“Careers’3 Test At School

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 306, 31 December 1935, Page 10

“Careers’ 3 Test At School

LONDON, NoL 23. Boys at an English public school are, for the first time, being psychologically tested to help them in choosing careers. The first “careers laboratory” has been opened at Dulwich College, Loudon. The boys submit voluntarily to tests, calculated to reveal ability, personality and character, whch have been evolved by the National Institute of Industrial Psychology. Thus it is hoped that industrial anu professional “misfits” may be avoided. Boys are given lamp-holders, spring cloths pegs, bicycle wheels, and doorlocks in pieces which they have to put together. The time taken is important. Would-be dentists and doctors undergo a steadiness-of-hand test. Each boy is given a tapering steel peg to insert into six holes varying in size in a metal plate. If he touches the sides an electric bulb flashes. Cube tests are used to indicate practical intelligence. Nine cubes are packed into a square and coloured only on the outside. These are jumbled up and the boy then has to put them together in the shortest possible time. In another test eight cubes are packed in two storeys and painted on the inside. This assembly process is more difficult. Perseverance is assessed by means of two balls of different size which have to be slipped into a run through holes the diameter of the balls. The bails are gathered at the end of the run and reinserted until the boy grows tired or shows impatience. Other tests are for suggestibility, temperament in success and failure, the ability to switch the mind rrom subject to subject, memory, verbal expression, showmanship and alertness.