forests or mines, but to national vitality, and to conserve the latter we must begin by conserving the child." After reading this book one feels that the last word, up to the present time, has been said on the Hygiene of the School Child. KATHERINE STORY. PLAY IN EDUCATION. By Joseph Lee. Macmillan. The aim of this book is to present a true picture of the child. In the words of the author, "The practical conclusions are of secondary interest; if I have succeeded in presenting the child as he really is, and if my presentation carries conviction, the right practical conclusions will be drawn. by somebody." The author has brought out a fact which is very significant for us, which is that there is a gradual unfolding and a special time when each power has its preferred opportunity to assert itself. "There is a time for impersonation, a time for construction, a time for running games, as truly as there is a time for puberty or for the sixthyear molar." "The stress that nature lays upon certain impulses at certain times is not a casual or an isolated suggestion on her part. It means that she has made all her arrangements to have the prescribed exercises registered in actual growth at just those seasons." "With some instincts indeed it is now or never; they cease altogether and leave no trace if not salted away in habit during their special period." A final quotation from the book will convince that it is well worth reading: "Play is to the boy what work is to the man-the fullest attainable expression of what he is and the effective means of becoming more." ALICE STORMS. WESTERN POSITIONS FOR TEACHERS IN EVERY DEPARTMENT OF SCHOOL AND Our openings come direct from school boards and superintendents who ask for our recommendations. Many authorize us to select their teachers outright, year after year. We are in touch with Western schools. We publish "THE ANNUAL ROCKY MOUNTAIN TEACHERS' AGENCY SCHOOL DIRECTORIES" covering the sixteen states from the Missouri River to the Pacific. Our 96-page Booklet, "How TO APPLY FOR A SCHOOL AND SECURE PROMOTION, WITH LAWS OF CERTIFICATION OF TEACHERS OF ALL THE STATES," free to members or sent postpaid for fifty cents in stamps. Our Free Booklet, "The Road to Good Positions," sent upon request THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN TEACHERS' AGENCY Kindergarten Materials and Kindred Supplies FOR Ungraded Classes HAMILTON WEAVING MATS Linen mats with gray borders, black and white strips, and colored wooden weavers. STEIGER'S HOME BUILDING BOX A substantial wooden box, containing 123 two-inch kindergarten blocks for free play, weighing only 25 lbs. EXTRA LARGE SIZE STICKS inch thick, 1 to 10 inches long, larger than the enlarged kindergarten sticks, but neither as large nor expensive as the "Long Stair." SEWING CARDS FOR THE BLIND NATURE STUDY AND OBJECT TEACHING CHARTS. KINDERGARTEN CATALOGS MAILED GRATIS UPON REQUEST. CORRESPONDENCE RELATIVE TO SPECIAL MATERIAL AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF NEW IDEAS SOLICITED. P. O. Box 1905 E. STEIGER & CO. 49 Murray Street, New York Telephone, Barclay 6133-6134 UNGRADED THE UNGRADED TEACHERS ASSOCIATION OF NEW YORK CITY Who Is Feeble-Minded ?* J. E. WALLACE Wallin Psycho-Educational Clinic, Board of Education, St. Louis, During the last three or four years thousands of social and scholastic misfits of every description have been classified as feeble-minded because Binet tests have shown (that is, by standards which, as we have just seen, are not accurate) that they possess mentalities of only X, XI or XII years. Now, if we are justified in pronouncing older-adolescent or adult prostitutes, murderers, criminals, or grade and high school retardates as feebleminded on the basis of these standards, then, by a parity of reasoning, we must be equally ready to call law-abiding, respectable and successful farmers, laborers or business men, who have had no more school training than most prostitutes and criminals are claimed to have had, feeble-minded on precisely the same standards. The logic of this conclusion is inescapable. If we are justified in branding every Binet X, XI or XII-year-old prostitute of limited scholastic training as feeble-minded, logical consistency demands that we so brand every successful Binet X, XI or XII-year-old housewife of limited scholastic training. If we are justified in branding every X, XI and XII-year-old murderer, robber or thief of limited scholastic training as feeble-minded, common fairness demands that we brand every X, XI or XII-year-old successful farmer, laborer or business man of limited scholastic training as feeble-minded. We can not consider X, XI and XII-year-old criminals as feeble-minded because they happen to be criminals and refuse to consider X, XI and XII-year-old housewives, farmers, laborers and merchants as feeble-minded simply because they are law-abiding and successful. If the rule works in the one case, it must work in the other; if it breaks down in the one case, it must break down in the other. During a brief visit in the state of Iowa I had occasion to study a few successful farmers, a business man and a housewife. Each subject was given all the 1908 and 1911 Binet Simon tests above age IX, except the we Excerpts from a chapter on "Who Is Fecble-Minded" in a forthcoming monograph on "Problems of Subnormality," in which facts are presented which show the unscientific nature of the attempt to