FIG. 10. HELEN CRAIG REPORTS THE ABOVE DATA IN A THESIS (UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN LIBRARY, 1918) WHICH SHOWS CONSIDERABLE OVERLAPPING OF PUPIL ABILITIES. IN THE STUDY, THE ATTAIN

MENTS IN DIFFERENT SUBJECTS ARE AVERAGED.

4. Individual Differences

[EDMAN, IRWIN, Human Traits, pp. 187–188. Mifflin Co., 1920.]

Boston, Houghton

Individuals differ, it must further be noted, not only in specific traits, but in that complex of traits which is commonly called "intelligence." In the broadest terms, we mean by an individual's intelligence his competence and facility in dealing with his environment, physical, social, and intellectual. This competence and facility, in so far as it is a native endowment, consists of a number of traits present in a more or less high degree, traits, for example, such as curiosity, flexibility of

native and acquired reactions, sociability, sympathy, and the like. In a sense an individual possesses not a single intelligence, but many, as many as there are types of activity in which he engages. But one may classify intelligence under three heads, as does Thorndike: mechanical intelligence, involved in dealing with things; social intelligence, involved in dealing with other persons; and abstract intelligence, involved in dealing with the relations between ideas. Each of these types of intelligence involves the presence in a high degree of a group of different traits. Thus, in social intelligence, a high degree of sympathy, sensitivity to praise, and blame, leadership, and the like, are more requisite than they are for intelligent behavior in the realm of mechanical operations or of mathematical theory. person may be highly intelligent in one of these three spheres and mentally helpless in the others. Thus, a brilliant philosopher may be nonplussed by a stalled motor; a successful executive may be a babe in the realm of abstract ideas. But what we rate as a person's general intelligence is a kind of average struck between his various competences, an estimate of his general ability to control himself in the miscellaneous variety of situations of which his experiences consist.

5. Individual Differences: Mental Types

Some children excel in dealing with abstract ideas. They may have the ability to deal with the concrete, but they are particularly interested in the abstract. Such children

invariably do well in mathematics, grammar, and abstract aspects of the sciences. Then there are other children whose best work is done when dealing with concrete situations. Both may be good thinkers. Then there are some children who manifest strong tendencies to action and leadership. They are especially able in controlling people or managing things. There is a fourth type who excel in enjoyment and appreciation of literature, art, music and nature. These types are not distinct one from the other. They overlap in many cases. In fact, most children are a composite mixture of all these types of abilities. Teachers will find, however, that many of the pupils are controlled by the dominant characteristics mentioned.

Similar variations will be found among any group of chil

dren if they be tested for memory, imagination, conduct, attention, thinking, ideals, habits, interests, and the whole gamut of human traits.

6. Variations of Human Nature

[JUDD, C. H., Cleveland School Survey, pp. 139-144, 147. Cleveland, Cleveland Foundation, 1916.]

First, in all grades girls do better than boys in oral reading. . . . The results show that children of American born parents are superior in achievement during the first three grades and from that point on follow the average very closely. The fact that the American child is not handicapped by unfamiliarity with the English language gives him a slight advantage during the first few years. Italian pupils are seriously handicapped. The sections of the city in which these pupils live are such that factors other than mere lack of English in the homes are probably to be recognized as contributing to the low rank of these pupils.

The children in Jewish schools are distinctly ahead of the average Cleveland pupils. In spite of the fact that they are often surrounded by poor economic conditions and that they often use a foreign tongue, these children seem able to rise above their handicaps better than any other nationality under similar conditions. Poles and Bohemians make slow progress during the first year, follow the average closely for the next four, and then drop below the average during the last three years.

7. Individualizing Instruction

[DEWEY, John and Evelyn, Schools of To-morrow, pp. 137-139. New York, E. P. Dutton & Co., 1915.]

