THE SIGNIFICANCE OF INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES FOR THE TEACHER
It has been indicated here and there
throughout the previous chapters that, despite the
fact that there are certain laws governing the various
mental traits and processes, still there is variation
in the working of those laws. It was pointed
out that people differ in kind of memory or imagination
in which they excel, in their ability to appreciate,
in the speed with which they form habits, and so on.
In other words, that boys and girls are not exact
duplicates of each other, but that they always differ
from each other. Now a knowledge of these differences,
their amounts, interrelations, and causes are very
necessary for the planning of a school system or for
the planning of the education of a particular child.
What we plan and how we plan educational undertakings
must always be influenced by our opinion as to inborn
traits, sex differences, specialization of mental
traits, speed of development, the respective power
of nature and of nurture. The various plans of
promotion and grouping of children found in different
cities are in operation because of certain beliefs
concerning differences in general mental ability.
Coeducation is urged or deplored largely on the ground
of belief in the differing abilities of the sexes.
Exact knowledge of just what differences
do exist between people and the causes of these differences
is important for two reasons. First, in order
that the most efficient measures may be taken for the
education of the individual, and second, in order
that the race as a whole may be made better.
Education can only become efficient and economical
when we know which differences between people and
which achievements of a given person are due to training,
and which are due more largely to original equipment
or maturity. It is a waste of time on the one
hand for education to concern itself with trying to
make all children good spellers if spelling
is a natural gift; and on the other hand, it is lack
of efficiency for schools to be largely neglecting
the moral development of the children, if morality
is dependent primarily on education. Exact knowledge,
not opinions, along all these lines is necessary if
progress is to be made.
The principal causes for individual
differences are sex, remote ancestry, near ancestry,
maturity, and training. The question to be answered
in the discussion of each of these causes is how important
a factor is it in the production of differences and
just what differences is it responsible for.
That men differ from women has always been an accepted
fact, but exact knowledge of how much and how they
differ has, until recent years, been lacking.
Recently quantitative measurement has been made by
a number of investigators. In making these investigations
two serious difficulties have to be met. First,
that the tests measure only the differences brought
about by differences in sex, and not by any other
cause, such as family or training. This difficulty
has been met by taking people of all ages, from all
sorts of families, with all kinds of training, the
constant factor being the difference in sex. The
second difficulty is that of finding groups in which
the selection agencies have been the same and equally
operative. It would be obviously unfair to compare
college men and women, and expect to get a fair result
as to sex differences, because college women are a
more highly selected group intellectually than the
college men. It is the conventional and social
demands that are primarily responsible for sending
boys to college, while the intellectual impulse is
responsible to a greater extent for sending girls.
Examination of children in the elementary schools,
then, gives a fairer result than of the older men
and women. The general results of all the studies
made point to the fact that the differences between
the sexes are small. Sex is the cause of only
a small fraction of the differences between individuals.
The total difference of men from men and women from
women is almost as great as the difference between
men and women, for the distribution curve of woman’s
ability in any trait overlaps the men’s curve
to at least half its range. In detail the exact
measurements of intellectual abilities show a slight
superiority of the women in receptivity and memory,
and a slight superiority of the men in control of
movement and in thought about concrete mechanical
situations. In interests which cannot be so definitely
measured, women seem to be more interested in people
and men in things. In instinctive equipment women
excel in the nursing impulse and men in the fighting
impulse. In physical equipment men are stronger
and bigger than women. They excel in muscular
tests in ability to “spurt,” whereas women
do better in endurance tests. The male sex seems
on the whole to be slightly more variable than the
female, i.e., its curve of distribution is somewhat
flatter and extends both lower and higher than does
that of the female; or, stated another way, men furnish
more than their proportion of idiots and of geniuses.
