We suggest, therefore, to be perfectly safe, it is well for every child in court to be examined who is two years retarded in school below the standard age of 7 in the first grade and is not able to carry work above the seventh grade. This will include a considerable number of children at the lower border of those presumably passable.
Binet used this standard of two years retardation in recommending examination for children 9 years of age or over (3 years below age 6 in the first grade) (77, p. 44). He adopted it from Belgium. It is also quite commonly followed in this country. The New Jersey law provides for special classes in any school district where there are ten or more children four or more years behind grade. This probably means behind the theoretical position of age 6 in the first grade, one year worse retarded than we suggest examining. Goddard says in one place that “a child who has been in school regularly and is two or three years behind his grade is so suspicious that it is almost certain that he is feeble-minded” ([116]). But later he is much more conservative and says, “The child who is fourteen years old and cannot pass an examination in fourth grade work is almost surely feeble-minded” ([34]). As judged by Strayer's tables the suggestion that examination is desirable for those two years behind a standard of age 7 in the first grade would tend to bring in for examination about 18% of the school boys in half of the cities of 25,000 population and over. This would not be too severe a burden for courts which would be interested only in that portion of these retardates who were brought into court.
This school test may be made of decidedly practical use by those working in juvenile courts where most of the cases are with children over this age. It can be applied in a very simple manner by subtracting 8 from the child's age and only passing without testing those who are in a grade in school higher than the number remaining. For example, if the child is 13 years of age, subtracting 8 gives 5. Now, if the child is in the fifth grade or lower, or entered such a grade at the time he was of this age, one should investigate the question of feeble-mindedness. Unless more than one year of the retardation is explained by the person's absence from school since he was six years of age, he should always be turned over to an expert for examination. This retardation of two years in school attainment below the standard of seven in the first grade may indicate feeble-mindedness if the child has been attending school constantly, although the chances are perhaps 6 to 1 that it does not. It is very desirable that we should have more adequate data on this point. A cautious court, however, would inquire into the mental ability of any child—at least two years retarded in school, i. e., any child the number of whose school grade is not higher than the remainder after subtracting 8 from his life-age at the time that he entered his last grade or who is not actually carrying the school work of an advanced grade. This latter caution we must now consider.
(c) School Success As A Check On The Binet Diagnosis.
The school test can give us still another practical cue as to feeble-mindedness in examining children. Ability to carry successfully school work of some grade certainly could be used as a systematic criterion of passable intellectual ability. What school grade indicates this is not at present possible to determine except as a rough practical check. With the great irregularity in school grading at present known to exist, it certainly would not be possible to say that fifth grade work indicates a passable intellect, although some of the oldest local schools for deficients, like those in Mannheim, do not pretend to carry children above the fourth grade work. Speaking of the school success of the intellectually deficient, Binet said: “One may draw the conclusion, which is of practical value, that one need not seek children of this group in the senior divisions of the primary schools” (77, p. 44). This would correspond to the sixth and seventh grades in this country. Tredgold gives a careful description of the highest work in a London special day-school for the highest grades of deficients. It shows that even fifth grade work would be beyond what is actually taught the children in this school. He says:
“The work done by this class consists of reading and writing, equivalent to normal Standard II; compound addition and subtraction up to 1000, and simple multiplication and division. Excluding a few children—who, in my opinion, are not really defective—it may be said that the scholastic acquirements of none of these children come up to the Standard II. In occupations and manual work they are decidedly better, and a considerable portion of the children of this class can cut out and make simple artificial flowers, knit rugs and weave baskets, with a really very creditable amount of dexterity, which redounds in no small measure to the patient, persevering and systematic care of their teacher” (14, p. 173).
Some of our group with doubtful intellects do better than this. When considering the borderlines with the Binet tests we decided that a child was presumably passable if he scored a test-age of XI. This score would not be made by 11-year-olds as a group, but could probably be attained by 12-year-olds. We may then ask what is the corresponding school position attained by 12-year-olds who have been continuously in school. At the same time we must ask whether the lowest 1.5% of the children of any single age can attain this school grade since it should be high enough to exclude the deficients, no matter how long they have attended school. We happen to have this information for a random group of Minneapolis elementary school pupils on the basis of census of school progress per years of schooling. Considering only the children who had been in school since they were six years of age, we found that 82% of 186 12-year-olds and 92% of 174 13-year-olds had reached the seventh grade, and that the lowest 1.5% of neither age nor of any of the older ages could apparently carry the work of this grade no matter how long they had remained in school. Our records included older pupils who were in their eleventh year of attendance on the elementary schools.
Another indication that reaching the seventh grade is presumptive evidence of passable intellects is found in the fact that none of our group of 653 15-year-olds testing presumably deficient with the Binet scale and only four of the six who tested doubtful intellectually had reached the seventh grade. On the other hand those that think that a 15-year-old testing XI is deficient will be interested to find that 42 out of 51 who tested XI with the 1908 scale were in the seventh grade or above. We are convinced, therefore, that it is a conservative position to take that either passing the Binet tests XI in the 1908 series or ability to pass successfully the seventh grade in school is good evidence of a passable intellect. The rule, of course, does not apply to those who are passed along to the seventh grade because of their size or age regardless of ability to carry the work.
B. Checking Deficiency Among Delinquents by the School Test.
Let us see what the rough preliminary estimates on the basis of school retardation would indicate for the Minneapolis delinquents. We may disregard the upper limit of 14 years since compulsory attendance in Minnesota for backward pupils continues until age 16. For the limits of five and four years of retardation in school below the standard of 7 years in the first grade we would have estimates of 2.6% to 6% of deficiency among the ordinary cases of delinquent boys and 14.7% to 23.1% among the ordinary delinquent girls. Among the recidivist group of boy offenders 3% to 11% would be below these borderlines. Among the Glen Lake School group 12% are four years or more and 4% five years or more retarded. This last is to be compared with our judgment on the basis of individual examinations with the Binet scale in which we concluded that 2% were presumably deficient and 5% doubtful as to deficiency. The estimates on the basis of school retardation are somewhat too large. This would certainly be true for older delinquents. In as much as the laws for compulsory school attendance usually do not enforce attendance after 14 years of age, it would probably be better generally to treat all over 14 years of age as if they were of this age at the time of leaving school. This limiting age of 14 checks more closely with the mental examination records reported by Williams ([149]) and Ordahl ([41]) for groups of delinquents in the California state schools.