62 PSYCHOLOGICAL METHODS OF TESTING INTELLIGENCE 



a half-hour's testing, we would place confidence in 

 the latter only if it agreed with the former; that if 

 it did not, then the tests or at least the gradation 

 derived from them would amount to nothing. 



Now we have already alluded in what has gone 

 before to the weakness of the gradations of intelli- 

 gence discovered by the Binet-Simon method, and 

 it is entirely probable that this insufficiency has con- 

 tributed in part to the lack of agreement with school 

 performances. 16 Since, for example, the tests for 

 7-year old children are too easy, many less gifted 

 7-year old children will reach the level of their age 

 as a result of the testing, although they do not rank 

 as "satisfactory" in the school. With the older 

 children the reverse will obtain. Nevertheless, I 

 do not think that this is the only cause of the lack of 

 agreement : the true cause lies in something more 

 fundamental. 



In the second place, one might believe that a true 

 picture of mental endowment was given only by the 

 tests, and that the blame for the disagreement 

 should be ascribed entirely to the school; that the 

 teachers had estimated the pupils wrongly when 

 they assigned them marks not in accord with their 

 mental level, and had treated them wrongly when 

 they kept them back in a class beyond which they 

 should have gone according to their mental level. 

 In this vein, for instance, Goddard writes, for he 

 refers this phenomenon almost entirely to a faulty 

 system of promotion (48, pp. 241 and 249). 



But to dispose of the matter in that way is to 

 ' ' pour out the baby with the bath. ' ' Of course, the 



16 This point has been made by Bobertag and others as well. 



