is put acts into words and vice versa. Now, changing over a left-handed, talking child suddenly into a right-handed child is likely to reduce the child to the level of a 6 months old infant. By interfering constantly with his acts you break down his manual habits and you may simultaneously interfere with speech (since the word and the manual act are simultaneonsly conditioned). In other words, while he is relearning he will fumble not only with his hands but also with his speech. The child is reduced to sheer infancy again. The unorganized (emotional) visceral control of the body as a whole again becomes predominant. It takes wiser handling to change the child over at this age than the average parent or teacher is prepared to give. The main problem is, I believe, settled: handedness is not an "instinct." It is possibly not even structurally determined. It is socially conditioned. But why we have 5 per cent of out and out left-handers and from 10 to 15 per cent who are mixtures-e.g., using the right hand to throw a ball, write or eat, but the left hand to guide an ax or hoe, etc.-is not known. 17. Great Men Considered Dullards According to [SWIFT, E. J., "Standards of Efficiency in School and in Life," Pedagogical Seminary, March, 1903, Vol. 10, pp. 3-22.] Napoleon Bonaparte does not seem to have distinguished himself in any of his studies at the military school in Paris, unless, perhaps, in mathematics. In the final examination for graduation he stood forty-second in his class. Who were the forty-one above him? ... William H. Seward's teacher once reported to his father that he was too stupid to learn. Patrick Henry "was too idle to gain any solid advantage from the opportunities which were thrown in his way. . . . .. Hence when the hour of his school exercises arrived, Patrick was scarcely ever to be found." At twelve years of age Sir Isaac Newton, as he himself tells us, was at the foot of his class. At that time he showed neither ability nor industry. . . Robert Fulton was a dullard because his mind was filled with thoughts about other things than his studies, but his teachers could not understand this and so the birch rod became a frequent persuader... Oliver Goldsmith's teacher, in his early childhood, thought him one of the dullest boys that she had ever tried to teach and she was afraid that nothing could be done with him. 18. Does the Attempt to Group Children by Ability Result in Adaptation to Individual Differences? 1 [Deffenbaugh, W. S., Some Recent Movements in City School Systems, pp. 1-3, Bulletin No. 27, 1925. United States Bureau of Education, Washington, D. C.] The fact that children differ in ability to progress through the grades has long been recognized, but the general use of intelligence and achievement tests has emphasized the fact that there is a widespread of mental ability in the same class-that some pupils are of the highest intelligence and others of very low intelligence. With all these facts before them, school administrators have come to see how absurd it is to expect children of the same chronological age but of different mental ages to progress through school at the same rate. In order to provide for these individual differences serious attention is being directed toward plans that promise to break up what is known as the lock-step system of grading and promotion. In fact, since the beginning of the graded-school system various attempts have been made to devise plans to assure pupils' continuous progress through school without repetition of entire grades. Semi-annual promotion was considered a means toward this end. More frequent promotion intervals, however, are considered desirable if it is possible to provide them, and several such plans have been tried. When Dr. William T. Harris was superintendent of schools at St. Louis, Mo., he organized classes with about five-week intervals between them, so that the brighter and more industrious pupils could be advanced without skipping a grade, and so that pupils not able to sustain themselves in the classes to which they were assigned could drop back to the class below without losing a half year or even a whole year. 1 Special References: COURTIS, Stuart A., “Data on Ability-Grouping from Detroit," Twenty-fourth Yearbook, National Society for the Study of Education, Part II, Adapting the Schools to Individual Differences (Bloomington, Public School Publishing Co., 1925), pp. 141– 148. HORN, Ernest, "Data on Ability-Grouping from Iowa," Twenty-fourth Yearbook, The National Society for the Study of Education, Part II, Adapting the School to Individual Differences (Bloomington, Public School Publishing Co., 1925), pp. 159–166. Not many cities adopted this plan, yet it had great possibilities, especially in a large school building where five or six groups. could be formed from the same grade. This plan may, however, be recognized to-day in the homogeneous grouping of pupils which is receiving serious attention in many cities. Of 215 cities furnishing information to the Bureau of Education as to the uses made of intelligence tests, 64 per cent are using them in the elementary school for grouping pupils according to ability, 56 per cent in the junior high school, and 41 per cent in the senior high school. A few years ago only a beginning had been made in so classifying pupils. The question, however, has been raised whether the attempt to group children by ability would result in adaptation to individual differences. Dr. S. A. Courtis says: 2 The Detroit results prove conclusively that, whether instruction be individualized or not, children of each level of intelligence, as shown by scores in mental tests, have a very wide range of achievement and very different rates of progress in any special skill. . . . Intelligence