Alfred Binet

“ Let us even say boldly that if, by some unhappy chance, other finer methods should conflict with this, and indicate as defective a child who has shown himself well adapted to school life, it is school life which should be considered the more important test. How, indeed, could one call a child defective who succeeds in his studies and profits by the instruction in the normal way? Thus we sum up by remarking that we possess a very simple method which enables us to recognise all the children whom we have any right to suspect of mental deficiency. ”

“ It is unfair to a normal child to send him to a special school, just as it is unfair to a defective to keep him in the ordinary school. It is better to make such mistakes as seldom as possible. Moreover, it is of the greatest interest to try to forecast the exact way in which errors are most likely to arise. In every machine there is a point of least resistance which requires to be watched. In every human institution there is a detail of organisation where fraud and charlatanism are most liable to occur. ”

“ One could imagine a school, and there are some of the kind, which only cares about producing graduates, without thinking of what will become of them in life, even if they go to the dogs. Every class, every school, for defectives ought to aim at rendering its pupils socially useful. It is not a question of enriching their minds, but of giving them the means of working for their living. This is an important question. Upon this depends our complete and final judgment of the utility of special education. ”

“ There is then no better means of finding out whether a child is intelligent or not than to take into consideration his age and his class. Intelligence, so extraordinarily difficult to judge, is indicated in the above way with a really curious exactness. A child two years behind his age, when irregularities in attendance, absence on account of illness, etc., do not explain his backwardness, is very likely to be less intelligent than one who is in, or in advance of, the usual class for his age. This amounts to judging intelligence by the degree of instruction. ”

“ Let an inspector look at our scale, and say at what age reading is "fluent," at what age a child should write the third phrase with less than ten mistakes. Just let him try, and he will find the result. Let us add that people who are neither inspectors nor teachers will be still more embarrassed. We recollect that at the recent opening of a special class some eminent people appeared much astonished at the intelligence of the pupils. They were surprised at children of twelve years who made replies of which in reality normal children of eight should have been capable. ”

“ But this augmentation in the amount of retardation, which is the first fact to strike the attention, ought not to conceal from us that there is real progress in the mental condition and in the studies; in fact, we may remark that if a defective child, in passing from the age of eight to eleven, has an augmentation of retardation of one year with respect to his companions, this proves that in the same time he has progressed two years with respect to himself. It is like an omnibus which goes more and more slowly, yet advances all the same. ”

“ When the inspector has established the retardation and determined its causes, may he, should he, give his opinion immediately? In most cases, without doubt, a further inquiry is not necessary. But in other cases the need of further inquiry is felt. Instruction is not everything, and there are some children who have difficulty in assimilating school knowledge owing to want of aptitude, to inattention, to laziness, who are yet quite intelligent. It is the intelligence of these children that one would like to determine, and for this it is necessary to make use of some tests of intelligence. ”

“ We may suppose, then, that there is a normal intelligence for each age just as there is a normal height for each age, although in the first case, as in the second, many children fall below and many rise above the standard. It is clearly by no means so easy to establish a norm for intelligence as for height, nevertheless, the method should be the same; that is, we should begin by finding out what the intelligence of children of different ages actually is, and from these results we should derive averages which might be used as norms. ”

“ They expect that the moment defective children are brought before them, they will find something peculiar, something ugly, in their physiognomy. And there are plenty of doctors, let us say frankly, who are equally naïve, and, more serious still, allow themselves to be influenced by unconscious suggestions. If, like our worthy mother, we present to the doctor a child as defective, the doctor will, as a general rule, have no difficulty in demonstrating that he must be so. How many of us are there without stigmata? None of us is built upon the model of the ideal man. ”

“ It is quite clear that special education should be condemned and suppressed if it does not do more than the ordinary schools. We have seen that, in the latter, the defective is a dead weight, and the ill-balanced is a nuisance. Nevertheless, one must not jump to the conclusion that these children are in no wise modified by the school influences, and do not profit in any degree by the instruction. ”

“ An idiot is any child who never learns to communicate with his kind by speech—that is to say, one who can neither express his thoughts verbally nor understand the verbally expressed thoughts of others, this inability being due solely to defective intelligence, and not to any disturbance of hearing, nor to any affection of the organs of phonation. Since a normal child of two years of age can understand the speech of others, and can make itself understood by others, so far as its simple wants are concerned, it is evident that the distinction between an idiot and a normal child is easily made. ”

