August 21, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



247 



question to which of these groups of students 

 the methods of teaching and of maintaining 

 discipline should be adapted. Plainly to the 

 50 per cent, of medium students. If these 

 are taught in such a way that they are able 

 to grasp what is presented, the superior ones 

 will take care of themselves, and a large per- 

 centage of the 25 inferior ones will derive 

 considerable benefit from the instruction. The 

 same holds true for the method of maintain- 

 ing discipline, of insuring the necessary regu- 

 larity and intensity of intellectual work in 

 class and at home. 



If these assumptions are made, it follows 

 that in no case should the highest grade estab- 

 lished in any institution be given to more than 

 25 per cent, of the students of a class on the 

 average of a number of years. The highest 

 grade, if there is any difference of grades at 

 all, must mean distinction. But it ceases to 

 have this meaning if it can be obtained by a 

 student of medium ability. We have seen 

 above that a large percentage of the medium 

 students have been able to obtain the grade 

 of distinction. This fact may be explained 

 by the teachers who are responsible for it in 

 two ways. 



1. A teacher may be guided by the convic- 

 tion that the very fact of a student electing 

 his work under his instruction proves that he 

 is a superior student and that he ought to 

 obtain a grade higher than the average grade. 

 The absurdity of this assumption can easily 

 be shown. In order to show this it is by no 

 means necessary to put all studies on the same 

 level, in our opinion. Some may be more 

 valuable, some may be more difficult, than 

 others. But to decide this is not the teacher's 

 task when he grades his students. If a stu- 

 dent excels, this means, of course, that he 

 excels among the students who are taking the 

 same instruction which he is taking. An 

 analogous case in the broader life of a nation 

 will make this still more clear. If we say that 

 a certain physicist is a distinguished scientist 

 of the country to which he belongs, we do not 

 mean that he ranks high among botanists, 

 physiologists and geologists, but that he ranks 

 high among the physicists. Important sug- 



gestions towards the solution of problems of 

 this kind may be found in Professor Cattell's 

 paper on " American Men of Science." In 

 the same way, when a student is ranked as a 

 superior student by his Latin teacher, this can 

 mean only that he does better work than Y5 

 per cent, of the students in Latin. Whether 

 he is more intelligent than 75 per cent, of all 

 the students in the institution is a question 

 which his Latin teacher is not called upon to 

 answer, and which not even the scientist to 

 whoso domain this question belongs, the psy- 

 chologist, is able to answer at present, and, 

 possibly, will never be able to answer. It can 

 not even be said, in justification of giving the 

 highest grade to students of the middle 50 

 per cent, group, that most of the students 

 taking work under this special teacher are 

 doing advanced work, and that this fact 

 proves that they are superior students. If 

 this argument were admissible higher grades 

 would have to be used in college than in the 

 high school, and here again higher grades 

 than in the elementary school. If a student 

 is said by his teacher of comparative philology 

 to have distinguished himself, this can mean 

 only that he has distinguished himself among 

 the students who are taking work in com- 

 parative philology, and not that he ranks high 

 among students taking first-year Latin. 



2. A teacher may say that by accident he 

 happened to have unusually good students. 

 This is a sufficient explanation for giving 

 students of a rather small class in a special 

 year unusually high grades. But it is the 

 very nature of an accident that it occurs but 

 rarely. If a teacher feels that he should give 

 six of ten students the highest grade, he 

 should first ask himself if these students are 

 so extraordinary that not in ten or twenty 

 years is such a good class likely to be found 

 again. If he does not feel that this is prob- 

 able, he can not justify giving a majority of 

 the class the highest grade. They ought to 

 receive the second grade, however satisfactory 

 their work may have been. They have no 

 claim on the grade of distinction. Under no 

 circumstances, therefore, can a teacher justify 

 his grading if it is found that of the total 



