card on entering the school showed that he was in the fourth grade at his former school, he was placed in that grade. If after a few weeks' time he showed that he could not do the work of that grade, he was put back into the third, or wherever he could master the work. If, on the other hand, it was found that he could do better work, he was promoted. On studying the results of the examination, a very positive correlation was notist between the number of years average that a boy was for his grade and the number of years he was below the normal mentality for his chronological age. That is, dulness in school was shown to correlate very positively with psychological defects. If on entering the school he had been examined carefully he could have been placed in the room where he belonged, without waiting for the trial of from three weeks to two or three months in the grade where, according to his school card, he had been placed. In this group there were two very bright boys, both of whom, according to the teacher's report, altho much younger than the other boys of their grade, were doing as good work, if not better, than the best of the class. On the other hand, one can give illustration after illustration of the success of psychological tests where other methods have failed, but in order that I may help, with the time limit set, I shall mention only four specific instances of this success. At demonstrations last fall I had reason to use a normal child to contrast her reaction with a feeble-minded child. A little six-year-old girl, of very unprepossessing appearance, was sent in. It soon developt, thru the child's responses, that she was not only normal but very much brighter than a normal youngster. In fact she showed the mentality of an eight-year-old child. This unusual brightness was mentioned to the teacher and a special promotion advised. The child was tested again this spring and she still retained her mental advantage over normal children of her age.

The second case is of a boy coming from an unusually good home and very fine stock. The parents were very much concerned over the poor school reports that the boy brought home. He was not only reported as doing very poor school work but also as being very troublesome. He was eight years old at the time of the examination, but, much to the surprise of parents and examiner, he past the eleven-year-old tests easily. On the basis of the examination he was put in the next higher grade and since then has had no trouble with school work.

The third child was a girl in one of our moron girls' centers. This girl had acquired in her school a veneer which gave a false impression of her abilities. One felt that she could do much better than she was doing. The principal felt this so strongly that she askt that the girl be placed in a regular room, as she did not belong with feeble-minded children. The examiner, basing her judgment on the girl's response to the psychological tests, advised against it. The girl, however, was placed in a regular grade. After three months' trial, the principal came back with the very earnest request that the girl be placed back in a moron girls' center, as she couldn't

do the work of the regular school and was proving a disturbing factor in the

room.

The fourth child was a seven-year-old girl who had just entered school. When the examiner visited the school the principal greeted her with the statement, "Oh! there was a girl so obviously feeble-minded in our first grade that I put her in the special class without waiting for her to be tested. I showed her to the school doctor and he said, 'Yes she's surely nuts."" The examiner tested the child and found that, contrary to the teacher's and doctor's opinion, the child was normal. It then came out that the child, owing to peculiar home conditions, was very timid and not accustomed to playing or working with other children. On the advice of the examiner, she was placed in the kindergarten, where she soon learned how to play with other children. In a month's time there was a complete change for the better and in the four years that have elapst since this examination the child has moved thru school at a perfectly normal pace.

As the results of our clinic, work piles up, and the feeling grows stronger and stronger that while the psychological test may not be absolutely infallible, the percentage of error is much smaller and the results are very much clearer and more definite than in any other method, either pedagogical or medical, that can be devised. Practical experience with school children shows very clearly that psychological tests do pick out the dull and the bright pupils.

THE PRACTICAL VALUE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTS-DO THEY FIND THE BRIGHT AND DULL PUPILS?

A. H. SUTHERLAND, SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGIST, LOS ANGELES, CALIF.

Any instrument, in the manipulation of which an individual shows his information, ability, or knowledge, is a psychological object. Any set of psychological objects arranged to constitute a problem to an individual is a psychological test.

Every recitation is a test for those who take part in it. Every examination, written or oral, is a test. Every examination of a form used by others or set before pupils elsewhere is a psychological test. Every formal set of exercises or every formal set of questions on which the performance of normal children is known advances a stage toward greater accuracy and is therefore a form to be preferred. Every set of questions or every outline of activities to be performed on which the normal performances of children of different abilities or ages is known is a scientific test, because it lends itself to classification of results and prediction on the basis of the results. But of all the general abilities shown in school work, or playground, or sloyd, or other manual or mental operations, the laboratory has shown that these are made up of simpler mental and nervous functions which have become integrated by practice. The test which is aimed to expose

the stage of advancement attained by an individual in the performance of one of these simpler operations is the product of laboratory psychology, and is the only kind of test which can finally be of educational service.

A Binet test is a set of particular questions from which it is easy to generalize. It is therefore spoken of as a general-intelligence test. By means of this test it is possible to compare the relative accuracy of teachers' judgments with a scientific test. Of 1000 children tested in the Los Angeles schools (all the pupils of twenty-two ungraded rooms and two parental schools and the failures in Grades I to VI in twenty-two elementary schools) the following comparison has been made:

It cannot be doubted that many factors enter into the judgment of the teacher which are eliminated by the scientific test. This is indeed the purpose of the scientific test.

