PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 17 October 1924, Page 7

PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTS.

limits .of usefulness. . CANAL BOAT CHILDREN’S INTELLIGENCE. . LONDON, Sep. 1. *“ e , €xac * limit s of the domain of psychology from a question of never ending discussion. There are those who would dismiss it from all practical application, and there are those at the opposite pole who would overwork the word and use it largely with meanings foreign to its proper significance. \Ve were towards the end of the war hustled into a sort of awe of the tests of intelligence used by American military authorities in classifying recruits they cry for “psychological tests.’’ this wave of unreasoning adoption of the new thing reached its crest at that gigantic examination campaign carried out by the Civil Service Commissioners in London, whereby they could select from among the “temporaries” those uho might be given a chance to enter the permanent Civil Service of G reat Britain. It was a nightmare of mass organisation, when under the glass dome of the Crystal Palace thousands of perspiring candidates turned over thousands of leaves to the shrill sound of the overseers’ whistle. From youngsters straight from school up to white-haired men and women, who by virtue of their war service had gained a right to compete, they perspiringly and hurriedly jotted down the answers. The test was a colossal, failure. It manifestly did not achieve its end, for it excluded in very many cases good candidates and included bad. The wave of. uncritical acceptance of such tests is subsiding, and evidence of the fact is provided by the issue this week of a report published at the reasonable price of two shillings, a fact which may make it available to the public, which ought to read it. Four years ago the Board of Education invited a consultative committee to prepare a report on the possible use of psychological tests of educable capacity in the public system of education.

The committee is frankly not over enthusiastic. We are not told for certain that- there is any such quality as “intelligence” apart from acquirement. We are told that in testing general capacity there must be some material on which to work, so that the results obtained by the application of tests of intelligence necessarily depend to some extent on environment, including schooling. On the other hand, the tests of canal-boat children and others who have had little schooling have revealed a degree of intelligence in some cases, beyond anything which might he discovered by an ordinary examination. The intelligence tests have a value.,' What is deprecated is over much reliance on them without checks. They do help towards elucidating earlier the type of child who, backward at school, shows efficiency as an adult. The old examination tests were manifestly insufficient. A child might write a good essay or lie quick at figures and yet be a ninny in other directions. School teachers and parents have, of course, known this a long time, but the school teacher, victim himself of an unenlightened system, was apt to gauge his pupils-by the same test as he himself liar! been measured.

The first break away from this literary type of test had to he made when laboratory work forced its way into .schools, when the class teacher’s report on day to day work had to complement written tests. The introduction of the psychological method of test is all to the good provided it he not ridden too hard. Certainly it can help in coming to a decision as to what calling a boy or girl should take up. At the Institute of Industrial Psychology young people may be tested, and already much valuable work has been accomplished there in the way of j&ieping round pegs out of square holes. If a hoy shows an imperfect sense of colour discrimination he had better not become a house painter. If a girl breaks down In sucli tests as threading beads quickly, discriminating parallel lines, or selecting a remembered colour from several alternatives, she should pause before entering upon dressmaking a,s an occupation. Discussion, too, rage's round the question of the proper age at which children shall be transferred to a secondary school, and the report pronounces a firm opinion on this. It says that any system of selection, whether by intelligence tests or by examination, which seeks to determine at the age of eleven the educational future of cln’ldren is. and must be, gravely unreliable. While agreeing that the normal age of transfer to a secondary school should be eleven, the committee rightly point out the waste of capacity winch is involved in any arrangement under which a limited number of free places is fixed ; n advance, and only such children are admitted' to higher education ;v-r> successful in th° competition for this fixed number of places.