The answers of the children may be good, passable, mediocre, or negative (the child makes no reply), or even absurd or unintelligible. In marking the replies one does not take account of a wrong word or an awkward phrase, but considers the meaning and whether the child has really understood. It may seem that marking these replies would be rather delicate and arbitrary, but in practice the difficulty is not great. Here are some examples:
(10) The reply, "Ask some capable person, a master, a parent," is a good reply. "Ask it," "Listen for it," are passable replies.
(7) The reply, "Pay and apologize," is good. "Pay for it," is passable.
(8) The reply, "Forgive him," is better than the reply, "Don't tell tales."
(1) The reply, "Hurry up," is better than, "Ring the bell," "Hurry to-morrow," "One is kept in."
(3) The reply, "One remains ignorant," is better than, "One is punished."
(4) The reply, "Take a rest, then walk," is better, being more explicit, than simply, "Walk."
We mark the good replies 3, the passable 2, the mediocre 1, the absurd and silence 0. Silence sometimes makes one hesitate. It may result from timidity, or even from prolonged reflection. It is necessary, without changing the form of the question, to encourage the child and to press him to reply. With a little practice one can easily see who is trying to find an answer and who does not understand.
We have stated that normal children of eleven years of age replied to the questions 10 to 13. It must be understood that by this we mean that the majority replied. There are no tests which can characterise all the subjects without exception of a given group. There are always failures. By way of example, we shall quote the observations we made in an elementary school with our questions 10 to 13, which we put to all the children of eleven, who were distributed, according to their ability, in the different classes. There were thirty-six of these pupils. The maximum of marks obtainable was 12, since there were four questions, and a good reply was worth 3. We then obtained the following averages: