Mentally defective children / by Alfred Binet and TH. Simon ; authorized translation by W. B. Drummond ; with an appendix containing the Binet-Simon tests of intelligence by Margaret Drummond and an introduction by Alexander Darroch.

  • Binet, Alfred, 1857-1911.
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Mentally defective children / by Alfred Binet and TH. Simon ; authorized translation by W. B. Drummond ; with an appendix containing the Binet-Simon tests of intelligence by Margaret Drummond and an introduction by Alexander Darroch. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    aptitudes ought to have been undertaken long ago m the interest of education. Everyone is crying out for it. No one, or almost no one, undertakes it. In the case of the abnormal there is even more urgent need that it should be undertaken, for the younger or less intelligent the pupils, the more depends upon educational methods. When a mind is of a superior kind, very little really depends upon the culture supplied to it. If a Berthelot or a Pasteur should even have had imbeciles as their first masters in chemistry, they would none the less have turned out men of genius. It is those of average intelligence who have need of good methods of instruction. It is the young children who really require intelligent methods. Conse- quently we should give the defectives the best teachers. Every fault of method committed in their education may have consequences which will prejudice them later on. In order to discover the aptitudes of the mentally defec- tive, we have three means of interrogatmg our question- naires. In the first place these contain the following question: Does the child show any particular aptitude either at school or outside ? This question has evoked replies which vary very little, for amongst the aptitudes of the children scarcely anything is mentioned but bodily occupa- tions—errands, domestic duties, gymnastics, sewing, and drawing. In the same questionnaire another question, placed on the following page, is almost identical in form with the first: Is there anything in which the child is par- ticularly interested ? The replies to this second question have been a little more numerous than to the previous one. It is true that the two differ by a shade—^the distinction between interest and aptitude. One may interest oneself in something for which one has no aptitude. The follow- ing table shows the distribution of the replies to the two preceding questions: