Recording Emotional Qualities
- Author:
David L. MacKaye
Educational and Vocational Counselor, Tulare Union High School, Tulare, California
The conceptions of intelligence which lie behind intelligence testing in modern education make inevitable a “differentiated” education, one which is cut and trimmed, or elaborated and expanded in conformity with the needs of the individual student. The techniques of this differentiating education never quite catch up with our growing convictions of the differences among pupils. They are, apparently, even more different than we at first believed. It is hard to draw a line between those differences which matter and those which do not. It is hard to devise methods of measuring the differences, to escape the use of general terms. It is not helpful to say, “John is so different!” If it is worth saying at all, we must state the differences as precisely as possible. At the present time education does this only with reference to the intelligence. Psychology supplies some precise ideas relating to behavior and personality, but they are not yet in a form useful to education.
Progressive schools are accustomed to segregate children into three, four, or five groups on the basis of intelligence or achievement tests, but no one supposes that such a segregation makes possible a more detailed attention to all the degrees of capacity and types of aptitude?in brief, to all the differences?which exist among children.
It is now commonly recognized that the direction which intelligence takes is determined in part by certain inherent qualities which we loosely group under the heads of “emotional traits” or “volitional power” or even more loosely under the heads of “character” or “traits.” These qualities determine whether our subject is to be advised to try Hollywood or a plumbing shop, as much as does the intelligence quotient. We should have a measuring unit for these qualities, or at least a carefully standardized vocabulary. Here are the difficulties. Emotional qualities are not simply composed, to be measured on a single scale, and individuals cannot be classified according to such qualities on a relative standing list with “high” and “low” groups. There is not a “high” or “low” group type of emotion in the sense of favorable or unfavorable as in intelligence. The child may be inclined to secrecy, or even be unconscious of his own characteristics so that the point where the measurement should commence is difficult to find.
There are difficulties on the mechanism side. The criterion which education applies to a device of measurement is its applicability in a system dealing with masses. There may be individuality of work but there must be mass accomplishment. Methods which suggest themselves are the observation of overt behavior, and the individual interview. The first infers a teaching staff with expert training in psychology which is not yet available. The second is limited in usefulness by the fact that the time which counselors may give to individuals is too little for real results. It takes time to get at the core of the individuality present, further time to disclose its details and counsel with the subject. It is the purpose of this paper, however, to suggest that the personal interview will remain the best available method, and to examine some methods of disclosing the emotional qualities of most consequence without an unduly long investigation.
The Composition as a Guide to Placement. No real counseling may be done with a pupil who presents himself to the adviser for the first time, and upon whose self-evaluation the adviser is dependent. It is at least supposed that the latter has secured intelligence or achievement test results, but these need interpretation on the basis of other data. He should have some knowledge of the social and school history of the pupil and his economic situation. Even this leaves out the essential datum. The counselor must somehow secure an insight into the qualities peculiar to the individual which exist apart from any aspect of his history or accomplishment; somehow this datum must be on the record before the interview.
An experiment which has become fixed in the system in which it was introduced, and which was intended to serve the specific purpose of supplying this essential datum, consists solely of a composition set by the counselor and given in the classroom as work in English. It remained as part of the counselor’s record, and in a majority of the cases it gave the leading direction to the interview between counselor and pupil. In this specific situation the object was to prepare for registration in and adjustment to high school and therefore involved only eight grades.
The title originally set was “My Favorite Day-Dream.” Apparently all children did not have definite day-dreams. There was later added, therefore, “The Dream that Bothers Me Most,” and “The Dream Which I Remember Best.” The pupil was given his choice of the three. The composition was assigned without previous notice and in words prepared as in the instructions for an intelligence test, so that conditions in that respect were the same in all class-rooms. It was a feature of the system that the counselor had time with each class throughout the year to talk on various matters; it had not been difficult to introduce the day-dream as one of these and the counselor and children shared the happy secret that all people had day-dreams, more or less. The children understood that they were writing for the counselor and there was no want of frankness in any except a few.
The following study of 244 of these papers, of which 127 are from girls and 117 from boys was made to crystallize the general results of this experiment. The composition justified its use as an expedient in the estimation of the emotional quality of the child; the conclusions arrived at and conditions discovered through its use were prepared as a “case report” and supplied to the high school teachers and advisers. As these papers accumulated those dealing with them learned to detect characteristic responses which marked “types.” It is an unfortunate word; nevertheless, it was possible to erect, roughly, classifications whose members could be depended upon to react to experience in much the same way. More than that, individuals similar in these respects but from different elementary schools, often found each other out in high school and formed social groups. From the start these qualities, and not the quality of the intellect, determined the social affiliations of these children. The following analysis deals with two things, the emotional qualities as they were disclosed in a general way by these papers, and the relation between this quality and the type of thinking.
