The Problem of Educability
- Author:
Lightner Witmer.
The United States Commissioner of Education called a conference recently in Chicago, of persons particularly interested in the field of elementary education, to consider what changes were necessary and practicable in order to improve the elementary school system of the country for the purpose of meeting after-war conditions in a satisfactory and scientific manner.
At every point, it seems to me, from the kindergarten to the professional schools, from the four-year-old level up to the level of the graduate student, our school system can be improved by a change of aim, content and method.
At two points, the elementary school system needs immediate and thorough-going reconstruction. These two points are the proficiency level of the first grade, and the proficiency level of the working certificate. The former is the age level of the child of from four to six; the latter the age level of the boy or girl of from fourteen to sixteen. On the intellectual scale, these levels may also be designated literacy levels: the first grade level being the competency level of literacy, while the working certificate level summarizes the efficiency standard to be attained in reading, writing and arithmetic before the boy or girl is released from school and permitted to go to work. Below the competency level of literacy are all those who cannot read, write and cipher. They have not yet proved themselves to be possessed of the mental abilities necessary to acquire an elementary education in the three R’s?they are the illiterates?a very large percentage of the population of even civilized countries. Among them are uneducated adults, normal perhaps, but a potentially dangerous element in a democracy; children who have not yet reached the school age; foreign-born and other children who have not yet attended school long enough to enter even the portals of an elementary education; and, finally, many feeble-minded children and adults who are congenitally illiterate and uneducable. Most of the so-called backward children in our schools are not backward, but feeble-minded; some of them are trainable, but many are merely custodial cases, not even trainable. The spectacle presented by our schools trying to educate uneducable children would be a scientific scandal, were elementary education a science. As it is, nobody expects the school to diagnose its children accurately, or to base an expert educational training upon what may be known of a child’s capabilities and defects.
I approach the problem of educability from the standpoint of the Clinical Educator. Every “attempt to teach” an individual child is a “psychological test.” The performance of each individual can be measured and the result expressed in such exact terms that the performances of different individuals may be accurately rated on standardized scales. Only in this way can we learn whether a child has enough ability to be worth educating. Only after tests have been applied can we find an answer to the insistent query: “How many children otherwise normal are congenitally incompetent to acquire the three R’s, whether as a tool for learning or for use in life? ” Every first grade pupil beginning to learn to read, displays to the Clinical Psychologist and Educator a measurable competency, partly congenital and partly acquired. Among the many abilities, constituting this competency to read, are eyesight, hearing, articulation, attention, memory span, retentiveness, imagination and intelligence. The greater the pupil’s comptency, the more quickly will he learn to read. After he has learned to read, practice may give him more or less efficiency in reading up to any established standard of efficiency.
The first grade standard of efficiency in reading is approximately zero?a pupil learns to read on his congenital and acquired competency. With the second grade he begins to acquire efficiency in reading. What is our standard of efficiency for reading in the sixth grade? It should be precisely defined, for children are being denied the right to work because they have not attained this standard. How many fail to reach this standard of efficiency, because they cannot reach it, owing to deficient competency, or in plain words, “lack of ability.” Is the percentage of congenital illiterates in the schools a large one? Some school men will not even understand the question, to say nothing of being able to answer it. You will assent to the proposition that it is a foolish waste of time to try to teach children to sing who are tone deaf, or to train color-blind boys to be locomotive engineers. We are forcing word-blind and word-deaf children to try to get an education they can never get, and at the same time refusing them the training they could put to good use in what, after all, is the chief business of life, i. e., to earn a living. The object of the elementary schools is to train children to adequate proficiency in reading, writing and arithmetic. The first grade level of proficiency is reached by a pupil if and when he gives convincing evidence that he has the competency to acquire reading, writing and arithmetic. Forty per cent of all children between the ages of four and six can learn, in my estimation, to read, to write, to add, to subtract, divide and multiply up to twelve on thirty minutes’ instruction per day, five days a week for nine months. The best ten per cent can even do better than this. Two weeks ago I tested at the Psychological Clinic of the University of Pennsylvania a little boy four years and three months old. He gave a memory span of six. He learned in one trial to do my Cylinder Test of Intelligence, and he gave the following record of performance as a result of only fifteen minutes of instructon by the diagnostic procedure: ‘“Are you a girl,’ I said?” “No,” he answered. “Good, write your answer on the board.” He wrote on the board the word “no” in script. “Whatshines at night,” I went on? “The moon.” “Do you know how to spell ‘moon’?” “No.” “M-o-o-n,” I told him, “now write it on the board.” He had never before attempted to make a script letter, but he was able to write the word “moon,” thus demonstrating the value of the diagnostic procedure in teaching. At command he made a vertical stroke (I had just a moment before taught him the difference between horizontal and vertical) then at command he made:?”From the bottom of the vertical stroke a short horizontal stroke to the right.” When I asked him what letter he had just made, he did not know. He had learned to make the capital print letter “L” before he had learned to recognize it. I estimated from the results of fifteen minutes of diagnostic teaching, that I could teach him to express some of his thoughts in simple written sentences within three months’ time, when he would be four and one-half years old.