Slight though these differences are,
they are not to be disregarded, for sometimes the
resulting habits are important. For instance,
girls should be better spellers than boys. Boys
should excel in physics and chemistry. Women
should have more tact than men, whereas men should
be more impartial in their judgments. With the
same intellectual equipment as women, men should be
found more often in positions of prominence because
of the strength of the fighting instinct. The
geniuses of the world, the leaders in any field, as
well as the idiots, should more often be men than
women. That these differences do exist, observation
as well as experiment prove, but that they are entirely
due to essential innate differences in sex is still
open to question. Differences in treatment of
the sexes in ideals and in training for generation
after generation may account for some of the
differences noted.
What these differences mean from the
standpoint of practice is still another question.
Difference in equipment need not mean difference in
treatment, nor need identity of equipment necessarily
mean identity of training. The kind of education
given will have to be determined not only by the nature
of the individual, but also by the ideals held for
and the efficiency demanded from each sex.
Another cause of the differences existing
between individuals is difference in race inheritance.
In causing differences in physical traits this factor
is prominent. The American Indians have physical
traits in common which differentiate them from other
races; the same thing is true of the Negroes and the
Mongolians. It has always been taken for granted
that the same kind of difference between the races
existed in mental traits. To measure the mental
differences caused by race is an extremely difficult
problem. Training, environment, tradition, are
such potent factors in confusing the issue. The
difficulty is to measure inborn traits, not achievement.
Hence the results from actual measurement are very
few and are confined to the sensory and sensorimotor
traits. Woodworth, in summing up the results of
these tests, says, “On the whole, the keenness
of the senses seems to be about on a par in the various
races of mankind.... If the results could be
taken at their face value, they would indicate differences
in intelligence between races, giving such groups
as the Pygmy and Negrito a low station as compared
with most of mankind. The fairness of the test
is not, however, beyond question." The generality
of this conclusion concerning the differences in intelligence
reveals the lack of data. No tests of the higher
intellectual processes, such as the ability to analyze,
to associate in terms of elements, to formulate new
principles, and the like, have, been given. Some
anthropologists are skeptical of the existence of
any great differences, while others believe that though
there is much overlapping, still differences of considerable
magnitude do exist. At present we do not know
how much of the differences existing between individuals
is due to differences in remote ancestry.
Maturity as a cause of differences
between individuals gives quite as unsatisfactory
results as remote ancestry. Every thoughtful student
of children must realize that inner growth, apart
from training, has something to do with the changes
which take place in a child; that he differs from
year to year because of a difference in maturity.
This same cause, then, must account to some extent
for the differences between individuals of different
ages. But just how great a part it plays, what
per cent of the difference it accounts for, and what
particular traits it affects much or little, no one
knows. We say in general that nine-year-old children
are more suggestible than six-year-old, and than fourteen-year-old;
that the point of view of the fifteen-year-old is
different from that of the eleven-year-old; that the
power of sense discrimination gradually increases
up to about sixteen, and so on. That these facts
are true, no one can question, but how far they are
due to mere change in maturity and how far to training
or to the increase in power of some particular capacity,
such as understanding directions, or power of forced
attention, is unknown. The studies which have
been undertaken along this line have failed in two
particulars: first, to distribute the actual
changes found from year to year among the three possible
causes, maturity, general powers of comprehension and
the like, and training; second, to measure the same
individuals from year to year. This last error
is very common in studies of human nature. It
is taken for granted that to examine ten year olds
and then eleven year olds and then twelve year olds
will give what ten year olds will become in one and
two years’ time respectively. To test a
group of grammar grade children and then a group of
high school and then a group of college students will
not show the changes in maturity from grammar school
to college. The method is quite wrong, for it
tests only the ten year olds that stay in school long
enough to become twelve year olds; it measures only
the very small per cent of the grammar school children
who get to college. In other words, it is measuring
a more highly selected group and accepting the result
obtained from them as true of the entire group.
Because of these two serious errors in the investigations
our knowledge of the influence of maturity as a cause
of individual differences is no better than opinion.
Two facts, however, such studies do make clear.
First, the supposition that “the increases in
ability due to a given amount of progress toward maturity
are closely alike for all children save the so-called
‘abnormally-precocious’ or ‘retarded’
is false. The same fraction of the total inner
development, from zero to adult ability, will produce
very unequal results in different children. Inner
growth acts differently according to the original nature
that is growing. The notion that maturity is
the main factor in the differences found amongst school
children, so that grading and methods of teaching
should be fitted closely to ‘stage of growth,’
is also false. It is by no means very hard to
find seven year olds who can do intellectual work
in which one in twenty seventeen year olds would fail."
The question as to how far immediate
heredity is a cause of differences found between individuals,
can only be answered by measuring how much more alike
members of the same family are in a given trait than
people picked at random, and then making allowance
for similarity in their training. The greater
the likenesses between members of the same family,
and the greater the differences between members of
different families, despite similarities in training,
the more can individual differences be traced to differences
in ancestry as a controlling cause. The answer
to this question has been obtained along four different
lines: First, likenesses in physical traits;
second, likenesses in particular abilities; third,
likenesses in achievement along intellectual and moral
lines; fourth, greater likenesses between twins, than
ordinary siblings. In physical traits, such as
eye color, hair color, cephalic index, height, family
resemblance is very strong (the coefficient of correlation
being about .5), and here training can certainly have
had no effect. In particular abilities, such
as ability in spelling, the stage reached by an individual
is due primarily to his inheritance, the ability being
but little influenced by the differences in home or
school training that commonly exist. In general
achievement, Galton’s results show that eminence
runs in families, that one has more than three hundred
times the chance of being eminent if one has a brother,
father, or son eminent, than the individual picked
at random. Wood’s investigation in royal
families points to the same influence of ancestry
in determining achievement. The studies of the
Edwards family on one hand and the so-called Kallikak
family on the other, point to the same conclusion.
Twins are found to be twice as much alike in the traits
tested as other brothers and sisters. Though the
difficulty of discounting the effect of training in
all these studies has been great, yet in every case
the investigators have taken pains to do so. The
fact that the investigations along such different
lines all bear out the same conclusion, namely, that
intellectual differences are largely due to differences
in family inheritance, weighs heavily in favor of its
being a correct one.
The fifth factor that might account
for individual differences is environment. By
environment we mean any influence brought to bear on
the individual. The same difficulty has been
met in attempting to measure the effect of environment
that was met in trying to measure the effect of inner
nature namely, that of testing one without
interference from the other. The attempts to
measure accurately the effect of any one element in
the environment have not been successful. No adequate
way of avoiding the complications involved by different
natures has been found. One of the greatest errors
in the method of working with this problem has been
found just here. It has been customary when the
effect of a certain element in the environment is
to be ascertained to investigate people who have been
subject to that training or who are in the process
of training, thus ignoring the selective influence
of the factor itself in original nature. For
instance, to study the value of high school training
we compare those in training with those who have never
had any; if the question is the value of manual training
or Latin, again the comparison is made between those
who have had it and those who haven’t.
To find out the influence of squalor and misery, people
living in the slums are compared with those from a
better district. In each case the fact is ignored
that the original natures of the two groups examined
are different before the influence of the element
in question was brought to bear. Why do some
children go to high school and others not? Why
do some choose classical courses and some manual training
courses? Why are some people found in the slums
for generations? The answer in each case is the
same the original natures are different.
It isn’t the slums make the people nearly so
often as it is the people make the slums. It isn’t
training in Latin that makes the more capable man,
but the more intellectual students, because of tradition
and possibly enjoyment of language study, choose the
Latin. It is unfair to measure a factor in the
environment and give it credit or discredit for results,
when those results are also due to original nature
as well, which has not been allowed for. It must
be recognized by all those working in this field that,
after all, man to some extent selects his own environment.
In the second place, it must be remembered that the
environment will influence folks differently according
as their natures are different. There can be
no doubt that environment is accountable for some individual
differences, but just which ones and to what extent
are questions to which at present the answers are
unsatisfactory.
The investigations which have been
carried on agree that environment is not so influential
a cause for individual differences in intellect as
is near ancestry. One rather interesting line
of evidence can be quoted as an illustration.
If individual differences in achievement are due largely
to lack of training or to poor training, then to give
the same amount and kind of training to all the individuals
in a group should reduce the differences. If
such practice does not reduce the differences, then
it is not reasonable to suppose that the differences
were caused in the first place by differences in training.
As a matter of fact, equalizing training increases
the differences. The superior man becomes more
superior, the inferior is left further behind than
ever. A common occurrence in school administration
bears out this conclusion reached by experimental
means. The child who skips a grade is ready at
the end of three years to skip again, and the child
who fails a grade is likely at the end of three years
to fail again. Though environment seems of little
influence as compared with near ancestry in determining
intellectual ability per se, yet it has considerable
influence in determining the line along which this
ability is to manifest itself. The fact that
between 1840-44, 9.4 per cent of the college men went
into teaching as a profession and 37.5 per cent into
the ministry, while between 1890-94, 25.4 per cent
chose the former and only 14 per cent the latter,
can be accounted for only on the basis of environmental
influence of some kind.
Another fact concerning the influence
of environment is that it is very much more effective
in influencing morality than intellect. Morality
is the outcome of the proper direction of capacities
and tendencies possessed by the individual, and therefore
is extremely susceptible to environmental influences.
We are all familiar with the differences in moral
standards of different social groups. One boy
may become a bully and another considerate of the
rights of others, one learns to steal and another
to be honest, one to lie and another to be truthful,
because of the influence of their environments rather
than on account of differences in their original natures.
We are beginning to recognize the importance of environment
in moral training in the provisions made to protect
children from immoral influences, in the opportunities
afforded for the right sort of recreation, and even
in the removal of children from the custody of their
parents when the environment is extremely unfavorable.
Though changes in method and ideals
cannot reduce the differences between individuals
in the intellectual field to any marked extent, such
changes can raise the level of achievement of the whole
group. For instance, more emphasis on silent
reading may make the reading ability of a whole school
20 per cent better, while leaving the distance between
the best and worst reader in the school the same.
Granting that heredity, original nature, is the primary
cause of individual differences in intellect (aside
from those sex differences mentioned) there remains
for environment, education in all its forms, the tremendous
task of: First, providing conditions favorable
for nervous health and growth; second, providing conditions
which stimulate useful capacities and inhibit futile
or harmful capacities; third, providing conditions
which continually raise the absolute achievement of
the group and of the race; fourth, providing conditions
that will meet the varying original equipments; fifth,
assuming primary responsibility for development along
moral and social lines.
Concerning those individual differences
of which heredity is the controlling cause, two facts
are worthy of note. First, that human nature
is very highly specialized and that inheritance may
be in terms of special abilities or capacities.
For instance, artistic, musical, or linguistic ability,
statesmanship, power in the field of poetry, may be
handed down from one generation to the next. This
also means that two brothers may be extremely alike
along some lines and extremely different along others.
Second, that there seems to be positive combinations
between certain mental traits, whereby the presence
of one insures the presence of the other to a greater
degree than chance would explain. For instance,
the quick learner is slow in forgetting, imagery in
one field implies power to image in others, a high
degree of concentration goes with superior breadth,
efficiency in artistic lines is more often correlated
with superiority in politics or generalship or science
than the reverse, ability to deal with abstract data
implies unusual power to deal with the concrete situation.
In fact, as far as exact measures go, negative correlations
between capacities, powers, efficiencies, are extremely
rare, and, when they occur, can be traced to the influence
of some environmental factor.
Individuals differ from each other
to a much greater degree than has been allowed for
in our public education. The common school system
is constructed on the theory that children are closely
similar in their abilities, type of mental make-up,
and capacities in any given line. Experimentation
shows each one of these presuppositions to be false.
So far as general ability goes, children vary from
the genius to the feeble-minded with all the grades
between, even in the same school class. This
gradation is a continuous one there are
no breaks in the human race. Children cannot
be grouped into the very bright, bright, mediocre,
poor, very poor, failures each group being
distinct from any other. The shading from one
to the other of these classes is gradual, there is
no sharp break. Not only is this true, but a child
may be considered very bright along one line and mediocre
along another. Brilliancy or poverty in intellect
does not act as a unit and apply to all lives equally.