Sex Differences
In these papers there is a sharp distinction in the quality of response between boys and girls, so that it is possible in nearly all cases to supply the sex, were it not known. Yet there are some similarities. For example, there are as many “animal dreams” reported by boys as by girls, and a few of them are of the same type, that is, the common “pursuit” dream. The boy differs only in that he records that he turned and defeated the animal; the girl never completes the incident. A series of eleven papers written by boys shade by degrees from the “pursuit” type to a pure daydream of hunting and trapping. The emotional responses among the girls differ in quality from those of the boys. There is, for example, nothing among the boys corresponding to the religious responses from girls, and where there is a similarity, as between the girls’ music group (Nos. 20 to 22 below) and the boy heroics group (Nos. 23 to 26), the greater range of specific interest in favor of the boys is immediately noticeable. It is certainly descriptive of the papers being studied here to say that subjectivity is a dominant note among the girls and that its appearance among the boys is an oddity worthy of special attention. The most striking aspect of this difference is in the appearance of the travel theme, which is almost universal among the girls and unexpectedly insignificant among the boys. The diffuse travel idea among the girls’ reports of their day-dreams is only one illustration of the difference between the papers of the sexes. It affords a pleasant and lady-like way of centering thought on self and is introduced for its own sake; the day-dream of teaching, nursing and other employment is incidental to the day-dream of traveling on the fruits of this industry. This is a strong contrast with the boys’ day-dream of travel, for here it is nearly always a means to an end. “I dream of going to Egypt to excavate the pyramids,” says one. The adventure motive is the nearest approach to the characteristic feminine response. “I like to think of going on a voyage on board ship. The ship would sink and all would drown except me.”
Travel in day-dreams is so obviously here the girl’s expedient for dwelling mentally upon herself and the boy’s expedient for developing a situation for himself to conquer, that Hall’s conception ?f the desire to travel as the last development of curiosity is made to appear unconvincing.
The boy always appears under the necessity of thinking of things; there must be an object ahead for him to attain. Twentysix per cent of the boys’ papers are of day-dreams of their future work, while through the whole group employment is as diffusely incidental as travel is in the girls’ group.
Sex and Mental Life: It was hoped, when this experiment was begun, that some clues would be secured to those children who serve as the foci of unwholesome sex stimulation in many schools. This did not materialize. The only conclusion worthy of note was that mental life centering around sex was revealed among girls, when at all, and not among boys, who were either more successful in concealing it or had other things to report where girls did not. Notwithstanding the barrenness of the papers in such data there were cases in which groups of two or three girls were disclosed (by a comparison of their papers and further investigation suggested by them) in which there was an unwholesome association founded on sex interest. In another case a group of papers from a single class were so uniformly colored by over-stimulated sex thought, that investigation disclosed the whole group sharing in an unwholesome social environment after school hours.
The abnormal side of sex life could scarcely be said to have been revealed by these papers, although some papers contained statements which would be construed as such evidence by some schools of psychology. Further investigation may indicate that such would be the correct construction.
Data on Mentality from Compositions
There was no intention, when this experiment was started, of deducing anything from the composition as to mentality. The matter suggested itself after an accumulation of evidence that a certain quality of response nearly always predicted a certain place on a classification list made from intelligence and other tests. Later it was learned that in some cases the counselor could prepare himself to deal with the mentality in question much better from a composition than from the results of an intelligence test. The simple expedient of arranging a series of these compositions in the relative order of their writers’ places on such a classification list presented, on each occasion when it was tried, the fact that there was a clearly indicated “stepping down” in refinement of idea and coherency of its expression from the top to the bottom composition. This gradation was not so sharply defined, naturally, that classification lists could have been made from the papers alone but it was quite possible to segregate the children from the papers into high, low and median groups. Ordinarily this amount of segregation is all that is necessary.