differentiate high-grade feeble-minded, border-line and backward children and adults purely by a rule-ofthumb procedure based on mental tests and arbitrarily assumed psychological standards. The more learn of psychological diagnosis the more evident it becomes that psychological tests are just like many of the tests of the physician (temperature, pulse, Wassermann, Noguchi, etc.); they are simply one means for aiding the clinician in arriving at a guarded diagnosis. They do not constitute an automatic diag. nosticon, which will enable the examiner to dispense with a thorough clinical examination or to disregard other clinical findings, nor do they obviate the need of technical training on the part of the examiner. After four years of general medical training the physician requires one or more additional years of specialized work in order to become a competent specialist, say as an oculist, pediatrician, neurologist or psychiatrist. The clinical psychologist can not qualify as a specialist on mentally and educationally deviating children, in the sense that a physician qualifies as a specialist in one of the medical branches, without an equally thorough preparation." There can be no field for the clinical psychologist as a specialist on mental and educational deviates so long as boards of education, courts and institutions are encouraged to believe that the mental and educational differentiation of children or adults can be satisfactorily done by any intelligent person who will learn to administer a few tests and to apply a few hypothetical forPsychological diagnosis is no easier than medical diagnosis and the consequences of a blundering psychological diagnosis may be as unfortunate as the consequences of a blundering physical diagnosis. Read, in part, before the American Psychological Association, Chicago, December 28, 1915. Published concurrently in the January number of the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. mulas. opposites test (Subject F, however, was given all the tests above age VIII). The 1908 scale was administered according to my own Guide* and the 1911 according to Goddard's version, which is usually used in this country for diagnosing feeble-mindedness. The subjects were generously rated in the tests: i. e., full credit was given for some responses that did not quite meet the technical passing requirements. Measured by the standards of one of the best rural communities of the country, socially and industrially considered, and by my own intimate knowledge of the subjects tested during the greater part of my life, not a single one of these persons could by any stretch of the imagination be considered feeble-minded. Not a single one has any sort of record of delinquency, or crime, petty or major, or indulges in alcoholic beverages. All are law-abiding citizens, eminently successful in their several occupations, all except one (who is unmarried) being parents of intelligent, respectable children. The heredity is entirely negative, except for a few cases of minor nervous troubles and alcoholic addiction. No relative in the first or second generation, so far as it was possible to get the facts by inquiry, was ever committed to a penal institution or an institution for the mentally defective or disordered. The following are the records of the half dozen whom I found time to test: Mr. A., 65 years old, faculties well-preserved, attended school only about 3 years in the aggregate, successively a successful farmer and business man, now partly retired on a competency of $30,000 (after considerable financial reverses from a fire); for ten years president of the board of education in a town of 700; superintendent or assistant superintendent of a Sunday-school for about 30 years; bank director; raised and educated a family of 9 children, all normal; one engaged in scientific research (Ph.D.), one assistant professor in a state agricultural school, one assistant professor in a medical school (now completing thesis for Sc.D.), one a former music-teacher and organist, a graduate of a musical conservatory, now an invalid, one a graduate of the normal department of a college, one a graduate nurse, two engaged in a large retail business, one holds a clerical position, all high school graduates and all except one one-time students in colleges and universities. Failed on all the new 1911 tests except six digits and suggestion lines (almost passed the central thought test). In the 1908 scale passed all the X-year tests and the following higher tests: Absurdities, 60 words (gave 58 words), abstract definitions and repetition of sentence. B.-S. age, 1908, 10.8; retardation 54 years; intelligence quotient .17. According to the 1911 scale, 10.6 years.† As given in "Experimental Studies of Mental Defectives," 1912, p. 116f. The 1911 rating given the subjects does them more than ample justice, because every one failed to make the 1911 X-year standard and some would probably have failed to make the 1911 IX-year standard had the IX-year tests been given. Nevertheless, all were credited with a basal level of IX years. The years of retardation and intelligence quotients of these cases are based upon the 1908 rating, which more adequately represents their mental level, as seen later. It is recognized, of course, that the rule for determining the intelligence quotient is not valid beyond the years of intelligence maturity. But this limit has not been determined. |