The high specialization of mental powers makes unevenness
in achievement the common occurrence. Within any
school grade that has been tested, even when the gradings
are as close as those secured by term promotions,
it has been found in any subject there are children
who do from two to five times as well as others, and
from two to five times as much as others. Of
course this great variation means an overlapping of
grades on each side. In Dr. Bonser’s test
of 757 children in reasoning he found that 90 per
cent of the 6A pupils were below the best pupils of
4A grade and that 4 per cent of 6A pupils were below
the mid-pupils of the 4A, and that the best of the
4A pupils made a score three times as high as the
worst pupils of 6A. Not only is this tremendous
difference in ability found among children of the same
class, but the same difference exists in rate of development.
Some children can cover the same ground in one half
or one third the time as others and do it better.
Witness the children already quoted who, skipping a
grade, were ready at the end of three years to skip
again. Variability, not uniformity, is what characterizes
the abilities and rate of intellectual growth of children
in the schools, and these differences, as has already
been pointed out, are caused primarily by a difference
in original nature.
There is also great difference between
the general mental make-up of children a
difference in type. There is the child who excels
in dealing with abstract ideas. He usually has
power also in dealing with the concrete, but his chief
interest is in the abstract. He is the one who
does splendid work in mathematics, formal grammar,
the abstract phases of the sciences. Then there
is the child who is a thinker too, but his best work
is done when he is dealing with a concrete situation.
Unusual or involved applications of principles disturb
him. So long as his work is couched in terms
of the concrete, he can succeed, but if that is replaced
by the x, y, z elements, he is prone to fail.
There is another type of child the one
who has the executive ability, the child of action.
True, he thinks, too, but his forte is in control of
people and of things. He is the one who manages
the athletic team, runs the school paper, takes charge
of the elections, and so on. For principles to
be grasped he must be able to put them into practice.
The fourth type is the feeling type, the child who
excels in appreciative power. As has been urged
so many times before, these types have boundaries that
are hazy and ill defined; they overlap in many cases.
Some children are of a well-defined mixed type, and
most children have something of each of the four abilities
characteristic of the types. Still it is true
that in looking over a class of children these types
emerge, not pure, but controlled by the dominant characteristics
mentioned.
The same variation is found among
any group of children if they are tested along one
line, such as memory. Some have desultory, some
rote, some logical memories; some have immediate memories,
others the permanent type. In imagery, some have
principally productive imagination, others the matter-of-fact
reproductive; some deal largely with object images
that are vivid and clear-cut, others fail almost entirely
with this type, but use word images with great facility.
In conduct, some are hesitating and uncertain, others
just the reverse; some very open to suggestions, others
scarcely touched at all by it; some can act in accordance
with principle, others only in terms of particular
associations with a definite situation. So one
might run the whole gamut of human traits, and in
each one any group of individuals will vary:
in attention, in thinking, in ideals, in habits, in
interests, in sense discrimination, in emotions, and
so on. This is one of the greatest contributions
of experimental psychology of the past ten years,
the tremendous differences between people along all
lines, physical as well as mental.
It is lack of recognition of such
differences that makes possible such a list of histories
of misfits as Swift quotes in his chapter on Standards
of Human Power in “Mind in the Making.”
Individual differences exist, education cannot eliminate
them, they are innate, due to original nature.
Education that does not recognize them and plan for
them is wasteful and, what is worse, is criminal.
The range of ability possessed by
children of the same grade in the subjects commonly
taught seems not always to be clear in the minds of
teachers. It will be discussed at greater length
in another chapter, but it is important for the consideration
of individual differences to present some data at
this time. If we rate the quality of work done
in English composition from 10 to 100 per cent, being
careful to evaluate as accurately as possible the
merit of the composition written, we will find for
a seventh and an eighth grade a condition indicated
by the following table:
Quality of Composition |
Grades |
|
7 |
8 |
|
No. of Pupils |
Rated at 10 |
2 |
1 |
Rated at 20 |
6 |
6 |
Rated at 30 |
8 |
8 |
Rated at 40 |
7 |
8 |
Rated at 50 |
2 |
4 |
Rated at 60 |
1 |
1 |
Rated at 70 |
1 |
1 |
Rated at 80 |
1 |
1 |
Rated at 90 |
1 |
1 |
The table reads as follows: two
pupils in the seventh grade and one in the eighth
wrote compositions rated at 10; six seventh-grade and
six eighth-grade pupils wrote compositions rated at
20, and so on for the whole table.
