“We call our freshmen to the campus a week early. The introductory week is given largely to lectures on college ethics and problems of study. During the first day of the week I give all the entrants both the Alpha and the Otis Group Intelligence tests. The marks and groupings are turned into the office and, so far as possible, we shall make up several representative classes of men supposedly of the same general mental make-up.
“During the first term we shall test the entire student body and then begin to correlate with teachers’ opinions and grade records. In no sense are we committed, but we shall try to influence our programme making and section determination by the testing results. Then I shall issue a report to each student regarding his standing, apparent strong and weak processes, and try to help him in his development.”
Other reports from schools, colleges, and universities indicate the widespread adoption of intelligence tests in determining the probable measure of success which a student will attain in his studies, or whether he is fitted, mentally, for the career he contemplates.
The group tests of intelligence have demonstrated their value in educational work to such an extent that, following the lead of Columbia University, a large number of prominent American universities and colleges are employing tests of intellectual ability as at least partial substitutes for the time-honoured college entrance examinations. Instead of requiring each prospective student to take an examination in which he would be required to demonstrate that he remembered the facts learned in high school, the present scheme is to examine the men who desire to enter college by means of the psychological tests designed to measure general fitness and intelligence. The theory behind this movement is that men should be allowed to enter college provided their intelligence and mental capacity is such as would enable them to profit by the instruction, regardless of whether such men could recall the required percentage of the facts taught them by their high school teachers.
This same philosophy will undoubtedly spread very widely through the high schools and elementary schools as well as through the colleges. A child should be allowed to undertake that work for which he is fitted by nature and intellectual capacity, regardless of what his past academic training may have been. It is unreasonable to require young men who, because of some accident, left school early in life and have continued their education through their own efforts, to go back and begin with younger pupils a course of study, which will have very little practical value to them, before they are allowed to undertake the professional courses they desire and are capable of undertaking at once. The group-examination method, which is employed by the majority of the Mentimeter tests, has been the greatest possible stimulus to the employment of intelligence examinations, because of the great saving of time which it affects over the method of individual examinations.
CHAPTER VIII
MENTAL TESTS IN INDUSTRY
The case for scientific mental tests as a prerequisite to the employment of beginners in business and industry has been well put by Dr. Henry C. Link. In addressing a convention of California railroad men, Doctor Link said:
“Would you, gentlemen, enter into a contract to buy material from a concern, the excellence of whose product you had grave reason to doubt? Would you place orders to the extent of three and one half millions of dollars a year, waive inspection of material, accept whatever was offered you, and make no effort to get your money’s worth? You would not—not if you expected to hold your job. And yet, that is what you are doing with respect to the public education system of California. In 1916 the railroads of this state paid in operative taxes $7,151,583. Of this sum 51 per cent., or $3,647,300, was used for purposes of public education.
“The boys and girls sent you from the public schools you take into your service, sometimes after a perfunctory mental examination, generally with none; in other words, you waive inspection, and then complain of the character of material after it has reached you and been paid for.”
It is, of course, in the case of the untried beginner in business or industrial life, the boy or girl fresh from school who has as yet had no opportunity to discover or to demonstrate his or her ability or capacity, that the application of scientific mental tests is most essential.