ALFRED BINET

PATIENT RESEARCHER, CREATIVE THINKER, UNPRETENTIOUS SCHOLAR;
INSPIRING AND FRUITFUL DEVOTEE
OF
INDUCTIVE AND DYNAMIC
PSYCHOLOGY

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

The present volume appeals to the editor of this series as one of the
most significant books, viewed from the standpoint of the future of our
educational theory and practice, that has been issued in years. Not only
does the volume set forth, in language so simple that the layman can
easily understand, the large importance for public education of a
careful measurement of the intelligence of children, but it also
describes the tests which are to be given and the entire procedure of
giving them. In a clear and easy style the author sets forth scientific
facts of far-reaching educational importance, facts which it has cost
him, his students, and many other scientific workers, years of
painstaking labor to accumulate.

Only very recently, practically only within the past half-dozen years,
have scientific workers begun to appreciate fully the importance of
intelligence tests as a guide to educational procedure, and up to the
present we have been able to make but little use of such tests in our
schools. The conception in itself has been new, and the testing
procedure has been more or less unrefined and technical. The following
somewhat popular presentation of the idea and of the methods involved,
itself based on a scientific monograph which the author is publishing
elsewhere, serves for the first time to set forth in simple language the
technical details of giving such intelligence tests.

The educational significance of the results to be obtained from
careful measurements of the intelligence of children can hardly be
overestimated. Questions relating to the choice of studies, vocational
guidance, schoolroom procedure, the grading of pupils, promotional
schemes, the study of the retardation of children in the schools,
juvenile delinquency, and the proper handling of subnormals on the
one hand and gifted children on the other,--all alike acquire new
meaning and significance when viewed in the light of the measurement
of intelligence as outlined in this volume. As a guide to the
interpretation of the results of other forms of investigation relating
to the work, progress, and needs of children, intelligence tests form