ID# 341:
"Delinquent girls tested by the Binet scale," by Dr. Louise Morrow and Dr. Olga Bridgman, Reprint from The Training School
Date:
1912
Pages: (1|2|3|4)
Source:
American Philosophical Society, ERO, MSC77,Ser1,Box35: Trait Files

&quote;Delinquent girls tested by the Binet scale,&quote; by Dr. Louise Morrow and Dr. Olga Bridgman, Reprint from The Training School

The second, third and fourth grades in the graded school of this institution are made up of girls from nine to twenty years of age; some of the eighteen- and nineteen-year-old girls can barely read or write, and their instructors experience great difficulty in teaching them to write even the letters to their relatives, with any degree of correctness in construction and punctuation. Of course, this is not true of all the girls here, for in the upper grades are found many who do work of a much higher type, but even most of these are far below the grades in which they would belong, if classified simply according to their physical ages. This deficiency is seldom due to ill nourishment and disease, for as a rule the girls are vigorous and show few physical defects. Frequently the courts which commit these girls fail to recognize the fact of their mental deficiency and irresponsibility, and consider their peculiar attitude as one assumed, perhaps for the purpose of concealing truth. Two sisters, aged seventeen and eleven years, were committed to this school on the charge of immorality, some months ago, and the officer who brought them told what difficulties there had been in getting these girls to give testimony against their mother in the trial which had resulted in their commitment. The girls were very deep, the officer said, and were exceedingly clever when it came to concealing damaging evidence. Sarah, the older of the two girls, is smiling and friendly and says she has gone to the public school off and on since she was six years old, but has never been able to get beyond the first grade. Ida, the younger, has attended school for several years and is also in the first grade. When tested by the Binet-Simon scale as modified by Dr. Goddard, both showed great deficiency, Sarah testing five and eight-tenths years and Ida five and six-tenths years. Sarah's definitions were merely repetitions, and she failed twice to select the prettier of the two heads shown her; Ida failed even to copy the square and did not known[sic] left from right. In her cottage, Sarah's chief pleasure is in transforming every rag she can find into the form of a doll, and carrying it around in her arms, and for this purpose she will even take away napkins from the dining-room unless closely watched. Such deficiency as these two girls show can, of course, never be overcome, and instead of being clever at concealing facts, they rather lack the mentality to comprehend any but the simplest questions. Sixty tests were made of girls selected for various reasons; some at the request of their teachers who wished assistance in classifying them in school; some because they seemed so low grade that it was considered advisable to send them if possible to some institution for mental defectives; and others who were chosen at random. The results were interesting and showed conclusively how little can be learned by mere observation and how inaccurate a classification will be unless controlled by some definite standard, by which each child is subjected to exactly the same series of tests. An

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