Any test is as good as, and no better than, the person who uses it. There is some pretense that certain psychological tests can be used automatically and mechanically. I have not found it so in my own experience. After teaching several hundred teachers to perform some of the rough preliminary tests (such as the Binet in one or more of its modifications) I have become more and more convinst that teachers will find innumerable ways to vary the procedure; and I am also firmly convinst that they will not do full justice to the child unless they do vary their procedure. There is always an interpretation to be considered. In the minds of many teachers the arithmetic, reading, spelling, and geography tests are being used to diagnose mental defect. This is frequently a rank injustice to the pupils. In many cases I have found a high grade of mentality in children who have fallen in the lower quartile on the standardized school tests. Every teacher should learn to perform the tests, not for purposes of diagnosis of children, but for the guidance of her own behavior toward them.

Tests should be used analytically. First find the arithmetical operation, the reading operation, the spelling operation, which can be performed at or above the median; then find the information and ability as indicated by some modification of the Binet test; and in the light of these two facts test the senses, perceptions, memories, associations, discriminations, apperceptions, and logical abilities as indicated. It is clear, if this is good advice, that a psychological-laboratory training is indispensable to accurate testing.

In some school systems of approximately 10,000 children there will be solved the problems of speed classes, extra promotions, and the care of backward and defective pupils. Here, I venture to predict, the schoolroom tests will be performed, not once merely, but at regular intervals as practice exercises. The teacher and pupil in collaboration will work out

for each pupil his learning curve. The pupil will find in this objective marking system a basis of comparison of his own abilities and progress coordinate with similar marking methods of the playground and of life. He will find in it his best stimulus and his best reward. He will cultivate the moral qualities, the manly and womanly qualities, the social qualities, and the individuality which society will demand of him. He will remodel the teacher. From a day laborer engaged in shoveling facts into thick heads she will begin to assume her proper function, that of guide and inspiration to the enthusiasms of life.

Psychological tests, in the hands of the expert, not only find the bright and the dull pupils but enable us to grade them and rank them objectively. More important still, we are enabled to discover what to do for them, and to predict with a fair measure of scientific accuracy the extent to which they will avail themselves of the opportunities which are set before them.

THE PRACTICAL VALUE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTS-DO THEY FIND THE BRIGHT AND DULL PUPILS?

FRANK CODY, ASSISTANT SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, DETROIT, MICH. A psychological clinic is a clearing-house whose function it is to help in the solution of all kinds of problem cases. It is to the teacher what the specialist is to the general physician. To it are brought the exceptional or atypical children, the misfits in the school system. It is the duty of the staff of the clinic-clinical psychologists, physicians, social workersto discover the cause of the child's retardation and prescribe the proper remedial treatment, whether the treatment be educational, medical, or social. Its practical value to a school system may perhaps be best shown by describing the types of cases it investigates, thus giving an idea of the scope of its work.

1. Feeble-minded or permanently retarded children. Of these children the clinic will exclude from school the ones of so low a grade that they cannot be educated, and thus the system will be saved from the paradoxical situation of attempting to educate those incapable of training. Those children who can to a limited extent be taught will thru the clinic be assigned to special classes, where it is possible to adjust school activities to the child's own rate of progress. In addition to the service thus rendered thru the clinic to the feeble-minded child, there will be the inestimable benefit to the regular grade child of removing the feeble-minded from the regular grade room.

2. Restorable cases.-Normal children who are pedagogically retarded thru late entrance, half-day sessions, poor teaching, peculiar mental make-up, etc., may be assigned to a restoration class, where, under the direction of an expert teacher especially trained to understand such cases,

the work of the room may be adjusted to meet the child's developmental needs. By such treatment these children can be restored to the regular grade, and thus the system will be saved from the waste of repetition and failure.

3. The normal child with certain specific mental defects which do not exclude the possibility of normal progress but require special treatment.—Thru the advice of the clinic these cases can be taken care of by the regular teacher, thus saving the child and the system from the cost of failure or from the expense of residence in a special class or a restoration class.

4. Disciplinary cases.-Thru the clinic the teacher may be advised as to their treatment, or they may be assigned to ungraded classes.

5. Speech cases.-Thru the clinic these cases may be assigned to special speech teachers for correction of speech defects interfering with normal progress.

6. The child with physical defects which interfere with normal progress.— These cases may be directed to physicians or medical clinics for remedial treatment, or, in cases where the defect makes special educational treatment necessary, as in the case of the blind, deaf, etc., the child may be assigned to the proper special class.

7. The supernormal child.—By this we mean the child who is capable of progressing at a more rapid rate than the normal child, or who is capable of a richer, fuller course. These children, considering their possibilities, are often more retarded than subnormal children. As they are probably our future leaders, it is of the greatest importance that we give them an education fitted to their needs, one which will make them the right kind of leaders.

8. Vocational guidance.-Allowing a child when he leaves school to find for himself his place in the industrial world is expensive for him and uneconomical for society. Psychological testing has advanst to a point where it can render valuable assistance in finding the vocation to which a boy or girl is best adapted, thus saving the child and society much valuable time and service.

Can this work be done without a psychological clinic? I do not believe it can be done efficiently or without much waste. The experience of any clinic will verify the statement that most teachers are not qualified properly to place these misfits in the school system. Deaf children are declared by the teacher to be "stupid," disciplinary cases are called feeble-minded. The bright child is often not appreciated, because he is compared with children older than he chronologically. Or a child is declared bright because he makes a good appearance or expresses himself very well. Such a child was recently examined at the clinic. He had been placed in a class for bright children. When tested he was found only normal, with a special gift in language. He was even a little below par in mathematical subjects. By the report of the teacher of the class he was as much of a drag upon her