The characteristics of these groups may be briefly described and illustrated. The full flavor of the distinctions between them could only be obtained from a larger number of illustrations than space allows but as far as possible typical selections have been made.1
High Type Group: Imagination. Imagination is not lacking from the low type group, but is rarely present in the papers of the median group. Its best expression, however, is the characteristic of the high type group, just as an extremely emotional response if typical of the low group. Indeed, we are probably dealing with .the same thing in both, refined by intelligence in one case and not in the other. The stabilizing effect of what we call “intelligence” on the inner life of the child would make an interesting field of study. There must be, of course, the inner life and we can say it is made up of the child’s “compounded potentialities.” Nos. 4 and 5 below are from girls and No. 6 is from a boy. (4) In my dreams one night I dreamed that I had taken a trip to the moon to see the queer people that I heard so much about. I went up in a whirlwind which carried me very swiftly. When I reached the moon I found to my surprise that the people were about eight feet tall and were so thin they looked like beanpoles.
(5) One night when I woke up the room was dark, the moon was shining. 1 looked at the little rocking chair where I had laid my clothes and behold, the image of a little girl was sitting there, holding my doll. The rest of the night I could not sleep because I was afraid she had taken my doll. (6) I am going to work in the field because I like to work with horses where the air is nice and cool early in the morning, where the birds are singing from morning till night in the fields of the farmers. There the birds make anyone feel happy.
No. 6 is from a Portuguese boy much retarded in school because of language difficulties and with a low score in a mental test, perhaps for the same reason, but with an excellent sense of values and great adaptability to practical situations. This paper could be duplicated in several papers from American boys scoring high in 1 Two factors appear in compositions of this type which, when casually observed, seem to detract from the value here ascribed to them. In the first place the children mix up day-dreams and real dreams; it is hard to tell which they are reporting. In fact, however, they prove to be presenting material which correctly indexes their mental life and the slight evidence of artificiality need not be noticed. It would be hard to see how they could invent material which would not correctly index their mental habit and outlook, except in cases of deliberate concealment which can usually be detected. The second difficulty is that most ideas come from an outside source originally, aQd it is important to know what selections they are making for their daydream life. mental tests. There are no papers from girls with this note. The distinction between Nos. 4-5 and No. 6 seems to be a sex difference. Median Type: Mediocrity. The members of this group write short compositions with such a tendency towards matter-of-factness that there is an obvious difficulty in writing a paper on “dreams.” Of the five children who turned in blank papers, four scored in the median group and one in the low group. Apparently it is not the group which indulges in day-dreams to any extent. The unembellished day-dream of a job marks the boy of the group and lack of ideation the girl. The word “uninteresting” applies to all these papers.
The following three illustrations are all complete papers. No. 7 is from a boy and Nos. 8 and 9 from girls. (7) The dream I rememer best happened several weeks ago. This dream was that I won a Moon car, six passenger and had my folks in it and were going to Detroit. Here we stayed and bought us a new home and store and made my way through college and was to be a doctor. (8) One night I dreamed that it was my birthday. My father bought me the prettiest blue dress and a green hat to go with the coat. I put it on for the first time. I wore it to town and it was raining and got all soiled and I never wore the hat and coat anymore.
(9) Sometimes I dream if I will get a passing grade on my paper and examinations and think about my studies and then I think of the good times I have at school and wonder what I do if it were not for school. The next example is from a girl in the last quintile of the classification list which, while it has the shortness characteristic of the median group, has the peculiarity which distinguishes the low group.
(10) Day after day I dream of writing songs and some times it seems as if I were singing to a large group of people.
This girl failed in the freshman year and left school. Low Group. Special Aids to Estimates of Mentality. This composition series gave an immediate insight into the mentality of the pupils in the lower range of the classification, such as a bare IQ would not provide. Until the psychologists give us a clearer idea of the factors which accompany what we call “low intelligence,” our picture must necessarily be that of a mental structure equal in size but less elaborated in detail than the higher intelligences. This is undoubtedly too simple a picture. The differences do not seem to be in the degree of elaboration in the structure, but in the quality of the elaboration and this quality is better disclosed by the comRECORDING EMOTIONAL QUALITIES 241 position test than the intelligence test. The degree of ideation is involved in this difference. The degree of ideation is low in No. 11 and fair in No. 12. Both illustrations are from boys with group IQ’s under 70. No. 12 developed in the Freshman year into a fair student and has completed his sophomore year with but little less grade in scholarship, but No. 11 failed in half of the subjects in the freshman year, and has been placed on a special schedule of vocational work, at which he is successful.
