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Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has been preserved.
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The Binet-Simon tests of children's intelligence have been the subjectof much discussion during the past few years, both in this country andin America. Much of this discussion seems to have been carried on, attimes, without any knowledge of the original aim or purpose for whichthese tests were devised, and as if, so to speak, they were inventedas a means for ascertaining the relative intellectual powers of allchildren, and so of affording to the teacher a ready and sure means ofaccurately classifying and grading the children under his charge. As aconsequence, there is a tendency, in some quarters, to search for andto endeavour to establish some absolute standard or criterion ofintelligence which shall be valid, irrespective of the nationality, orthe class, or the particular environment of the child.
It is hoped that the publication in translation of the work of Binetand Simon in which these tests first appeared, along with the completeseries of tests as extended and revised during the lifetime of theformer, will tend to remove this twofold misapprehension, and make theeducationalist, as well as the wider public interested in socialquestions, acquainted with the real purpose which underlay the devisalor invention of the tests, and so enable all to perceive that theirrelative value, as measuring stages of intelligence, must be judged bythe purpose for which they were devised.
Now, the main purpose of the authors in the devisal of [vi]these tests isto furnish to the teacher a first means by which he may single outmentally backward children, who, upon further examination, may also befound to have some mental defect or peculiarity which prevents themfrom fully profiting by the education of the ordinary school, and whoprobably would benefit more by being educated in a special school orin a special class. But the final selection, it is contended, ofdefective children for special education demands the experience of thedoctor and of the psychologist, as well as the knowledge of theteacher, and the aid of all three is necessary in the devisal ofcourses of study for the mentally defective. Especially important isthe division of mentally defectives into two main clas