THE METHOD OF AGE GRADATION 49 



TABLE HI. 

 AVERAGES FOB CERTAIN YEARS. (TERM AN AND CHILDS.) 



Chronological Age Mental Age 



4.75 6.50 



7.50 8.00 



12.33 11.00 







But far more important is a positive result, viz. : 

 the international accordance in the judgment as to 

 special ease or special difficulty of certain test-levels. 

 It is certainly not of minor significance that the 6- 

 year old tests were too easy and the 11-year old as 

 uniformly too difficult, with the 8 and 9-year old ap- 

 parently forming a between-lying zone in the case 

 of children in the common schools of America, Ger- 

 many, France and England, all without exception. 

 That, despite the differences in race and language, 

 despite the divergences in school organization and 

 in methods of instruction, there should be so decided 

 agreement in the reactions of the children is, in 

 my opinion, the best vindication of the principle 

 of the tests that one could imagine, because this 

 agreement demonstrates that the tests do actually 

 reach and discover the general developmental condi- 

 tions of intelligence (so far as these are operative in 

 public school children of the present cultural epoch), 

 and not mere fragments of knowledge and attain- 

 ments acquired by chance. 



And this confirmation of the principle may also 

 lead us confidently to expect that the discrepancies 

 that have been revealed at the same time in some of 

 the details of the system can be obviated in the 

 future. 