(11) One night I was studying the preamble as I went to bed and thought that I would say it over before I went to sleep and then I slept a while, it seemed to me, and then I went back to sleep after a while and I woke up and I was saying the preamble so I went to sleep again and was not very long till dad said it was time to get up so he came over and said ‘’ hay get up it’s time to milk the cows,” so before I got up I thought that I would say the preamble again before I got up.2
(12) My favorite day-dream is a dream wanting to go to pismo on Motorcycle and bicycle. When we are to start we are to pull the bicycle without motorcycle. And when we get in the mountains we aim to have the ones on the bicycle to pedal so we can get over the sands and dig clams. And cook them on a campfire.
No. 13 is also from the last quintile of the classification list. No intelligence test would reveal the actual quality of its writer, who was a failure by the test of school work as given by a harassed country teacher, but a dreamer and a poet and a personality to cherish. The IQ would have alarmed the faculty which received him, but the composition enlisted their best interest, which is something to be said in favor of the method:
(13) I wonder if I would like to be the thing that I wounded to be for thinking of the things I would like to do in my work. It will be years to come and years to go before I will be a man to do the work that I Would like to do. And it will be years of training before I can do the work that I would like to do. For am studying the plains for what I half to do in my work before those years to come and go. For when I’m a man I wounded to look you straight in the face and also make success of my work of aernnotical engineer.
Data on Emotional Qualities from Compositions Emotional qualities appear in the papers from the upper and lower groups and are consistently absent from the median group Papers, so that the latter is set apart in still another particular. “The young gentleman’s preoccupation is due to the fact that it is Necessary, in California, to pass a test on the U. S. Constitution to graduate *roin the 8th grade. He passed.
The term emotion is being used here to indicate any affective response in which the personality is obviously more borrowed from than an objective situation in writing this assignment. It would seem that the objective situation is specifically ruled out by the nature of the assignment, yet it is precisely this, translated into day-dream form, which the median group usually reports upon.
For this reason these papers afford a valuable insight into vocational interest; that is, the median group and other papers in which this emotional quality is missing indicate a group of matterof-fact children seriously interested in the thing they describe for its own sake. In the other group the child is interested in the thing for the sake of his present reaction to it. It is almost certainly ruled out from serious consideration in counseling, as meeting in no ways the child’s permanent interest or aptitude.
In the illustrations below the papers with vocational interest are presented first; those purely emotional last.
Teaching and Nursing. The largest group of “vocationalinterest” papers from the girls are those expressing a desire for training as a teacher or a nurse. Since this study was commenced it has been learned that the “teacher-ambition” is the most unreliable of those recorded, and yet it is strong enough to lead the girls to register in high school for this type of work.
These papers are most illustrative of the general rule that when an emotional quality appears its expression may be designed to conceal the real mental life as often as to reveal it. It is a useful point to bear in mind in conference because the child will often maintain the same camouflaging attitude in registering unless closely questioned. In No. 14 below, the writer, an Italian, confessed in conference that she positively disliked children. The writer of No. 15 left school in the freshman year to marry, apparently her object from the first.
(14) We all have day-dreams and sometimes in the future they become true. I have had one which I hope will become true. Ever since I started to school until up to the higher grades I am always thinking of becoming a school teacher. As I am always dreaming of it during the day. It seems to me to be a school teacher is a wonderful way of doing good towards the community. I know it will take many years of study but when you have the study you have it forever. (15) My favorite day dream is planning how I shall finish grammar school and high school. Then I want to go to college at Berkeley. I want to be a music teacher or a school teacher and teach the first and second grades. I want to earn my way through life. At the end of each month I want to put some money in the bank. When I quit teaching I want to draw my money out of the bank and go to France, England, Japan, China, Portugal, South America and several other places. Then I want to come back and teach school again, if I can get the first and second grades to teach. The complete lack of altruistic motive in this group of papers is illustrated by the following extracts, typical of some expression in almost every composition in this series.
(16) At the end of each month I want to be able to put a little money in the bank. When I have saved enough money I want to travel about the world.
(17) Then I thought of a foolish little sentence which my mother had said. She said: “she wanted all of her girls to be teachers so they could have lots of silk dresses.”
(18) I want to enjoy life and get everything out of it there is in it. There are some examples of the same quality in papers of the nursing type, but they are rare, and a much more genuine note is struck which is borne out by following up the girl’s history. No. 19 illustrates these.