A similar condition of affairs is
indicated if we ask how many of a given type of addition
problems are solved correctly in eight minutes by
a fifth- and a sixth-grade class.
Number of Problems |
Grades |
|
5 |
6 |
|
No. of Pupils |
0 |
2 |
3 |
1 |
6 |
6 |
2 |
6 |
6 |
3 |
6 |
6 |
4 |
4 |
5 |
5 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
3 |
4 |
7 |
1 |
2 |
8 |
1 |
1 |
9 |
1 |
1 |
In like manner, if we measure the
quality of work done in penmanship for a fifth and
sixth grade, with a system of scoring that ranks the
penmanship in equal steps from a quality which, is
ranked four up to a quality which is ranked eighteen,
we find the following results:
Quality of Penmanship |
Grades |
|
5 |
6 |
|
No. of Pupils |
Rated at 4 |
5 |
6 |
Rated at 5 |
1 |
1 |
Rated at 6 |
0 |
0 |
Rated at 7 |
2 |
4 |
Rated at 8 |
10 |
4 |
Rated at 9 |
12 |
1 |
Rated at 10 |
3 |
6 |
Rated at 11 |
3 |
8 |
Rated at 12 |
3 |
3 |
Rated at 13 |
1 |
2 |
Rated at 14 |
1 |
1 |
Rated at 15 |
0 |
1 |
Rated at 16 |
1 |
1 |
Rated at 17 |
0 |
0 |
Rated at 18 |
0 |
0 |
Results similar to those recorded
above will be found if any accurate measurement is
made of the knowledge possessed by children in history
or in geography, or of the ability to apply or derive
principles in physics or in chemistry, or of the knowledge
of vocabulary in Latin or in German, and the like.
All such facts indicate clearly the
necessity for differentiating our work for the group
of children who are classified as belonging to one
grade. Under the older and simpler form of school
organization, the one-room rural school, it was not
uncommon for children to recite in one class in arithmetic,
in another in geography or history, and in possibly
still another in English. In our more highly organized
school systems, with the attempt to have children
pass regularly from grade to grade at each promotion
period, we have in some measure provided for individual
differences through allowing children to skip a grade,
or not infrequently by having them repeat the work
of a grade. In still other cases an attempt has
been made to adapt the work of the class to the needs
and capacities of the children by dividing any class
group into two or more groups, especially in those
subjects in which children seem to have greatest difficulty.
Teachers who are alive to the problem presented have
striven to adjust their work to different members of
the class by varying the assignments, and in some
cases by excusing from the exercises in which they
are already proficient the abler pupils.
Whatever adjustment the school may
be able to make in terms of providing special classes
for those who are mentally or physically deficient,
or for those who are especially capable, there will
always be found in any given group a wide variation
in achievement and in capacity. Group teaching
and individual instruction will always be required
of teachers who would adapt their work to the varying
capacities of children. A period devoted to supervised
study during which those children who are less able
may receive special help, and those who are of exceptional
ability be expected to make unusual preparation both
in extent and in quality of work done, may contribute
much to the efficiency of the school. As paradoxical
as the statement may seem, it is true that the most
retarded children in our school systems are the brightest.
Expressed in another way, it can be proved that the
more capable children have already achieved in the
subjects in which they are taught more than those
who are tow or three grades farther advanced.
