The Development of intelligence in children (the Binet-Simon Scale)
REVIEWS AND CRITICISM. :Author: Alfred Binet, Sc.D., and Th. Simon, M.D. Translated by Elizabeth S. Kite. Vineland, N. J.: The Training School, May, 1916. Pp. 337.
The Intelligence of the feebleminded. By Alfred Binet, Sc.D., and Th. Simon, M.D. Translated by Elizabeth S. Kite. Vineland, N. J.: The Training School, June, 1916. Pp. 328. Illus.
Miss Kite has done a great service to the literature of clinical psychology by the performance of a task for which she was particularly well fitted. Not only does she hold a French diploma for primary instruction, awarded in 1905, but for many years she has been engaged in the application of the BinetSimon scale in America. In these two volumes she has rendered into satisfactory English practically all that the authors of the famous scale have written on the subject of feeblemindedness and its diagnosis. The first comprises five papers on intellectual level, published in L’Annee Psychologique during the years from 1905 to 1911. The second includes three longer papers published likewise in L’Annee Psychologique, in 1908 and 1909, on “The Intelligence of the feebleminded,” “The Language of the feebleminded,” and “Feeblemindedness and dementia.”
Dr Henry Goddard contributes an introduction to each volume. In that of the second volume he says,?”Nowhere does Binet’s genius show more brilliantly than in this work. That he in the midst of a busy life and in addition to all his other work could have acquired so great a knowledge of mental defectives is amazing; the more so when we realize that it was first-hand knowledge gained from observation backed by keen perception, that perception that enabled him to see the truth with a quickness that makes the rest of us, still groping in the dark, question if it was truth Binet saw.”
Many who have worked with the scale in this country have asked themselves this question; but far too many more have gone on applying the scale without any question whatever. As early as 1905, in his first significant paper, Binet observed, “The use of tests is today very common, and there are even contemporary authors who have made a specialty of organizing new tests according to theoretical views, but who have made no effort patiently to try them out in the schools. Theirs is an amusing occupation, comparable to a person’s making a colonizing expedition into Algeria, advancing always only upon the map, without taking off his dressing gown.” Current journals are being filled with the accounts of such “expeditions into Algeria.” It would be well if all clinical psychologists and all teachers of defectives could read Binet’s work in its entirety. Perhaps it would be Utopian to expect that all Binet testers should read it. But every one who does read the writings of Binet, whether in their original French, or in the faithful English of Miss Kite, cannot help but be impressed anew with the greatness of the man, his openness of mind, and the extreme care with which he proceeded to his conclusions.
The books are beautifully printed, and the few slips in English which are to be found in them are probably due to oversights in proof correcting. The Training School is to be congratulated on the production of these two volumes. (175)
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