(19) I am helping with a hard, tedious operation. I work many hours overtime, losing sleep but toiling on to save the life of this tortured person. When at last, at the dawn of a new day, this operation has been finished and the patient will live I am very thankful for my position although it require lots of strength, both physical and mental. For I have helped to save the life of a person who is dear to someone. Or often I see myself sitting in a little cot where a little babe is tossing about in delirium. It has nearly been given up by the doctors but my gentle and patient care and by my alert and steady watch for every change of fever or actions the child has been saved from entering the gates of death before it has accomplished its purpose in life. Oh, that precious little child! The heart aud hopes of a mother! The pride and joy of a father has been restored to them. My favorite day-dream is the saving of a life that is needed somewhere by some one.’’
Music and Art: Music is, without exception, coupled with a strongly egoistic feeling and is the motive of a typical group in which there is so little deviation that the following are sufficient to illustrate it.
(20) My favorite day dream is that I am on the stage as a concert violinist. I always see myself in pink with silver beads. The stage is big Wlth all different colored light shining. I usually always picture myself in Europe in one of the great shows. I can see my name on the outside in colored lights.
(21) As I sit day-dreaming I dream of being famous. I dream of playlng on a pipe-organ. I dream of being very beautifully dressed in silks and Precious stones.
(22) One night I played at a public building. My piano was on a great beautiful stage and my piano was trimmed in beautiful gold. I was greeted by all the people.
Only three papers bring in the art interest. In these the egoistic motive is not so strong and conference shows that some slight contact or doubtful skill has been responsible for supplying the material for the day-dream. Heroics. In such a set of papers one expects to find those from the boys in which the hero theme supplies the thought and there are, of course, a great many such. They are of no value in guidance and are quoted here because they are the only ones supplied from the masculine side which duplicates the egotism of the girls’ music group. Such extracts as these are more common, undoubtedly, in boys’ day-dreaming than the number of recorded cases indicate, but in a majority of cases the boys have had something more substantial to draw upon for their assignment.
(23) My favorite day dream is that I wished I was a great man and had saved someone from dying or other things. Of all the cheer I would get and I would become a very famous man.
(24) I expect to be setting at the table of some great Business and be making new things such as a clock that will speak the time in a human voice every half hour.
(25) I have dreamed time after time of how I would like to be a great man like Lincoln or Washington.
(26) I would try to make things that would be good for children like castor oil without a taste. I would try to make a pill that would be good for every ailment from rheumatism to a toothache.
The writer of No. 26, it developed, came from a home constantly experimenting with patent medicines. Religious Influences. One of the most important uses of these compositions was the insight into home conditions which they frequently provided; useful, because they made it possible to deal satisfactorily with parents who may not have been too sympathetic with secondary education. Papers disclosing religious influences, of which there were many, were of this type. The emotional elements which are worked up into the religious attitudes are probably not peculiar to the children who recorded them, but the form they take is due to the influences to which the child has been exposed, a major factor in the continuing adjustment of the pupil.
These compositions fall into two classes, showing respectively balanced and unbalanced social attitudes. In the first case the prognosis for further education should be positive and in the other negative. In the first case, also, as illustrated in No. 27 (in which the phrases which reveal the religious background are in italics), the religious attitude is only the background for other thoughts. No. 27 contrasts with No. 28, in which the home religious life proved to be less than balanced.
(27) My big aim in life is to be a teacher, when I am older and farther advanced. I like the study of books in which we learn more about the world and different people. About the way other people live and their personality. Of course I could gain this knowledge without being a teacher. But when I have received the knowledge I would like to transfer it to others, thus serving the public or humanity at large, and gaining still more knowledge than either books or study could give me through the contact and near communion with other lives. Then maybe some day I can visit some foreign land which I have studied about and learn still more. Sometimes I may be sent to some foreign country on a missionary trip.
(28) I am interested in Music, Latin, Spanish, housework and teaching. I am especially interested in teaching because I would like to be with children and teach them things about the Bible and win them for Christ that they may be worth something in this world and go to heaven when they ?lie If I decided not to be a missionary I would be fitted for some other useful life.
The following illustrations are from the conventional to the extremely unbalanced.
(29) Once when I was sick I dreamed I went to school and my teacher was the preachers’ wife. We had bible study every morning and church songs. The teacher had just been telling us about the Day of Beckoning when it seemed that the whole world was on fire
(30) After the ship had been sent on its way they joined hands and danced around a pot of magic mutton placed there since the passover when they put blood on the post to tell if they bore loyalty to Christ which was cherished much by the dwarfs.
