L. — EDUCATIOK. 193 



instruction, and to record in quantitative terms the course of progress 

 from year to year, by means of standardised tests for educational attain- 

 ments. In this country research committees of the British Association 

 and of the Child-Study Society have already commenced the standardisa- 

 tion of normal performances in such subjects as reading and arithmetic. 

 In America attempts have been made to standardise even more elusive 

 subjects, such as drawing, handwork, English composition, and the 

 subjects of the curriculum of the secondary school. 



B. Treatment. 



This work of diagnosis has done much to foster individual and 

 differential teaching — the adaptation of education to individual children, 

 or at least to special groups and types. It has not only assisted the 

 machinery of segregation — of selecting the mentally deficient child at one 

 end of the scale and the scholarship child at the other end ; but it has 

 also provided a method for assessing the results of different teaching 

 methods as applied to these segregated groups. Progress has been most 

 pronounced in the case of the sub-normal. The mentally defective arc 

 now taught in special schools, and receive an instruction of a specially 

 adapted type. Some advance has more recently been made in differen- 

 tiating the various grades and kinds of so-called deficiency, and in dis- 

 criminating between the deficient and the merely backwai'd and dull. 

 With regard to the morally defective and delinquent little scientific work 

 hais been attempted in this country, with the sole exception of the new 

 experiment initiated by the Birmingham justices. In the United States 

 some twenty centres or clinics have been established for the psycho- 

 logical examination of exceptional children; and in England school 

 medical officers and others have urged the need for ' intermediate ' 

 classes or schools not only to accommodate backward and borderline 

 cases and cases of limited or special defect {e.g., ' number-defect ' and 

 so-called ' word-bhndness ') but also to act as clearing-houses. 



In Germany and elsewhere special interest has been aroused in 

 super-normal children. The few investigations already made show 

 clearly that additional attention, expenditure, study, and provision will 

 yield for the community a far richer return in the case of the super- 

 normal than in the sub-normal. 



At Harvard and elsewhere psychologists have for some time been 

 elaborating psychological tests to select those who are best fitted for 

 different types of vocation. The investigation is still only in its initial 

 stages. But it is clear that if vocational guidance were based, in part 

 at least, upon obseiTations and records made at school, instead of being 

 based upon the limited interests and knowledge of the child and his 

 parents, then not only employers, but also employees, their work, and 

 the community as a whole, would profit. A large proportion of the 

 vast wastage involved in the current system of indiscriminate engage- 

 ment on probation would be saved. 



The influence of sex, social status, and race upon individual differ- 

 ences in educational abilities has been studied upon a small scale. 

 The differences are marked : and differences in sex and social status, 

 when better understood, might well b^ taken intQ account both in 

 1920 