Last November I sent to the first grade a boy who was five years old last July, because I discovered he was exercising his intelligence chiefly to “beat the game,” that is to say, he was acquiring great skill in avoiding mental effort. This boy has been in my professional care since he was two years and seven months old, when I took him for educational treatment, apparently a feeble-minded child. He had then just begun to walk; he had a vocabulary of eight words, and during the first two weeks his best spontaneous observation, as recorded in my notes of the case, was to look at his teacher through an empty picture frame he was holding in his hands. After five months of clinical teaching, at the age of three years and two months, I put into his hands a copy of Monroe’s Primer which he then saw for the first time. As I pointed to a line for the purpose of testing him, he correctly read the words: “A cat can see a dog.” At the opposite pole from these children, the poorest ten per cent can perhaps never learn to read, write and cipher. Their competency is below the literacy level. You may teach them, or preTHE PROBLEM OF EDUCABILITY. 177 tend to teach them, the three R’s but you will not be able to give them the three R’s as educational tools. You will give them only an “accomplishment/’ as you may train your dog to walk on his hind legs.
If you do not agree with me that it is absurd to try to educate uneducable children; if you do not believe that it is destructive to the competency of competent children to make them take the slow and labored pace of the incompetent ones, at least you will agree, I hope, that until the competency of each child is measured when he first goes to school, you will not begin to understand the educational problems involved in the acquisition of reading, writing and arithmetic. The public schools are teaching the three R’s to children very much as our grandmothers doctored them before the scientific physician came with thermometer, antitoxin and the trained nurse. I assert that it is possible to measure with ease the competency of every child to acquire reading, writing and arithmetic, before he enters the second grade. I affirm that when you come to make this test you will find that fifty per cent of all children can learn to read, write, add, subtract, multiply and divide up to twelve before they have passed their sixth birthday and they can do most of this as play and all of it as an hygienic exercise for both mind and body. The time for this work is before the child is six, and not afterwards. Every child who cannot pass the competency test in the three R’s set by the diagnostic procedure in education, should be separated for the second and higher grades from the fifty per cent of competents, in order that he may not obstruct the progress of his more highly endowed brothers and sisters. He should also be provided with a different curriculum adapted to his abilities and defects. These reforms would come into practice at once, as a result of an overwhelming derriand, if Clinical Tests and Measurements were employed by the schools to discover and eliminate the incompetent, for the results would make plain what an enormous waste of time, brains and effort our present indiscriminate mass education is demanding from both child and teacher.
A second point in our school system, where clinical measurement is indispensable, is at the fourteen-year-old level, when the boy or girl is refused his release from school in order to go to work, because a sixth grade or some other standard of proficiency has not been reached. If the public schools are to justify themselves before the community, they must see to it that they undertake the scientific educational treatment of the children to whom they refuse permission to go to work. Some children were dragged from remunerative employment last year, who were earning more than the truant officer who seized them, and nearly as much as the teacher into whose hands they were put for educational treatment. I am a friend of the schools, and I believe in upholding our compulsory education law, but nevertheless when I am consulted as a Clinical Psychologist I am often compelled to advise parents asking for the vocational guidance of their backward but normal children, children ready and willing to work but unwilling or unable to learn, that the schools are a degenerating influence, a worse place in many instances than even the streets. I am compelled, as a scientific expert, when parents of extra bright children, six years of age ask: “Would you advise sending my little boy or girl to the first grade?” to answer emphatically, “No, your child has a good mind, the public school may ruin it.”
This situation can be changed, but it will not be much changed for the better, until the orientation of the Clinical Psychologist is accepted by the schools, and they proceed to measure the competency of the beginner, and to ascertain the efficiency possibilities of the child who is not allowed to depart in peace to begin to make a living. When the Commissioner of Education invited discussion of the changes in the elementary education of the country required for greater efficiency, he specified changes in aim, content and method. He did not specify the factor charged with higher potency for progress or for obstruction than any one of these i. e., the personnel. Clinical education will need to develop a new personnel orientated in clinical psychology, and trained to employ diagnosis at every step in the educational treatment. Until that personnel is chosen and trained, no real progress can be made. When the personnel arrives and begins to work, obstruction, stupidity, ignorance and inefficiency may still negative its every effort. You cannot become a clinical educator as you may join church. Something more is needed than a change of heart, though this would help mightily in some quarters. The best ten per cent of our children do their school work at the level of the mediocre, because the worst ten per cent is neither discovered nor eliminated. The best ten per cent of the personnel cannot function at its own level of efficiency, because it must meet the requirements of a prescribed course of study administered by a prescribed group of supervisors, many of whom are well below the proficiency level of the mediocre. The testing and rating of the personnel will throw into the foreground the ten per cent group, who, because of incompetency, obstruction, ignorance or inefficiency, will have to be eliminated before the school system is able to put into advantageous and efficient operation the newer methods of clinical examination and educational treatment which stand ready for adoption.
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