Intelligence Tests

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 182, 30 April 1936, Page 7

Intelligence Tests

Sir, —According to a report in your issue of Monday last, the Minister of Education, Hom P. Eraser, in the course of an address to the W.E.A. at Auckland, stated that he had undergone an intelligence test, and that ‘’he had found that h's mental nge was less than one; his intelligence was a minus quantity.” A previous Minister of Education who had advocated these tests had also come out minus when he tried the questions. If the Minister has been correctly reported. his speech reveals ignorance of tlie method and terminology of intelligence testing, or a regrettable carelessness in his phraseology. A grown man with a mental age of "less than one” would be a hopeless idiot; even the Minister’s worst enemies —if any —would scarcely so describe him. He meant, no doubt, that the test showed that his intelligence quotient (1.Q.). which is the ratio between his mental age and his chronological or actual age, was less than unity; unity being the standard of intelligence which the educational experts who. supposedly, prepared the test deem do be that of the exactly average person. It. is usual to express the' I.Q. as a percentage. In the Minister's case, then, his I.Q. was somewhat lower than 100— less than the average—how much less he does not indicate, (It is not correct to say that this shows that his “intelligence was a minus quantity.”) If he was satisfied with the truth of this finding, it is rather surprising—though commendable —that he informs the world at large. But the implication is that he was not satisfied that, the test revealed the true state of affairs—he infers that because his intelligence (and that of a predecessor) had been shown to be somewhat less than average, there must be something wrong with the tests. Admittedly, intelligence tests for adults are still imperfect, and may not measure all the qualities that should be covered. But the spread of intelligence scores within various groups is enormous; some professional mon score low, and some labourers score high; and the most intelligent labourers surpass the least intelligent professional men. In any easy, it is hardly fair for the Minister to belittle even by implication the efficacy of an educational device which, particularly in the realm of juvenile education, is receiving ever-in-creasing attention and use in other parts of the world, and which the Minister and his associates would do well to examine carefully with a view to making tho greatest possible use of it in our own country.—l am, etc., PARENT. Wellington, April 22.