Possibly the greatest contribution which teachers
can make to the development of efficiency upon the
part of the children with whom they work is to be
found in special attention which is given to capable
children with respect to both the quantity and quality
of work demanded of them, together with provision
for having them segregated in special classes or passed
through the school system with greater rapidity than
is now common. In an elementary school with which
the writer is acquainted, and in which there were
four fifth grades, it was discovered during the past
year that in one of these fifth grades in which the
brighter children had been put they had achieved more
in terms of ability to solve problems in arithmetic,
in their knowledge of history and geography, in the
quality of English composition they wrote, and the
like, than did the children in any one of the sixth
grades. In this school this particular fifth
grade was promoted to the seventh grade for the following
year. Many such examples could be found in schools
organized with more than one grade at work on the
same part of the school course, if care were taken
to segregate children in terms of their capacity.
And even where there is only one teacher per grade,
or where one teacher teaches two or three grades,
it should be found possible constantly to accelerate
the progress of children of more than ordinary ability.
The movement throughout the United
States for the organization of junior high schools
(these schools commonly include the seventh, eighth,
and ninth school years) is to be looked upon primarily
as an attempt to adjust the work of our schools to
the individual capacities of boys and girls and to
their varying vocational outlook. Such a school,
if it is to meet this demand for adjustment to individual
differences, must offer a variety of courses.
Among the courses offered in a typical junior high
school is one which leads directly to the high school.
In this course provision is made for the beginning
of a foreign language, of algebra, and, in some cases,
of some other high school subject during the seventh
and eighth years. In another course emphasis is
placed upon work in industrial or household arts in
the expectation that work in these fields may lead
to a higher degree of efficiency in later vocational
training, and possibly to the retention of children
during this period who might otherwise see little
or no meaning in the traditional school course.
The best junior high schools are offering in the industrial
course a variety of shop work. In some cases machine
shop practice, sheet metal working, woodworking, forging,
printing, painting, electrical wiring, and the like
are offered for boys; and cooking, sewing, including
dressmaking and designing, millinery, drawing, with
emphasis upon design and interior decoration, music,
machine operating, pasting, and the like are provided
for girls. Another type of course has provided
for training which looks toward commercial work, even
though it is recognized that the most adequate commercial
training may require a longer period of preparation.
In some schools special work in agriculture is offered.
Our schools cannot be considered as
satisfactorily organized until we make provision for
every boy or girl to work up to the maximum of his
capacity. The one thing that a teacher cannot
do is to make all of his pupils equal in achievement.
Whatever adjustment may have been made in terms of
special classes or segregation in terms of ability,
the teacher must always face the problem of varying
the assignment to meet the capacities of individual
children, and she ought, wherever it is possible,
especially to encourage the abler children to do work
commensurate with their ability, and to provide, as
far as is possible, for the rapid advancement of these
children through the various stages of the school
system.
QUESTIONS
1. What are the principal causes
of differences in abilities or in achievement among
school children?
2. What, if any, of the differences
noticed among children may be attributed to sex?
3. Are any of the sex differences
noticeable in the achievements of the school children
with whom you are acquainted?
4. To what extent is maturity
a cause of individual differences?
5. What evidence is available
to show the fallacy of the common idea that children
of the same age are equal in ability?
6. How important is heredity
in determining the achievement of men and women?
7. To what extent, if any, would
you be interested in the immediate heredity of the
children in your class? Why?
8. To what extent is the environment
in which children live responsible for their achievements
in school studies?
9. What may be expected in the
way of achievement from two children of widely different
heredity but of equal training?
10. For what factor in education
is the environment most responsible? Why?
11. If you grant that original
nature is the primary cause of individual differences
in intellectual achievements, how would you define
the work of the school?
12. Why are you not justified
in grouping children as bright, ordinary, and stupid?
13. Will a boy who has unusual
ability in music certainly be superior in all other
subjects?
14. Why are children who skip
a grade apt to be able to skip again at the end of
two or three years?
15. Are you able to distinguish
differences in type of mind (or general mental make-up)
among the children in your classes? Give illustrations.
16. What changes in school organization
would you advocate for the sake of adjusting the teaching
done to the varying capacities of children?
17. How should a teacher adjust
his work to the individual differences in capacity
or in achievement represented by the usual class group?