Note 6 — Chapter III · ToC

See Année Psychologique, vol. xii., p. 1, and vol. x., p. 116. The method sometimes adopted, for other purposes, of asking the teacher to classify the children according to their intelligence is quite fallacious. Teachers make no allowance for age. Recently an excellent teacher pointed out to us, as the most intelligent in the class, a child who had really, when his age was taken into account, a retardation of two years; but in a class of younger children his age gave him an appearance of mental superiority. [Such facts vitiate much statistical work on the correlation of "brightness" in school-children with other qualities.—Tr.]