“ Now, in a school it is the feeble-minded who are in the majority, and it is they who have to be recognised much more frequently than the idiot or the imbecile, and this lessens the importance of the physical examination. We may therefore conclude with this practical rule: a physical examination can never allow us to dispense with a direct examination of the intelligence. Anthropometry, stigmata, and physical appearance must take a second place as means for discovering in school the feeble-minded and the ill-balanced. ”

“ The child's success in his studies is, in fact, the best indication we have of his capacity to adapt himself to the school environment. If the child is unable to keep up with the classes suited to his age, if he is unable to profit like other children from the education provided, this shows that he has not the same degree or the same kind of intelligence as his companions, and there is a presumption, if not an absolute demonstration, that his intelligence is inferior to the average, or that his character is different. ”

“ There is always a personal element which is independent of all administrative prescription. What use can be made of observations which are often merely a collection of paper? If we are some day to understand the rôle of heredity, of alcoholism, of insanity, of poverty, in the production of defective children, it will be necessary for someone, who wants to do a really good piece of work, to set aside all these equivocal documents, and go straight to the facts, collecting his information at first hand and in a critical spirit. Scientific work can be done in no other way. ”

“ But many of these children are ill-balanced; they are excitable, and their bodies are never at rest; they are not amenable to ordinary discipline. They are a constant source of trouble and annoyance to their master and to their comrades. The supervision of a single ill-balanced child is more trouble, the teachers sometimes declare, than the direction of twenty normal ones. Either one or the other must be neglected, and the alternatives are equally objectionable.
What, then, must be done with those children who are not amenable to the ordinary school discipline? ”

“ We must also discuss the question what a mentally defective child really is—a very important question, upon which depends everything else, the organisation of the schools and the special methods of education. Every educational method depends upon a theory, formulated or implicit, which is at once its point of departure and its justification. One would run the risk of falling into a blind empiricism if one were content to apply an educational method independently of the theory which is its soul. ”

“ Let us turn now to our school cases. Our conclusions may be divined. We expressly demand that the utility of the schools shall be rigorously established, and that the teachers and inspectors shall be bound to take exact notes of the mental condition and the state of instruction of the pupils on entrance and on leaving. In this way one will act like any good shopkeeper, who considers it one of his chief duties to keep accounts of what he is doing. His system of book-keeping shows his position in a way which is indispensable if he is not to lose his money. ”

“ When the three examiners meet in order to judge the degree of retardation of the children who are presented to them, is this absence of a definite programme embarrassing? We do not think so. A committee which is duly authorised always manages to do something. The work is done more or less empirically, perhaps, but it is done. Tell the jury to find defective children, and they are sure to find them. The only question is, What will be the value of their selection? and, above all, How can so delicate a quest be saved from empiricism and rendered exact? ”

“ It is not so much to determine the child's precise mental level as to diagnose the condition of his brain, and to discover, by analysis of all the symptoms, the original responsible agent. That, however, is the second part of the doctor's work, and is of scientific interest; whereas the first part, which consists in diagnosing the ailments which co-exist with the mental deficiency, is of immediate practical utility.
Let us note, in conclusion, the scientific trend of the present day. A large proportion of medical work is of scientific interest rather than of direct utility for the patient. ”

“ The replies of the teachers to our questionnaires had already led us to suspect this. Our tests are a confirmation, and even an exact demonstration, of it.
The normal curriculum of primary education, as one can imagine, is therefore not suitable to the mental condition of the majority of defectives. Even by reducing it to its first elements, one would make only a bad fit, for if one were to diminish the abstract portion which is not intended for defectives, one would equally diminish the concrete portion, which, far from being reduced, when defectives are in question, ought to be amplified. ”

“ Thus the defective, like an inert mass, become a dead weight which encumbers the school. They adapt themselves as well as they can to their environment. Their parents are apt to leave them at school as long as possible, because they do not know what to do with them, and probably the teachers do not complain very much, but are ready to put up with these defectives who do not interfere with discipline. The ill-balanced, on the other hand, find the school environment irksome, the discipline hostile. They do not wish to stay at school ”

“ It would not be just on this account to accuse of negligence a teacher who has charge of forty to sixty pupils. The sluggishness, both mental and [21] physical, of these children is a negative quality which an overtaxed master is sometimes weak enough to value. When the defective child becomes subject to discipline, we are told, he does not rebel; for he is obedient, respectful, and probably suggestible. Sometimes the teacher may even recognise in him the presence of qualities of a more positive nature. Some defectives are pleased, and even eager, to do little services. ”