Criteria for the Regrading of Schools

Abstract

Perhaps the most significant forward step in methods of school supervision was made possible when the modern more exact methods of mental measurement were put at the disposal of supervisors. School work has always been conceived of as at root an intellectual problem, the problem of the learning process, even though it be admitted that learning has its connection with emotion or other factors. Methods for the quantitative measurement of intelligence become, therefore, the key to school adjustments. Especially in a graded system do they make possible the formation of the homogeneous groups so essential to progress under such conditions. Yet to reorganize and regrade a school according to mental age alone is to make a serious mistake. Mental age is the essential criterion, it is true; but there are contributing criteria which successful reorganization cannot afford to overlook. A discussion and application of a tentative list of such criteria are here presented. Probably first in importance after mental age is the formerly used, and now somewhat discredited, chronological age. Before the advent of mental age, studies in retardation led to attempts at readjustment and reorganization based upon chronological age. This movement in American education occupied something of the same place as that held today by the tendency to grade by mental age. It has its values and should not be thoughtlessly and entirely discarded in favor of the new. Some of the reasons for this follow. To a considerable extent chronological age determines social grouping. Certain characteristics of chronological age may bar a child from the group of his mental age. A child chronologically fourteen, who happens to be mentally seven, does not belong in first grade. He is a social misfit when so placed. He belongs in a specially arranged group in which chronological and mental age tend to correspond. A child chronologically seven and mentally 55