tion, and is condemned by Mr. Yule as being vague, and 

 the estimate of mental capacity is said to be relatively as 

 well as absolutely useless. We shall consider later to what 

 extent Mr. Yule himself is consistent in his condemnation of 

 such verbal classifications. 



Now it is quite true, as Mr. Yule says, that the per- 

 centage of children who are classed as brilliant varies from 

 3 % to 33 % in the case of the boys and from i % to 33 % in 

 the case of the girls, and at first sight this may seem to dis- 

 credit the returns. But Mr. Yule has apparently not noticed 

 that these high percentages occur in the boys' and girls' 

 departments of the same school (No. i), and I have satisfied 

 myself, by going carefully over the records in the different 

 standards, that the boys and girls were not classified by 

 the same teachers. This shows that although the term 

 * brilliant ' covers a wider range of mental capacity in this 

 school than in any other, yet the use of the term has been 

 on the whole consistent throughout the school in question. 



The classification of intelligence is admittedly difficult, 

 and in the case of the data under discussion not so satisfac- 

 tory as might be wished, but this was clearly pointed out in 

 the memoir itself. Every point that could in any way tell 

 against the classification made by teacher or school medical 

 officer was included and examples of faulty classification 

 were even given from material that was not used at all, and 

 in fact no inconsiderable part of Mr. Yule's reviews consists 

 of extracts from the memoir itself With all these points 