A truly scientific education can never develop so long as children are treated in the lump, merely as a class. Each child has a strong individuality, and any science must take stock. of all the facts in its material. Every pupil must have a chance to show what he truly is, so that the teacher can find out what he needs to make him a complete human being. Only as a teacher becomes acquainted with each one of her pupils can she hope to understand childhood, and it is only as she understands it that she can hope to evolve any scheme of education which shall approach either the scientific or the artistic standard. As long as educators do not know their individual facts, they

can never know whether their hypotheses are of value. But how are they to know their material if they impose themselves upon it to such an extent that each portion is made to act just like every other portion? If the pupils are marched into line, information presented to them which they are then expected to give back in uniform fashion, nothing will ever be found out about any of them. But if every pupil has an opportunity to express himself, to show what are his particular qualities, the teacher will have material on which to base her plans of instruction.

Since a child lives in a social world, where even the simplest act or word is bound up with the words and acts of his neighbors, there is no danger that this liberty will sacrifice the interest of others to caprice. Liberty does not mean the removal of the checks which nature and man impose on the life of every individual in the community, so that one individual may indulge impulses which go against his own welfare as a member of society. But liberty for the child is the chance to test all impulses and tendencies on the world of things and people in which he finds himself, sufficiently to discover their character so that he may get rid of those which are harmful, and develop those which are useful to himself and others. Education which treats all children as if their impulses were those of the average of an adult society (whose weaknesses and failures are moreover constantly deplored) is sure to go on reproducing the same average society without even finding out whether and how it might be better. Education which finds out what children really are may be able to shape itself by this knowledge so that the best can be kept and the bad eliminated. Meantime much is lost by a mere external suppression of the bad which equally prevents the expression of the better.

8. Comments on Individual Differences

[GESELL, Arnold. Quoted in Bolton's Everyday Psychology for Teachers, pp. 39-40. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1923.]

Take an ordinary kindergarten and first grade, with a combined enrollment of one hundred pupils, and among this number we may expect to find at least one child feeble-minded; one child who stutters; two or three who seriously lisp; another extremely anæmic; a badly spoilt child; another babyish-a year or two retarded in mental or moral growth; and still another morally weak. There will be one "negative" child-passive,

colorless; one oversensitive, nervous child; one superficially precocious child; another distinctly super-eager, ardent, imaginative, sociable. The diversity of the ungraded class membership is often pathetically picturesque. Here is the roll-call for one such class in a large Eastern city: Twenty-four boys, sixteen girls; nationalities Norwegian, French, Irish, Armenian, Italian, Austrian, American, Chinese; names range from James Moriarity and Ong Yung to Arcangelo Christiano and Nishan Kalehadoarion; ages range from 6 to 18; mentality, from giggling imbecility to ambitious intelligence; morality, from truancy, cigarette smoking, and thieving to good behavior; parentage, noted in special cases, includes a drunken mother, an insane father, and in three instances gypsies; physical conditions from partial blindness and deafness, and spinal trouble sleepy.

and anæmia to vigorous physical health. Think of the problem before this teacher, who may not even have a working definition of feeble-mindedness in her consciousness to aid her in classification and instruction!

9. Judging Pupils

[THORNDIKE, E. L., Principles of Teaching, pp. 31, 84-85. New York, A. G. Seiler, 1916.]

The teacher is usually one who has himself been successful at this sort of thinking and so is more in sympathy with it. He may even thoughtlessly sneer at the mental ability of those who lack it. Your son will make a first-rate mechanic or grocer, but he isn't fit for high school,' said such a one. The proper retort would have been, 'Your school, then, is first-rate for one kind of a boy, but it isn't fit for the majority.'

[An] . . . error from which all of us suffer is to credit our scholars with natures like our own. We think of them as duplicates more or less of ourselves. If we are quick learners, we expect too much of them; if we have sensible, matter-of-fact minds, we have no patience with their sentimentalities and sensitiveness; if we are precise and neat and systematic we fail to understand how intolerable it is for them to lead a regular, orderly existence. Teachers need to add to the maxim, 'See ourselves as others see us,' the still more important one, 'See others as they are.""