is a factor determining progress, but by no means the only factor, so that grouping on an intelligence basis is only a partial solution of the problem of individual differences. A complete solution is furnished by individualization of instruction where any child, whether his intelligence is A, B, C, D, or E may go as fast or as slowly as his condition at the time demands. It is conceded that it is impossible to obtain perfectly homogeneous groups, since no two pupils are exactly alike. Even children with the same intelligence quotients vary widely in their school progress. It is a matter of common observation that lazy, intelligent pupils may not make as rapid progress in school as do the industrious ones who are less intelligent. What may be considered good grouping at the beginning of the school term may be found very poor a month or two after. Dr. Ernest Horn, of the University of Iowa, in summarizing studies made in Detroit, Mich., Los Angeles, Calif., Winnetka, Ill., San Francisco State Teachers College, and the University of Iowa, says: " 3 All these data, gathered by five groups of investigators working independently, point to this conclusion: Children do not fall into natural ability groups and cannot be classified so as to yield homogeneous groupings; groups which appear relatively homogeneous at the time of classification soon vary more within them 2 Twenty-fourth Yearbook, Part II, National Society for the Study of Education. Ibid., p. 166. selves than they do from each other; different types and amounts of instruction are required by different children within each group; ability grouping does not solve the problem of adjusting schools to individual differences. Although the homogeneous grouping of pupils is not an ideal plan for adjusting instruction to individual pupils, it is generally conceded that such grouping makes for better adaptation to individuals than does undifferentiated mass instruction. If, for instance, there are four fifth-grade classes in a school building, it is better to divide them into four or more groups on the basis of ability than it is to assign to each of the four teachers children of all degrees of ability and at all stages of progress within the fifth grade. Designed to reach the individual child more completely than does any method of grouping, several plans of individual instruction that have attracted wide attention may be mentioned. One of these plans originated at the State Teachers College, San Francisco, and has been adopted in other places under city school conditions. Winnetka, Ill., has given the plan the most thorough trial. Another plan of individual instruction, known as the Dalton plan, originated at about the time Winnetka began its experiment. The Dalton plan has been more widely adopted in England and other European countries than in the United States. Among the schools in this country that have adopted the plan are the South Philadelphia High School for Girls, Philadelphia Trade School, the Manhattan Trade School of New York City, and the Children's University School, under the direction of Miss Helen Parkhurst, New York City. ... QUESTIONS AND PROBLEMS 1. What are the chief causes of difference in abilities and in achievement among children? 2. What differences may be attributed to sex? 3. Among children of your acquaintance, what sex differences do you note? 4. How is maturity a cause of individual differences? 5. In what particulars should the problem of differences affect school procedure and organization? 6. Explain fully the importance of heredity in determining achievement. 7. What can be learned of the near ancestry of members of a class? How may such information be verified? 8. To what extent does environment affect school achievement? Illustrate specifically. 9. For what factor in education is environment most re sponsible? 10. Suppose two children of widely different inheritance have been subjected to the same training. What results would you expect? 11. If two children with about the same inheritance have had widely different training, what results would you expect? 12. Granted that inheritance is the principal cause of individual differences in intellectual achievement, how would you define the work of the school? 13. Justify the sectioning of children according to general intelligence. 14. What are the bearers of the heredity? How do they account for individual differences? 15. Is variety among human beings an asset or a liability? Why? 16. Illustrate individual differences (a) in the case of perceptions, and (b) in imagery. REFERENCES BOLTON, F. E., Everyday Psychology for Teachers (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1923), Chap. iv. CAMERON, E. H., Psychology and the Schools (New York, Century Co., 1921), Chap. xiv. EDWARDS, A. S., Psychology of Elementary Education (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1925), Chap. xxi. GATES, A. I., Psychology for Students of Education (New York, Macmillan Co., 1924), Chap. xvii. PYLE, W. H., Nature and Development of Learning Capacity (Baltimore, Warwick & York, 1925), Chap. ix. STARCH, Daniel, Educational Psychology (New York, Macmillan Co., 1919), Chaps. iii-v. STERN, William, Die differentielle Psychologie in ihren Methodischen Grundlagen (Leipzig, 1911). STRONG, E. K., Introductory Psychology for Teachers, Lesson 24 (Baltimore, Warwick & York, 1920). TERMAN, L. M., Intelligence of School Children (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1919), Chaps. iii-vi. et al., Genetic Studies of Genius (New York Commonwealth Fund, 1925). THORNDIKE, E. L., Individuality (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1911). Educational Psychology (New York, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1921), Vol. III. |