Читать книгу The Measurement of Intelligence - Lewis M. Terman - Страница 22

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Finally, Binet had three teachers come to his laboratory to judge the intelligence of children whom they had never seen before. Each spent an afternoon in the laboratory and examined five pupils. In each case the teacher was left free to arrive at a conclusion in her own way. Binet, who remained in the room and took notes, recounts with playful humor how the teachers were unavoidably compelled to resort to the much-abused test method, although their attempts at using it were sometimes, from the psychologist’s point of view, amusingly clumsy.

One teacher, for example, questioned the children about some canals and sluices which were in the vicinity, asking what their purpose was and how they worked. Another showed the children some pretty pictures, which she had brought with her for the purpose, and asked questions about them. Showing the picture of a garret, she asked how a garret differs from an ordinary room. One teacher asked whether in building a factory it was best to have the walls thick or thin. As King Edward had just died, another teacher questioned the children about the details of this event, in order to find out whether they were in the habit of reading the newspapers, or understood the things they heard others read. Other questions related to the names of the streets in the neighborhood, the road one should take to reach a certain point in the vicinity, etc. Binet notes that many of the questions were special, and were only applicable with the children of this particular school.

The method of proposing the questions and judging the responses was also at fault. The teachers did not adhere consistently to any definite formula in giving a particular test to the different children. Instead, the questions were materially altered from time to time. One teacher scored the identical response differently for two children, giving one child more credit than the other because she had already judged his intelligence to be superior. In several cases the examination was needlessly delayed in order to instruct the child in what he did not know.

The examination ended, quite properly for a teacher’s examination, with questions about history, literature, the metric system, etc., and with the recitation of a fable.

A comparison of the results showed hardly any agreement among the estimates of the three teachers. When questioned about the standard that had been taken in arriving at their conclusions, one teacher said she had taken the answers of the first pupil as a point of departure, and that she had judged the other pupils by this one. Another judged all the children by a child of her acquaintance whom she knew to be intelligent. This was, of course, an unsafe method, because no one could say how the child taken as an ideal would have responded to the tests used with the five children.

In summarizing the result of his little experiment, Binet points out that the teachers employed, as if by instinct, the very method which he himself recommends. In using it, however, they made numerous errors. Their questions were often needlessly long. Several were “dilemma questions,” that is, answerable by yes or no. In such cases chance alone will cause fifty per cent of the answers to be correct. Some of the questions were merely tests of school knowledge. Others were entirely special, usable only with the children of this particular school on this particular day. Not all of the questions were put in the same terms, and a given response did not always receive the same score. When the children responded incorrectly or incompletely, they were often given help, but not always to the same extent. In other words, says Binet, it was evident that “the teachers employed very awkwardly a very excellent method.”

The above remark is as pertinent as it is expressive. As the statement implies, the test method is but a refinement and standardization of the common-sense approach. Binet remarks that most people who inquire into his method of measuring intelligence do so expecting to find something very surprising and mysterious; and on seeing how much it resembles the methods which common sense employs in ordinary life, they heave a sigh of disappointment and say, “Is that all?” Binet reminds us that the difference between the scientific and unscientific way of doing a thing is not necessarily a difference in the nature of the method; it is often merely a difference in exactness. Science does the thing better, because it does it more accurately.

It was of course not the purpose of Binet to cast a slur upon the good sense and judgment of teachers. The teachers who took part in the little experiment described above were Binet’s personal friends. The errors he points out in his entertaining and good-humored account of the experiment are inherent in the situation. They are the kind of errors which any person, however discriminating and observant, is likely to make in estimating the intelligence of a subject without the use of standardized tests.

It is the writer’s experience that the teacher’s estimate of a child’s intelligence is much more reliable than that of the average parent; more accurate even than that of the physician who has not had psychological training.

Indeed, it is an exceptional school physician who is able to give any very valuable assistance to teachers in the classification of mentally exceptional children for special pedagogical treatment.

This is only to be expected, for the physician has ordinarily had much less instruction in psychology than the teacher, and of course infinitely less experience in judging the mental performances of children. Even if graduated from a first-rank medical school, the instruction he has received in the important subject of mental deficiency has probably been less adequate than that given to the students of a standard normal school. As a rule, the doctor has no equipment or special fitness which gives him any advantage over the teacher in acquiring facility in the use of intelligence tests.

As for parents, it would of course be unreasonable to expect from them a very accurate judgment regarding the mental peculiarities of their children. The difficulty is not simply that which comes from lack of special training. The presence of parental affection renders impartial judgment impossible. Still more serious are the effects of habituation to the child’s mental traits. As a result of such habituation the most intelligent parent tends to develop an unfortunate blindness to all sorts of abnormalities which exist in his own children.

The only way of escape from the fallacies we have mentioned lies in the use of some kind of refined psychological procedure. Binet testing is destined to become universally known and practiced in schools, prisons, reformatories, charity stations, orphan asylums, and even ordinary homes, for the same reason that Babcock testing has become universal in dairying. Each is indispensable to its purpose.