If the child merely names an incorrect sum without saying anything to indicate how he arrived at his answer, it is well to tell him to figure it up aloud. “Tell me how you got it.”
Scoring. Passed if the correct value is given in not over fifteen seconds.
Remarks. The value of this test may be questioned on two grounds: (1) That it has an ambiguous significance, since failure to pass it may result either from incorrect addition or from lack of knowledge of the individual values of the stamps; (2) that familiarity with stamps and their values is so much a matter of accident and special instruction that the test is not fair.
Both criticisms are in a measure valid. The first, however, applies equally well to a great many useful intelligence tests. In fact, it is only a minority in which success depends on but one factor. The other criticism has less weight than would at first appear. While it is, of course, not impossible for an intelligent child to arrive at the age of 9 years without having had reasonable opportunity to learn the cost of the common postage stamps, the fact is that a large majority have had the opportunity and that most of those of normal intelligence have taken advantage of it. It is necessary once more to emphasize the fact that in its method of locating a test the Binet system makes ample allowance for “accidental” failures.
Like the tests of naming coins, repeating the names of the days of the week or the months of the year, giving the date, tying a bow-knot, distinguishing right and left, naming the colors, etc., this one also throws light on the child’s spontaneous interest in common objects. It is mainly the children of deficient intellectual curiosity who do not take the trouble to learn these things at somewhere near the expected age.
The test was located in year VIII of the Binet scale. However, Binet used coins, three single and three double sous. Since we do not have either a half-cent or a 2-cent coin, it has been necessary to substitute postage stamps. This changes the nature of the test and makes it much harder. It becomes less a test of ability to do a simple sum, and more a test of knowledge as to the value of the stamps used. That the test is easy enough for year VIII when it can be given in the original form is indicated by all the French, German, and English statistics available, but four separate series of Stanford tests agree in finding it too hard for year VIII when stamps are substituted and the test is carried out according to the procedure described above.
FOOTNOTES:
[64] See discussion, p. [207] ff.
[65] “Ueber eine neue Methode der Intelligenzprüfung und über den Wert der Kombinationsmethoden,” in Zeitschrift für Pädagogische Psychologie und Experimentelle Pädagogik (1912), pp. 145–63.