(31) I am most interested in the Lord Jesus Christ, my Savior. I am interested in getting souls saved for Christ. I don’t want to be left here when He comes to claim his chosen bride and I don’t want anyone left here during that awful tribulation. I want to be a messenger for Christ and go out and tell others about this loving Savior. I want others to be ready to meet the Savior the same as I do and the rest of his followers. Although they make fun of me I am going to live my life for Christ and be ready when lie comes. I wont be able to get what I want in high school even if I go clear through and then go to college. What will come from Christ through the Holy Spirit.
Worries and Abnormalities. A comparatively large number of Papers disclosed maladjustments to school, home or the play group, ?r supplied the clue which led to the discovery. These papers ranged from exhibitions of chronic worry habits to obvious abnormalities and in all cases were more valuable in the individual conference than any other available data.
The following group is typical of a large number of girls worrying unjustifiably about school work:
The next morning I went to school with terror in my heart, dreading to receive my paper.
(33) The dream that bothers me most is that I am not going to pass into high school. I am afraid the dream will come true because I dream of it every once in a while.
The boy, however, has more definite situations in mind when he worries, as well as at other times:
(34) The first day I went to high school (in his day-dream) everybody picked on me. The first I failed in English which made me feel as cheap as a penny. The next year I got all my studies and went out for football. I made the team.
No. 35, written by an Italian boy, proved actually an expression of social isolation which might not have been detected otherwise : (35) My favorite day-dream is to sit on a chair and just think how nice it would be to have a bicycle and what fun I would have with it, to ride around with the other boys. Then I stop and think and say: “I haven’t the money and can’t buy it.” So I just forget it and go off to play. The following revealed the only case of abnormal fear recorded in three years of observation:
(36) When it gets cloudy and the wind blows hard and it thunders and lightnings it makes me nervice so that I can’t do anything. The deviation from normal is obvious in the following group of illustrations, several out of many, and the contributing cause is appended in parentheses. It would be difficult to maintain that the school has no interest in such qualities as are disclosed here, and an understanding of them on the part of the teachers may be expected to prevent reactions against the children which otherwise may occur. The number of responses of this type precludes many quotations from them.
(37) Day and night I am bothered by this dream which I know is not true. While in my sleep I have often thought that I could see the phantom hovering over my head. An unshapen thing it is and very white and large. At other times in the night I often see, as through a mist, long white bony hands ready to grasp my throat. (This girl has become parRECORDING EMOTIONAL QUALITIES 247 tially deaf as the result of scarlet fever, has been thrown in on herself and taken to reading much cheap literature.)
(38) At night when I went to bed I dreamed that the teacher had taken me down to the basement to talk to me about one of the monitors writing my name in a book. When I was down there I threw her against a electric board and killed her. This was the most terrible dream I ever had. (From a hard-working Portuguese girl who had come to this country when nine years old and completed the eight grades in five years. Her educational career has been a difficult one.)
(39) One night I dreampt I saw a skeleton with a red lantern come into my room. I wanted to scream and think I would scare Doris or my brother who was in the next room. (An association test brought out the sequence: Red lantern?blood?Wayne. Wayne is the brother with whom she had quarreled violently just prior to the time she had this dream, she says.)
Conclusions
Measuring devices used at present by education are not adequate from the viewpoint of predicting the distribution of the children ultimately throughout the social structure; the intelligence data alone is not sufficient for this purpose. Within the group having the same range of intellect there will exist certain emotional qualities having a determining influence upon the child’s choices, something which must be taken in consideration when planning with him for future training. Compositions written for 3- teacher or counselor in whom the children have confidence, and so assigned that they will be required to reveal a glimpse of their own day-dream life, will supply data on this emotional quality, as well as other useful data in making adjustments with the school. There seems to be a fairly adequate proof that children may be satisfactorily arranged in groups according to probable mental efficiency on the composition data alone, but the principal aid to counseling is in arranging those within the upper and lower mental classifications into sub-groups according to the emotional emphasis their personality.
The group rated as median in intelligence tests are indicated by the compositions to lack this emotional quality, with a corresponding lack of imagination, and a matter-of-fact point of view. The value of the vocational interest volunteered by the pupil may usually be checked for validity by the association in which it occurs in the composition.
There is an indication, frequently important, of the home background of thought and emotional experience which cannot always be detected even by a visit to the home itself.
Added to case reports on the children, the data supplied to the teachers, induces a sympathetic and personal treatment of the pupil for which there would be no basis otherwise and the adjustment of the child is therefore further advanced. This applies particularly to children in the low ranges of the mental classification list who need an extra “pull” over the discouraging spots of training life.
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