4 MAL-NUTRITION AND THE TEACHER'S 



the statistical treatment of such observations if they are 

 not made with due regard to the needs of the statistician.^ 



The observations on which this investigation was based 

 were made on the children of fourteen schools in London, 

 and the recording work was carried out under the auspices 

 of the Chief Medical Officer to the Education Committee of 

 the London County Council. Particulars were given for 

 4,286 boys and 4,474 girls, regarding mental capacity, age, 

 standard, height, weight, and condition of the teeth, and in 

 certain schools only regarding state of nutrition, condition 

 of the clothing, state of cleanliness, power of hearing and 

 condition of the cervical glands, tonsils, and adenoids. 



With the exception of the estimate of the mental capacity 

 of the children, the whole examination was carried out by 

 the school medical officers, and although different methods 

 were used in different schools, the method of examination 

 was uniform throughout each school, the obser\'ations 

 throughout each school were made by one medical officer, 

 and in the memoir itself each school was dealt with 

 separately. The estimates of the mental capacity of the 

 children were of course made by the individual teachers. 



The results of this investigation have been somewhat 

 severely criticized b}- Mr. G. Udny Yule in the Journal of 

 the Royal Statistical Society- and again in School Hygiene? 

 No objection has, however, been raised to the classifications 

 made by the school medical officers, and these will not be 

 dealt with here. 



* Memoir^ p. i. ' Vol. Ixxiii, part v, p. 547. 



' Vol. i, p. 473. To those aware of the high correlation between a teacher's 

 estimate of general intelligence, and the class and examination places of children, 

 Mr. Yule's criticism that ' the data were of no value for any serious purpose ' 

 falls singularly wide of the mark. We ask in this, as we have had recently to 

 do in many other cases, why do not these critics set to work and find out facts 

 before they criticize? 



